The history that remains today can be seen as mud/rock walls, a few crosses at the cemetery and also a few walls of the corral. The Spring House still stands very much in tack today. As you walk along what is left of the past you just can't help but wonder what it must have been like. Our main goal was to see the petrogylphs. We had 2 groups of people that came in from 2 different ways. We chose to stop at Ft. Cummings on the way. You saw a bit from the last entry. Here are some more pictures and some history gathered from the net. Yes, there was enough snow for Dave to make a snowball!
Butterfield Overland Stage Route
By Todd Underwood
In March of 1857, realizing the need for an overland mail route from the east that serviced the west, congress passed a Post Office Appropriations Bill. While nine bids were being considered for this new contract, James E. Birch began carrying mail and passengers from San Antonio, Texas to San Diego, California. The first trip was in August 1857 and took a route that required passengers to be transported on mules over the Oriflamme Mountains. The route became known as the "Jackass Mail" and lasted only a short period until Birch drowned when his ship sank off Cape Hatteras while enroute from Washington D.C.
Robber's Roost at Virginia Dale, a well known stage station of the Overland Route from 1862 to the opening of the railroad. At one time the home of Slade, a notorious character of the times. Larimer County, Colorado.
Then, on September 15, 1857, one of the nine bidders, 56 year old John Butterfield of the John Butterfield Company was awarded the mail contract by congress. The Southern Postmaster General required the route that John’s company was to take be similar to the Birch route. This route, which was generally not accepted, was called the Ox Bow Route and had to go through El Paso, Texas and Fort Yuma, California. It added 600 miles over the more northern routes and required extra relay stations and frontier forts to be built. The total length of the new route was 2812 miles and had to be run twice a week. It was also required that the trips be completed within 25 days.
"The overland stage road between Ogden and Helena crossing the Beaver Head River at Point of Rocks ... by means of a plank bridge." By Jackson, 1871
It took a year for John and his company to secure sites for stage stations, buy equipment, obtain horses and mules, and find men to work for him. Bridges had to be built over rivers and streams, large rocks had to be removed from trails, wells had to be dug, and passes through mountains had to be cleared. Finally, on September 16, 1858, the first trip was launched from Tipton, Missouri. Butterfield’s son drove the first leg along with a reporter from the New York Herald named Waterman L. Ormsby. Their trip is recorded in a book called The Butterfield Overland Mail, ; published 1942 by the Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery, San Marino, California.
The cost for one way fare was $200 or $.15 per mile for shorter trips and usually took 22 days as opposed to the contracted 25. The Concord stagecoaches carrying the passengers averaged 5-9 miles per hour and were fairly comfortable by the days standards. Only when the trail was very rough did the passengers have to switch to a more uncomfortable but rugged Celerity stagecoach. There were 139 relay stations and forts, 1800 head of stock, and 250 Concord and Celerity Overland Stage Coaches used by the 800 men that Butterfield employed.
Butterfields men were rough tough frontiersman as no other men could handle the hardships that Butterfield would put them through. He gave them instructions such as ,"drivers and conductors to be armed but to shoot only when lives of passengers are endangered" and "no shipments of gold or silver to be carried to cut down on attacks by highwaymen." Each driver had a 60 mile route and then a return for a total of 120 miles.
Despite the $600,000 per year grant Butterfield was awarded by congress, he still ran up large debts with the Wells Fargo company. In March of 1860, John Butterfield was forced out and Wells Fargo took over the stage route. When the Civil war was begun, the Ox Bow Route could no longer be used and the Wells Fargo company had to switch to the Central Overland Trail instead. By 1866, Wells Fargo had gained a monopoly over long distance overland stage coach routes and mail service and used both the original Butterfield Overland Trail and others. In 1869, the first transcontinental railroad was finished and the need for transcontinental passenger and mail travel by stagecoach was to be no more.
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History of Butterfield Trail
The History of Butterfield Trail dates back to 1858 when the Butterfield Overland Mail Company operated for three years carrying mail and passengers across country from Missouri to San Francisco. More than 700 miles of the almost 2,800 mile mail route ran across the state of Texas. Part of the original trail used still runs through the Butterfield Trail golf course property today, thus providing the perfect name for our emerald gem designed by world-renown golf course architect, Tom Fazio.
Modern travelers can still view some of the same landscapes in West Texas, and follow exact segments of the route, reaching historical markers, all while feeling some nostalgia for the historic Texas frontier.
When playing golf, you can still view remnants of the original Butterfield Trail adjacent to Hole #8 on the Butterfield Trail Golf Course.
For more information on the history of the Butterfield Overland Mail Company, we invite you to pick up a copy of Historic Texas Tours, A Guide for Tracing Early Routes and Trails by William J. Sheffield, Jr. Copyright 2001.
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BUTTERFIELD OVERLAND MAIL
When California was admitted to the Union in 1850, slavery was the most divisive issue facing our nation? California was admitted as a "free" state, with no slavery permitted, but much of Southern California was inhabited by pro-slavery southerners. In 1856, the state was already a fabulously wealthy one, but far removed from our country's capital, and there was a movement afoot to the state to form a separate nation. Rapid transportation west to California was essential to maintain close communication. Pro-slavery senators wanted a southern route to California, via Texas. Antislavery forces wanted the North to have access to Upper California where nearly all the gold had been discovered. The central overland route from St. Joseph, Missouri, through Nebraska, Southern Wyoming, Utah, and Nevada to Sacramento, California, was the shortest and fastest way, but it was politically unsatisfactory to Southern sympathizers. John Butterfield won a government contract to transport mail from the Mississippi River to San Francisco in 1857. He chose a route that would offend neither the North nor the South. It ran from St. Louis to Tipton, Missouri, by rail, then by Stagecoach or wagon to Springfield, Missouri, to Fort Smith, Arkansas, to Sherman and EL Paso, Texas, thence to Tucson and Yuma, Arizona, to Los Angeles, California and terminating in San Francisco.
The route had the advantage of being snow free most of the year. Much of the route ran through wild and semi-arid territory, but it was open prairie and desert and not particularly difficult for wheeled vehicles.
Watterman Ormsby, who traveled on the first westbound trip, had this to say about one night's travel. "To see the heavy mail wagon whizzing and whirling over the jagged rock, through such a labyrinth, in comparative darkness, and to feel oneself bounding--now on the hard seat, now against the roof, and now against the side of the wagon--was no joke."
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