The Southwest Trail was a 19th-century pioneer route that was the primary route for American settlers bound for Texas.
The Southwest Trail was originally an American Indian trace, and it was improved and expanded by European-American pioneers. The trail ran from St. Louis, Missouri, to Fulton, Arkansas on the Red River. At the time of Americans' first settling the Texas area, the Red River was the border between Mexico and the United States.
The trail is commemorated in the Historic Washington State Park near Hope, Arkansas.
Famous quotes containing the word trail:
“These, and such as these, must be our antiquities, for lack of human vestiges. The monuments of heroes and the temples of the gods which may once have stood on the banks of this river are now, at any rate, returned to dust and primitive soil. The murmur of unchronicled nations has died away along these shores, and once more Lowell and Manchester are on the trail of the Indian.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)