48 Various types of evidence have been employed in determining the
route of the National Road through Dallas. Exhaustive measurements
on the Texas Highway Department's map of Dallas were made until the
place was found at which Major Stell's field notes almost exactly fitted
the space between White Rock and Mill Creek. The writer then went to
Dallas, followed the course of Mill Creek on foot as far as obstructions
would permit, and had an interview with Henry L. Stokey, who has lived
in the immediate area for the past sixty-three years. Stokey reports that
the prairie came to the banks of Mill Creek on its east side only between
Exall Park and Gastón Avenue and that the present southeasterly course
of the stream between these points follows the original stream bed. It
should be noted that Stokey's information roughly confirms the Peters
Colony map of 1852 as to the distribution of timber and prairie and that
the combined evidence leaves no other place for one to locate the crossing
of the National Road on Mill Creek except between Gastón Avenue and
Exall Park, for Major Stell, according to his notes, entered prairie im-
mediately east of Mill Creek at the place where that stream flowed south-
east. To make doubly sure as to the accuracy of this conclusion, measure-
ments were made on the immense map of Dallas that hangs in the Records
Building at Dallas (property of the Fidelity Union Abstract & Title Co.).
Olen Coats, a draftsman in the Records Building, volunteered to plat the
field notes of the old road (to the correct scale) on tracing paper and to
find the place where the drawing fitted this large map. Coats' drawing,
representing the course of the road from White Rock to Mill Creek, fitted
the map without apparent error in the following course:
Beginning on White Rock Creek about 1250 feet south of U. S. Highway
80 (East Pike), then 8780 feet in a direction 6 degrees north of west to a
point in Ash Lane about 250 feet northeast of Fitzhugh Street, then due
west 5280 feet to a point about 300 feet southwest from the intersection
of Junius and Haskell Avenue and then 2300 feet in a direction 10 de-
grees south of west to Mill Creek at a point about 200 feet north of Swiss
Avenue, which is about midway between Exall Park and Gaston Avenue.
Mr. W. S. Beesley, head of the Map and Plat Book Department in the
Records Building, regards this large map used by Coats as the most ac-
curate map of Dallas to be found, which emphasizes the accuracy of
Coats' drawing.
The route of the National Road as platted by Coats is about a quarter
of a mile north of the path which that road would assume if Major StelPs
field notes were platted without reference to topography. But the old field
notes evidently contain a small error, since the plat and field notes do not
themselves agree on an eight mile course of the road in east Dallas County.
The route as platted by Coats is the only route found by the writer that
satisfies all conditions of topography and direction, and it corresponds
closely with the exhaustive measurements previously made on the Texas
Highway Map of Dallas.
