High Lonesome Stage Stand

The line's Ozona end had grown quickly. The Handbook of Texas says that by 1892 the town had 400 people, a saloon, a blacksmith, two restaurants, a school, a feed yard and other businesses, and that by 1898 the Crockett Hotel had become a stage stop on the road to San Angelo. The Crockett County Courthouse, designed by Oscar Ruffini, was built of locally quarried limestone in 1902, the year this stand was built. The 1936 state highway map showed two schools, two churches and numerous businesses and dwellings at the townsite.

What the plaque says

First station after leaving Ozona on the San Angelo-Ozona mail line. Here, at the 20-mile point of an 86-mile run, fresh horses awaited. The stand, built in 1902, served one of Texas' last commercial stage lines. Ten horses were kept here, as at the three other stations: Shoeingstand (where the horses were reshod each six weeks), Sherwood, and Knickerbocker. Frequent riders were whiskey drummers (peddlers), lightning rod salesmen and preachers. Automobiles (1908) and finally the railroad (1910) put the "hacks" on this line out of business. (1969)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Crockett County Museum — 8.8 mi
  Three floors of ranch-country history in Ozona, the only town in Crockett County, housed in a burned-out 1926 church rebuilt as a hospital and courthouse annex.
• Caverns of Sonora — 29 mi
  A show cave on a Sutton County ranch, opened in 1960 by cavers who wanted to stop the damage, and dense with helictites that grow sideways in every direction.

More markers nearby

• Ozona's Water System — 8.6 mi
• Ozona's First Water Well — 8.7 mi
• Ozona Stockman, The — 8.8 mi
• Crockett County — 8.8 mi