Library Gazebo ~ Borger, TX
Posted by: 
YoSam.
N 35° 39.258 W 101° 24.323
14S E 282245 N 3948271
Picnic table for the college students, study and/or eat in the shade.
Waymark Code: WM9YAR
Location: Texas, United States
Date Posted: 10/16/2010
Views: 1
This gazebo sits on the library lawn, on the old Fort Smith - Santa Fe Trail, with is the street in front of it. Still named "Trail Way".
Large Campus for a Junior College.
There is a THC (Texas Historical Commission) marker next to the gazebo, and for your entertainment I will post the text of that marker:
Josiah Gregg (1806-50) blazed the Fort Smith-Santa Fe Trail in 1840 as a shorter route between the U.S. and New Mexico. He crossed this site on March 17, 1840, while returning to Arkansas from a trading expedition to Santa Fe and Chihuahua. In a book, "Commerce of the Prairies", published in 1844, Gregg recommended the new route, which paralleled the Canadian River. Over 2,000 California-bound gold seekers traveled it in 1849. The largest wagon train of that year was accompanied by U.S. Army troops commanded by Captain Randolph B. Marcy (1812-87), who made a survey of the trail for a proposed National Wagon Road. Marcy's party crossed this site on June 9, 1849.
The extensive use of the Fort Smith-Santa Fe Trail in the early 1850s caused it to be considered as a favorable route for a transcontinental railroad. Lt. A.W. Whipple of the Army Corps of Engineer surveyed a possible route in the summer of 1853. By the late 1850s, emigrants were traveling a more southern road through El Paso, which was eventually to become the southern railroad route, and the Fort Smith-Santa Fe Trail fell into disuse and was finally abandoned.
In many places on the Plains, the wagon ruts are still visible in the undisturbed prairie sod.