Virginia Dale

The station the bronze points to still stands three-quarters of a mile off, on its own ground with its own logs, the last on this stretch of the Overland route. It is a long one-story building of hewn logs put up in 1862, its boards cut on a mill already old-fashioned then. After the railroad reached Cheyenne it was a house, store and post office. The ranchers Fred and Maude Maxwell left it in 1964 to the community club nine local women had founded in 1921, which finished restoring it in 2019 and opens it by reservation.

What the plaque says

This memorial is the property of the State of Colorado Three-quarters of a mile northwest from this point is the original Virginia Dale famous stage station on the Overland route to California, 1862-1867. Established by Joseph A. (Jack) Slade and named for his wife, Virginia. Located on Cherokee Trail of 1849. Favorite camp ground for emigrants. Vice President Colfax and party were detained here by Indian raids in 1865. Robert J. Spotswood replaced Slade. Erected by the State Historical Society of Colorado from the Mrs. J. N. Hall Foundation and by the Fort Collins Pioneer Society 1935

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Vedauwoo — 14 mi
  Knobs of 1.4-billion-year-old granite between Laramie and Cheyenne, rough as sandpaper and famous among climbers for its wide cracks.
• Poudre Canyon — 19 mi
  Colorado's only wild and scenic river, named for buried gunpowder in a story nobody can date, and burned along its length in 2020.

More markers nearby

• Tree Rock — 12 mi
• Tree in the Rock — 12 mi
• Lonetree on the Laramie Range — 12 mi
• The Gangplank — 16 mi