The way north was an old trace that lay along the great wrinkle in the earth that separated the Blackland Prairie to the east from the Southern Plains to the west. The trail ran from Southwest Texas north to present day St. Louis, Missouri, and for centuries it served as a conduit for trade and war and migration by peoples ancient and modern. It went by many names. Most referred to it as the Shawnee Trail, for the ancient Indian village of Shawneetown near present day Denison. The military route built by the Texas army in 1843 was called the Preston Road. It ran south from Coffee’s Trading Post in the Washita Bend of the Red River to Cedar Springs hard by the Trinity in what is now Dallas. For settlers heading to the Promised Land south of the Red it was The Texas Road, and for the drovers who pushed the cattle herds north it was the Sedalia Trail, the Kansas Trail, or just, the trail.

In 1937 Congressman Sam Rayburn led a contingent from Denison to a meeting in Louisiana that would lead to the construction of one of the largest man-made lakes ever.