An old ferry road runs through Atlanta State Park

Some wagon roads in Atlanta State Park now look like ditches in the woods. Wheels wore traces more than three feet below the forest floor. One was the Bobo Ferry trace, which once led travelers toward a Sulphur River crossing.

The park now covers 1,475 acres on the south shore of Wright Patman Lake. Pines and hardwoods rise as high as 90 feet, but the water below them is much newer. Federal dam work began on August 20, 1948. The river was blocked in 1953, and planned impoundment began in 1956.

Texas had leased the parkland from the Department of the Army in 1954. The reservoir was originally known as Lake Texarkana. Congress renamed it Wright Patman Dam and Lake on December 15, 1973. That puts two kinds of travel in one landscape: a ferry road pressed into East Texas soil and a broad lake made for flood control and other public uses. The water changed the destination, but deep wagon ruts still record the trips that came before it.