In maps of the United States/Texas/North America between 1820 and 1825, I noticed a place along the Red River in former Miller County, Arkansas Territory called "Williams Settlement." I began a search that took me into the aftermath of a major earthquake.

Color your own power maps from 1601 and 1478!

This Belgian Map from 1825 of the Red River of the South leaves more questions than answers.

Until the 1830s, the Disputed Territory along the Red River, where Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas and Louisiana meet, was a "no man's land."

What are these "earth pimples" (acne!) as some researchers have described the circular mounds that appear in all over the Red River Valley?

For Thomas Jefferson, the most important Corps of Discovery in the Louisiana Purchase was the expedition up the Red River of 1806.

he Western Interior Seaway of the Mesozoic Era is the reason that the Red River Valley of the South is extremely rich in fossils.

Two maps of the Missouri Territory were either made with a time machine, or one of them is a wee bit older.

A 1656 map shows villages like Naguatex, which were described in the 1557 book, Gentleman of Elvas, about the de Soto expedition.

The northwestern portions of the Ozark Trail were subsumed by the federal highway project designated as US 66, aka the original Route 66.

Coates' Bluff was Shreveport's original settlement, the site of a trading post within a Caddoan village.

According to Jacques Marquette in 1673, this is the "First Map of the Mississippi River."

I found two other maps of Texas, both from the period after Texas statehood (1845), that shows Warren's trading posts.

Pressler's 1867 shows Warren's Trading House sandwiched between Panther and Salt Creek (TX), and near Red Creek (OK), but not on Mud Creek.

A map about an unrealized future, drawn to indicate where the Texas & Pacific Railroad would pass once it was built west of Shreveport.

Along Cherry Street in downtown Sherman is an interesting ruin behind the 1888 Cottonbelt railroad depot.

The Index Line stretched all the way from Logansport north to the Red River.

An undated photograph depicts "a busy Saturday in Durant, Bryan County, Oklahoma."

This French map from 1783 combines European claims and native America.

This 1824 German map of Arkansas Territory is a lot more illuminating than many others from the same period I've encountered.