Butterfield Stage Line

When the Butterfield coaches began running, Jacksboro was barely a town. Settlers drawn by the Peters Colony offers had taken root along Lost Creek in the mid-1850s, and as houses, a church and a schoolhouse spread south toward the West Fork of Keechi Creek, people called the place Mesquiteville. It was chosen county seat in 1858 and renamed for William H. and Patrick Jack, and that year the first stagecoach arrived. Regular postal service followed in 1859. The stages ran until early 1861, and after the war the town was little more than a dozen ruined buildings.

What the plaque says

Here ran the Southern Overland Mail Line connecting St. Louis and San Francisco with semi-weekly stage and mail service, 1858-1861. The length of the route, 2,795 miles, and the superior service maintained made this a pioneer enterprise of first magnitude.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Richardson State Park and Historic Site — 0.9 mi
  The northernmost post of the Texas frontier line, outside Jacksboro, where a stone hospital and six other buildings stand from 1867 and a later Guard unit became the Lost Battalion.
• Old Post Office Museum and Art Center — 26 mi
  Graham's 1936 Art Moderne post office, with a New Deal mural by Alexandre Hogue inside, now the free museum of Young County in the town where the Texas cattle raisers first organized.

More markers nearby

• Jack County — 0.3 mi
• First Baptist Church of Jacksboro — 0.3 mi
• Mobilization Site of Lost Battalion — 0.7 mi
• Wizard Wells — 11 mi