Identifier: bookoftexa00bene (find matches)
Title: Book of Texas
Year: 1916 (1910s)
Authors: Benedict, Harry Yandell, 1869-1937 Lomax, John A. (John Avery), 1867-1948
Subjects: Texas Texas -- Economic conditions
Publisher: Garden City, N.Y. : Doubleday, Page
Contributing Library: Houston Public Library
Digitizing Sponsor: LYRASIS Members and Sloan Foundation

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From the towns that enjoyed water transportation primitive roads scattered in various directions. The Republic of Texas made a few feeble efforts to build roads, but the chief thing that was done was to pass a law that the stumps in the roads should not be over twelve inches high. Stages carried passengers, ox wagons hauled freight. When railroads began to be built, their interior terminals became centres of radiating overland traffic. By 1860 there were thirty stage lines, including one from San Antonio to San Diego, California, and one from Sherman to St. Louis. Freighting, mainly with ox wagons, became the permanent occupation of some and the incidental amusement of whole neighborhoods who went to Jefferson or Houston with cotton, to come back loaded with other necessaries. For a long time the fertile Black Prairie country, whose dirt roads are so unpassable when wet, was left undeveloped agriculturally because of the lack of transportation. Freight cost 20 cents per mile per ton, just twenty times the present average railroad rate.

Photo Caption
A Portion of the Texas and Pacific Tracks at Fort Worth

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