Butterfield Overland Stage Line

The highway the stages followed runs to Grandfalls, named for the upper, or grand, falls of the Pecos. Settlers came in the late 1880s, among them the brothers-in-law R. I. Carr and J. T. Sweatt, who built a brush dam above the lower falls and powered their cotton gin by the water. A flood in 1894 tore out the raceway and the dam, and the two families rebuilt. Dr. Charlotte Bergman, one of the Scandinavian settlers of the 1890s, was practicing there by 1897, when women physicians were rare in West Texas, and fought tuberculosis in the area.

What the plaque says

Butterfield Overland Stage Line One of the longest stage routes ever established, the Southern Overland Mail Line (Butterfield Route) which provided semi-weekly service St. Louis to San Francisco, 1858-1861. Followed substantially the route of this highway through Ward County.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Million Barrel Museum — 19 mi
  An oil reservoir that could not hold oil, then a water park that lasted one day, now a museum in Monahans with the story of the Pyote bomber base beside it.
• Monahans Sandhills State Park — 21 mi
  A small corner of a 200-mile dune field east of the Pecos, where fresh water lies just under the sand and a forest of shin oak grows no higher than your knee.

More markers nearby

• Million Barrel Tank — 19 mi
• Ward County — 19 mi
• Monahans Sandhills State Park and Museum — 21 mi
• Rattlesnake Bomber Base — 22 mi