Butterfield Mail and Stage Line

The Handbook of Texas calls the 2,795-mile route probably the longest ever run with horse-drawn vehicles in the United States. The mails almost always arrived within the twenty-five days allowed, and postage at ten cents a half ounce brought in $119,766.77 in 1860. Early in 1859 Sherman became a distribution point, giving Texas settlements their postal service through the line. Passengers had a hard bargain: anyone who laid over forfeited his seat and might wait a month for another. Late in 1858 the coaches west of the Pecos were moved to the San Antonio-El Paso road for better water.

What the plaque says

One of major horse-drawn transportation projects of history. Was authorized by Act of Congress on March 3, 1857. Contract for semi-weekly service overland to San Francisco, California, was awarded to company headed by John Butterfield; another stockholder in the $2,000,000 venture was express pioneer William G. Fargo. The line employed some 2,000 people and used hundreds of stagecoaches and thousands of animals. In addition to receipts from freight and passengers, it had a $600,000 annual subsidy for carrying U.S. Mail. Company operated from September 1858 to February 1861 with a 25-day schedule for the 2,795 mile trip (8 to 9 days were allowed for crossing Texas). Route began in Tipton, Mo., and Memphis,Tn., uniting at Fort Smith, Ak., entering Texas near Sherman, thence westward through the Comanche-held frontier, leaving the state at El Paso. Stage stations were located about every 20 miles and the best known in this vicinity were Fort Belknap, Fort Phantom Hill, Mountain Pass and Fort Chadbourne. Between Fort Belknap and Tucson, Az., mules were used to pull the coaches as they were less appealing to Indians. Each coach accommodated four to ten passengers at an average fare of $200 each; mail and freight charges were ten cents per one-half ounce. (1969)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Frontier Texas! — 8.9 mi
  Abilene's multimedia museum of the frontier as the settlers told it, beside the Texas and Pacific tracks the town was built on, and the official visitor center for the Texas Forts Trail.
• Buffalo Gap Historic Village — 12 mi
  The 1880 stone courthouse and jail of the county seat Abilene took away, with about twenty old buildings from around West Texas gathered around it since 1956.
• Abilene State Park — 15 mi
  A pecan-shaded park on Elm Creek in the Callahan Divide south of Abilene, with red sandstone CCC buildings, a summer pool, a bird blind and yurts under the trees.
• Fort Phantom Hill — 17 mi
  A field of lone stone chimneys north of Abilene, left by the fire after the Army left in 1854, later a stage stop and a buffalo-hide town of more than 500 people.

More markers nearby

• Lt. Col. William E. Dyess — 4.3 mi
• 12th Armored Division at Camp Barkeley — 4.5 mi
• Site of Western Cattle Trail — 6.4 mi
• Castle Peak — 6.8 mi