Preston Trail

Preston Trail, later known as the Old Preston Road, was a road created by the Republic of Texas in 1841 from Preston, Texas on the Red River south to Austin, Texas. This road closely followed an existing trail that led across the area that had been used for centuries. This road was a main transportation artery from Central Texas to North Texas in the latter half of the 19th century. Today Texas State Highway 289 follows near this former road.

The Preston Trail followed an ancient Indian trail extending from Mexico through central Texas all the way to what is now St. Louis, Missouri and even on to Ohio where the Shawnee Indians lived. Parts of this old trail became known as the Chihuahua Trail. Extending northwards from Cedar Springs to the Red River, the Old Preston Road crossed very few streams. It followed a geographic spine of topography that still exists today where rainwater draining to the west flows into the Elm Fork of the Trinity River and rainwater draining to the east flows into the East Fork of the Trinity River until the rivers merge below Dallas.

The route of the Preston Trail followed the earlier cattle trail that came to be known as the Texas Road (also known as the Shawnee Trail). The Texas Road was in use in the early 1840s.

Preston Trail became part of the first official Texas military road in 1839. In the autumn that year, Albert Sidney Johnston (who was at that time the Secretary of War for the Republic of Texas) sent soldiers under the command of Colonel William Gordon Cooke to build a road from the Brazos River to the Red River and establish frontier forts to protect settlers from Indian attacks.

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Wikipedia