Cherokee Trace - FM 21 near Lake Bob Sandlin, Camp Co. TX
N 33° 01.796 W 095° 05.462
15S E 304712 N 3656548
This Cherokee trace wandered along the prairies and streams of this beautiful area of Camp County TX, and reached all the way to US border in Arkansas after passing through the Oklahoma Indian Territory.
Waymark Code: WM1066K
Location: Texas, United States
Date Posted: 03/05/2019
Views: 3
This marker on the old Cherokee Trace is located in a pullout on the south side of the Lake Bob Sandlin bridge on the FM 21. The marker reads as follows:
"CHEROKEE TRACE
This Indian trading route to Arkansas and Oklahoma was laid out by Cherokees. A tribesman with a keen sense of direction pulled buffalo hides behind his horse to press down the tall grass. Groups of Indians followed blazing the trail, removing logs and underbrush, and marking fords. Others located springs and good camping places. After the road was established the Cherokees planted roses and honeysuckle which still mark the old trace. After the Indians were driven out, settlers came into Texas by this route. The first residents in Camp County lived on the trail."
Fromthe Handbook of Texas Online: (
visit link)
"CHEROKEE TRACE. The Cherokee Trace was a historic trail that traversed East and Northeast Texas. The Cherokee Indians are credited with blazing this route about 1821. It is also possible that the trace may have evolved from one marked by other Native American groups or French traders a century earlier and that the Cherokees further defined and smoothed out this course. According to folklore, the Indians dragged buffalo skins behind their horses to flatten the tall grass and then cleared the path of brush and logs. They charted a road that encountered the best camping places, river fords, and springs. They also planted honeysuckle and rose bushes along the route. The white blooming hedgerows functioned as bright and effective indicators of the trace, and the stiff branches and briars of the Cherokee rose later became noted by settlers as a dependable shrub for fencing.
The trail ran from the vicinity of Nacogdoches north through Northeast Texas including present-day Gregg, Upshur, and Camp counties. The road then crossed Big Cypress Creek into Titus County near the historic location of Fort Sherman and continued north to Indian settlements in Oklahoma and Arkansas. Serving as a travel and trading route for East Texas Indians, the trail also enabled the migration of many settlers into Texas. Popular tradition holds that Sam Houston, David Crockett,qqv and other participants in the Texas Revolution first crossed the Red River into Texas on the Cherokee Trace. Early land grant surveys of the 1830s and 1840s mention the trail as a landmark and also reference roads that subsequently evolved from this route such as the Fort Towson Road and Clarksville-Nacogdoches Road. In 1839, after their defeat at the battle of the Neches, many Cherokees fled Texas on this trail. Remnants of the old Cherokee Trace along with hedgerows of roses can still be found in Northeast Texas today.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Laurie E. Jasinski, "A History of Lake Bob Sandlin State Park" (unpublished manuscript, Cultural Resources Program, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, Austin, March 2001). Marker files, Texas Historical Commission, Austin (Cherokee Trace—Camp County, Gregg County, Upshur County). Traylor Russell, History of Titus County (2 vols., Waco: Morrison, 1965, 1966; rpt., n.p.: Walsworth, 1975)"