Mountain Pass Station

The pass itself is modest: three miles west of the Callahan Divide, averaging 2,250 feet above sea level and about 150 feet below the summits on either side. Coaches came from Fort Chadbourne in present Coke County, crossed Valley Creek twelve miles on, reached Mountain Pass after sixteen more, and then ran thirty miles north to Fort Phantom Hill, passing a mile west of where the Texas and Pacific Railway later built through Tye. From Phantom Hill the line ran on to Smith's station and Fort Belknap.

What the plaque says

Maintained from 1858 to outbreak of the Civil War in 1861 as a stage stop on the Butterfield Overland Main Route, which was the first mail and passenger line to link the east and west coasts of the United States. In 1870s this was a stop for branch of El Paso and San Antonio mail line. (1968)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Abilene State Park — 11 mi
  A pecan-shaded park on Elm Creek in the Callahan Divide south of Abilene, with red sandstone CCC buildings, a summer pool, a bird blind and yurts under the trees.
• Buffalo Gap Historic Village — 13 mi
  The 1880 stone courthouse and jail of the county seat Abilene took away, with about twenty old buildings from around West Texas gathered around it since 1956.
• Frontier Texas! — 21 mi
  Abilene's multimedia museum of the frontier as the settlers told it, beside the Texas and Pacific tracks the town was built on, and the official visitor center for the Texas Forts Trail.
• Fort Chadbourne — 23 mi
  An 1852 infantry post and Butterfield stage station on a Coke County ranch, its fallen stone buildings rebuilt since 1999 by the descendant of the family that has ranched the land since 1877.

More markers nearby

• Near Site of Indian Battle — steps away
• Mulberry Canyon — 5.8 mi
• Cornelia Clark Fort — 5.8 mi
• In Vicinity of Coronado's Camp — 6.2 mi