The Wichitas were the people of the Cross Timbers.

The original homelands of the Caddos consist of the Red River Valley from southeastern Oklahoma to Natchitoches, Louisiana.

The French and Creole City of Natchitoches is the oldest colonial city in the Louisiana Purchase.

Fort Los Adaes near Robeline, Louisiana was once the capital of Spanish Texas.

The village of Natchitoches welcomed Fort St. Jean Baptiste in the early 18th century.

The Butterfield Overland Mail Route was the first transcontinental road in the United States.

Before it ferried cars across, Carpenter's Bluff bridge served as a train crossing.

A wreck in the Red River is an archeological site.

By the late 1830s, Boggy Depot centered the Choctaw/ Chickasaw Nation.

There was the once-large town of Gotebo, Oklahoma.

Roosevelt has disproportionately more cars than it does humans, but the cars are what keep the humans in Roosevelt.

Tatums in Carter County, Oklahoma was an all-black town that enjoyed a brief oil boom.

Doaksville in Choctaw County, Oklahoma is now a ghost town but was once a very important place.

Spanish Fort in Montague County, Texas was originally a Taovayan village that spanned the Red River.

Preston was founded by Holland Coffee, and yes, that was his real name.

The home of Charles DeMorse, publisher of the Northern Standard of the 1840s-1850, in Clarksville, Texas.

The old town of Washington, Arkansas was once the biggest town in the Southwest.

Fulton grew up along the Great Bend of the Red River but is no longer growing.

Several years ago, I drove the entire Belt Line Road that circles around Dallas County, and I did it again this past month.

San Calixto in the Wichita Mountains - the Sierra Jumanos - was probably the base for gold prospecting after it failed as a mission in 1629.