Butterfield Overland Mail in Missouri - 1858-1861

The coaches that changed teams at Smith's ran for barely two and a half years. Mail went by rail for the first 160 miles, from St. Louis to Tipton, and the company's Fort Smith to Tipton division, 318.5 miles of road through this corner of Missouri, was scheduled at about 48.6 hours. The first eastbound mail of September 1858 reached St. Louis in 24 days and 18 hours. As war approached, the company was ordered onto the Union-held central route instead; its last mail bag left St. Louis on March 18, 1861 and reached San Francisco on April 13.

What the plaque says

Butterfield Overland Mail in Missouri - 1858-1861 The John I. Smith Relay Station was 172 1/2 miles from the Tipton Terminus and stood in northeast Barry County, about 7 miles west of Crane. Erected by State Historical Society of Missouri, 1958

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Roaring River State Park — 20 mi
  A deep valley cut into the edge of the Ozark Plateau south of Cassville, with a fern-hung spring, a trout hatchery on an 1865 mill dam, and land bought with a patent-medicine fortune.
• Wilson's Creek National Battlefield — 24 mi
  The farm valley southwest of Springfield where the first major Civil War battle west of the Mississippi was fought on August 10, 1861, and where Nathaniel Lyon became the first Union general killed.
• Marvel Cave (Silver Dollar City) — 25 mi
  A sinkhole cave west of Branson that was mined for guano under a false name, toured by candle from 1894, and turned into Silver Dollar City by the family that leased it in 1950.
• Shepherd of the Hills Homestead (Old Matt's Cabin) — 27 mi
  The Ross homestead above Mutton Hollow, which Harold Bell Wright's 1907 novel turned into Old Matt's Cabin, drawing readers into the White River hills from the year it appeared.

More markers nearby

• Lawrence County — 7.5 mi
• Galena — 15 mi
• Butterfield Overland Mail in Missouri - 1858-1861 — 16 mi
• Butterfield Overland Mail in Missouri - 1858-1861 — 21 mi