Texas Road

The Texas Road, also known as the Shawnee Trail, or Shawnee-Arbuckle Trail, was a major trade and emigrant route to Texas across Indian Territory (later Oklahoma, Kansas, and Missouri). Established during the Mexican War by emigrants rushing to Texas, it remained an important route across Indian Territory until Oklahoma statehood. The Shawnee Trail was the earliest and easternmost route by which Texas Longhorn cattle were taken to the north. It played a significant role in the history of Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, and Kansas in the early and mid-1800s.

According to Gary and Margaret Kraisinger, "The Texas Road, an immigration route, followed an earlier Indian trail and had existed since the early Republic-of-Texas days when northern pioneers migrated to the Republic to take advantage of the generous Spanish land-grants....trail drivers followed the Texas Road north across the Indian Nations, paused at Baxter's Place located in southeast Kansas Territory on the military road between Fort Scott, Kansas Territory, and Fort Gibson, Indian Territory, and continued across Missouri to the river towns of St. Louis and Hannibal, Missouri. By the 1850s, this route became known as the 'Shawnee Trail' and it carried thousands of longhorns northward."^[1]