abilenet August 8th, 2008
In 1857 a congressional act authorized the establishment of a mail contract to convey letters twice weekly, in both directions, between St. Louis, Missouri, and Memphis, Tennessee, in the east and San Francisco, California, in the west. The act also stipulated that four-horse coaches suitable for carrying passengers would carry the mail. A final requirement was that the trip should take no more than twenty-five days. John Butterfield and Associates won the contract, agreeing to compensation of $600,000 per year, plus receipts for passengers and express.
Butterfield began his Southern Overland Mail operation on September 15, 1858. By necessity, this route wound its way through West Texas. Moving from the two eastern termini (St. Louis and Memphis), the routes converged into one at Fort Smith, Arkansas. The distance between Fort Smith and San Francisco on this route totaled 2,795 miles—probably the longest route for horse-drawn conveyances in the history of the United States. The route crossed into Texas from the Indian Territory at Sherman. From there it moved west to Gainesville, Jacksboro, Fort Belknap, and Clear Fork Station. Other prominent West Texas stops included Fort Phantom Hill (just north of present-day Abilene in Jones County), Mountain Pass (in the western part of present-day Taylor County), Fort Chadbourne, Carlsbad, Pope’s Camp, Hueco Tanks, and Franklin (present-day El Paso).
The Butterfield Route proved quite beneficial to settlement in West Texas. Community leaders all along the route clamored to have the line stop in their town. They believed that with communication and transportation would come progress, law, and safety on the frontier. By early 1859, these communities got their wish. Butterfield made Sherman a distribution point and Texas settlements therefore gained postal service.
The Butterfield Line used Concord coaches, which had room for five or six passengers, although more could be crowded in. Passengers desiring a one-way trip from Memphis or St. Louis to San Francisco could expect to pay an average of $200. The trip was quite uncomfortable, and as the coaches went through large stretches of Indian country, the journey was also dangerous. The owners encouraged passengers to travel armed in case of a hostile attack. If a passenger decided to lay over at a stop, he would lose his seat, and might have to wait as long as a month before another one came available. Nevertheless, in the two and a half years of its operation, the Butterfield Overland Mail line never suffered an Indian attack, nor did it ever miss its twenty-five day travel deadline.
The Butterfield Overland Mail service in Texas stopped in March 1861, when they amended the contract to modify the route northward. The early promise of steady transportation and communication in West Texas came to an end, and with the Civil War and the Indian Wars, it would be decades more before those goals could be achieved.
This article is the work of and used by permission from Don Frazier.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Conkling, Roscoe P. and Margaret B. The Butterfield Overland Mail, 1857-1869. 3 vols. Glendale, California: Clark, 1947.
Hafen, LeRoy R. Overland Mail, 1849-1869. Cleveland: Clark, 1926.
Ormsby, Waterman L. The Butterfield Overland Mail. San Marino, California: Huntington Library, 1942; rpt. 1955).
Richardson, Rupert N. “Some Details of the Southern Overland Mail.” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 29 (July 1925).
Williams, J. W. “The Butterfield Overland Mail Road across Texas.” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 61 (July 1957).
Williams, J. W. “The Marcy and Butterfield Trails across Texas.” M.A. thesis, Hardin-Simmons University, 1938.