MISSING - Historic Indian Trading Post - REMOVED
Posted by: 
ggmorton
N 30° 43.411 W 095° 33.025
15R E 255782 N 3401739
** This marker was removed due to inaccuracies** Per the Walker County Historical Commission.
An old indian trading post on the square in Huntsville.
Waymark Code: WM1AC7
Location: Texas, United States
Date Posted: 03/14/2007
Views: 24
The first building erected in Huntsville is thought to have been the log trading post built near this site about 1835-46 by the town's founder, Pleasant Gray, in order to barter with the Bedias and other friendly tribes of Indians in the vicinity. According to early settlers the trading post was a small cabin in a grove of oak trees where the town's first business houses were built a few years later on the east side of Main Street (University Avenue) fronting the Courthouse square. The location was chosen for its convenience to a spring about one block to the north (near an Artesian well and, later, the electric-light and ice plant of early Huntsville). A small prairie west of the trading post afforded grazing for the ponies of Gray's Indian customers, and the spring provided a pleasant location for their camping ground. The prairie afterward became the site for the courthouse and surrounding blocks of businesses. Pleasant Gray's home was close to the trading post. His brother Ephraim, who assisted with the trading post, lived just north of the spring. The Grays operated the business for only a few years. Pleasant Gray built a tavern and hotel north of the Courthouse Square in 1841, and Ephraim moved a few years later to Madison County, where he remained until his death.
The official Texas Historical Marker has been removed, but a local marker is here.
NOTE: SOME PART OF THE INFORMATION IN THE MARKER TEXT FIELD IS SO INACCURATE THE TEXAS HISTORICAL MARKER WAS REMOVED.
Marker Number: 8458
Marker Text:
Located here about 1830, this Indian post was established by Pleasant Gray, adventurer and pioneer from Alabama. Friendly Indians of East Texas had long used the nearby springs and they came to exchange agricultural products and pottery for hides, ponies, and cured meat brought by the western Indians. Soon settlers began to move into the region and by 1836, during the Republic of Texas, the future town of Huntsville had started to spring up here. Gray sold his post in 1846, as he could no longer tend it. He died in 1848. He had one son.
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