Butterfield Overland Mail Route Through Grayson County

Grayson County did not simply wait for the coaches. J. W. Williams, writing in the Southwestern Historical Quarterly in 1957 and citing the county's 1936 history, says citizens held a champagne supper for John Butterfield himself, and that the evening ended with residents pulling apart Sherman's small log courthouse in search of a goose's nest. After the mail began running, Williams adds, Sherman doubled in population, and its people built one of the finest courthouses in that part of Texas without hesitating. The county had courted the line and meant to enjoy the result.

What the plaque says

Butterfield Overland Mail Route Through Grayson County In the mid-19th century, mail traffic between the eastern United States and the western states and territories was accomplished via Panama and Cape Horn. In 1857, Congress authorized the postmaster to contract a new overland mail service. The successful bidder for the southern route was John Butterfield, who agreed to convey mail twice weekly in 25 days per run. The "Oxbow Trail" originated at St. Louis, Missouri, and Memphis, Tennessee, then merged at Fort Smith, Arkansas. The stagecoaches traveled through Indian Territory (later Oklahoma) and across northern Texas to Tucson, Arizona, and on to Los Angeles and San Francisco, California, traveling 2,795 miles from St. Louis. The trail entered Grayson County by crossing the Red River at Colbert's Ferry and proceeding into Sherman. It crossed the county toward Gainesville in Cooke County en route to Franklin (later El Paso). The citizens of Sherman are credited with especially courting the mail route to use Colbert's Ferry instead of entering Texas near Preston (8 mi. upriver). Sherman became a distribution point in 1858, bringing mail service to Texas settlements. Waterman L. Ormsby of "The New York Herald" was the first through passenger on the Butterfield Trail in September 1858. He described Sherman as "a pleasant little village of about six hundred inhabitants," and chronicled the remainder of his trip across Grayson County, writing "our course lay across a fine rolling prairie, covered with fine grass, ...the beautiful moonlight lit up the vast prairies making its sameness appear like the boundless sea and its hills like the rolling waves." The southern route was terminated in March 1861. The course of the trail is still visible in a number of locations in Grayson County. (1999)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Eisenhower Birthplace State Historic Site — 8.9 mi
  The small frame house beside the Katy tracks in Denison where Dwight Eisenhower was born in 1890, bought by townspeople in 1946 and given to Texas in 1958.
• Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge — 11 mi
  A 1946 refuge on the Big Mineral Arm of Lake Texoma, laid over land bought for Denison Dam and the site of the vanished railroad town of Hagerman, now a winter stop for geese.
• Eisenhower State Park — 12 mi
  A bluff-top park on Lake Texoma opened in 1958 on land leased from the Corps of Engineers, in the Red River country of Fort Johnson, Colbert's Ferry and the Butterfield stages.
• Sam Rayburn House State Historic Site — 23 mi
  The two-story farmhouse west of Bonham that the longtime Speaker of the House built in 1916 and kept as his home, left as he lived in it and open as a museum since 1975.

More markers nearby

• Courthouses of Grayson County — steps away
• Grayson County — steps away
• Home County of Allison Mayfield, Conservationist — steps away
• Ninth Texas Cavalry — steps away