Diamond Horse Ranch

Whitesboro's Butterfield stop has more than one claimant. The marker calls the Diamond ranch a station on the line from 1858 to 1861. A National Park Service brochure on the Butterfield Overland Trail says the Diamond brothers ran Diamond Station, where passengers had a quick bite and a fresh team of mules, which the company used instead of horses because raiders showed less interest in them. The Handbook of Texas, though, says the line used Ambrose White's Westview Inn. The sources do not say whether both served the mail.

What the plaque says

Diamond Horse Ranch Founded 1850 by James R. and John Diamond, joined later by their brother George, who had founded paper that today is Houston "Post." Station, 1858-1861, on Butterfield Stage Line. The Diamond brothers were political leaders and active in Texas frontier defense and Masonry. James is buried here. (1967)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge — 12 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.
• Great Hanging Memorial — 12 mi
  Two granite monuments in a Gainesville park, dedicated in 2014, for the Cooke County men the Confederate militia hanged in October 1862 on suspicion of Unionism.
• Eisenhower State Park — 22 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.
• Eisenhower Birthplace State Historic Site — 24 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.

More markers nearby

• Sadler United Methodist Church — 4.9 mi
• Callisburg United Methodist Church — 5.6 mi
• First Oil Well in Cooke County — 5.6 mi
• Sanborn Ranch — 6.1 mi