Odessa, Ector County
Road of stubborn seekers of 1849 California gold fields and better life. Bringing the old, infant, the yet unborn and all worldly goods, family wagons entered Texas at Preston, on Red River, to go southwest via springs (including some now in Monahans Sandhills Park) to Emigrants' Crossing on the Pecos, then upriver and west through Guadalupe Pass to El Paso. Old wagon parts by the trail tell of some disasters. Capt. R. B. Marcy in 1849 and Capt. John Pope in 1854 made Army surveys of the trail. It passed near this spot.