William Hepworth Dixon, White Conquest: Volume 1

[319] for local traffic only, but for the security and supply of a long chain of Indian posts, including Fort Sill, Fort Griffin, and Fort Richardson, a town was ordered to be built, and has accordingly been built.

The story of Denison City is as curious, in its way, as the story of Salinas City; for Denison in Texas, like Salinas in California, is built by English enterprise, with English gold.

Five miles from the bridge over Red River, Colonel Stevens, engineer of the Texas and Kansas railways, found a safer and better site. The Colonel (in whose company we have the great advantage of seeing these countries) is a man of vast experience in the ways of savage life. No one in the service knows the Redskins better, or the land on which they live so well. A town was needed on the frontier, and he chose the site, instead of leaving the locality to chance. A rolling prairie, with a grove of ancient oaks, arrested his attention, and on finding the plateau drained by a pretty runnel, fed by many living springs, he paused, and looked about. At points, the rock cropped out, and here and there, outside the grove of oaks, lay strips of open country, dotted with single trees. Around the plateau rolled a rich and level country,