The Cross Timbers is well defined on this 1844 map by Josiah Gregg.

The Central National Road connected Dallas, Texas to Washington, Arkansas.

What may be the final photo of the ferry at Fulton, Hempstead County, Arkansas which crossed the Red River just below the Great Bend.

Between 1809 and 1819, a young American named Henry Ker traveled up the Red River from its mouth to its far western reaches search of gold.

One of my favorite maps of the Red River is Nicolas de Fer's illustrated map published in France in 1718.

The photos of hotels in Clarksville from 1885 are from an archive that is no longer available.

Decommissioned in 1926, the Gardie Eastman may well have been the last steamboat to traverse the entirety of the Red River.

I was pleasantly surprised to recognize that the Jefferson to Shreveport Waterway still exists as Twelve Mile Bayou.

The Pawnee/ Wichita village that George Catlin sketched was abandoned by the 1860s.

Near Marksville, Louisiana sit 2,500 year old, human constructed mounds... ancient, earthen pyramids. They've been abandoned once again.

The "Willis Bridge" now connects Oklahoma to Texas over Lake Texoma along US 377.

Marion Post (later, Marion Post Wolcott) was the first photographer to document the Cane River Creole culture of Louisiana.

Sophia Suttenfield Aughinbaugh Coffee Butt Porter was one of the more colorful characters to inhabit the Red River Valley.

In 1931, the toll bridge at the former Sacra's Ferry site across from Brown Springs closed for good in favor of a free bridge a upstream.

Sykes (Sikes) Ferry Road passing over Dorcheat Bayou north of Minden in central Webster Parish, Louisiana.

When the capitol of Louisiana faced Union Control and Reconstruction during the Civil War, western Louisiana descended into lawlessness.

The re-taking of forts in Indian Territory was one minor focus of Grant's Vicksburg campaign in the Civil War.

The people in Southwestern Arkansas before the Civil War were much more populist and had a strong free-soil expansionist base.

The bones of the Natchez warriorss could be seen there years afterwards at Lake Sang pour Sang — "Blood for Blood."

Newspaper articles report on the same event: the Great Hanging in Gainesville, as well as other murders that took place in North Texas