When the early pioneers came to Texas they were faced with many problems in the vast, unsettled, and unfamiliar country. To the necessity of providing food, clothing, and shelter was added the constant concern over communication, travel, and transportation. It is the last mentioned phase of pioneering life that is to be treated in this study. Much has been written about the period of the four decades before the Civil War but nowhere has the author bean able to find an adequate presentation of the progress of transportation, as a whole, in Texas from 1820 to 1860. The story of transportation during that era has to do with the early days of settlement when the pioneers were coming into Texas in ever-increasing numbers from the United States and Europe. This was a period which has been highly colored and romanticized by numerous books and motion pictures and it has become increasingly easy to lose sight of the obstacles that the early settlers In a frontier region had to face. [...]