Texas Road

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.

Used before and just after the Civil War, the Shawnee Trail gathered cattle from east and west of its main stem, which passed through Austin, Waco, and Dallas.

It crossed the Red River at Rock Bluff, near Preston, and led north along the eastern edge of what became Oklahoma, a route later followed closely by the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad.

"[2] From the mid 1840s, various feeder routes along the Texas coastal plains, Rio Grande and western ranges connected into a trunk line leading into Austin onwards to Waco, Dallas, and the Preston Trail.

[1]: 3–14 The Kansas Live Stock Company proposed a route west of the Sixth Principal Meridian from the Red River to Fort Arbuckle, then northwards into Kanas, passing between Abilene and Junction City.