Bob Montgomery

Saturday will mark the 150th anniversary of a great American adventure: The first coach of the Southern Overland Mail was ferried across the Red River and pointed west for El Paso.

John Butterfield had chosen his route from St. Louis to San Francisco and was determined to make it work. “Nothing can stop the U.S. Mail,” was his mantra. And nothing did.

Even Great Britain sent its mail to British Columbia via his line. Butterfield’s looping route was politically unpopular and a money loser, but it worked.

How did Texas become the longest passage on the Butterfield Trail? And, most of all, why should Denton care much about a long-lost pair of ruts that run 2,800 miles from the Mississippi River to the Golden Gate?

Briefly, here is the tale:

In 1850, Army Capt. Ran­dolph Marcy was detailed to take his infantry company across Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle. He would escort a sizeable party of gold seekers up the Canadian River Valley from Fort Smith to New Mexico, where they would continue on to California. He delivered his charges unscalped and heading west to get rich.

Marcy chose a different route of return.

Starting near El Paso, he moved east through the emptiness of the Trans-Pecos, over the shoulder of Guadalupe Peak, and successfully forded the Pecos — a formidable river in early western travel. Marcy’s column skirted south of the Llano Estacado and took a course that struck the Red River at the village of Preston (now under Lake Texoma).

Marcy had a keen mind and a ready pen. He kept a careful journal of the trip, recording flora, fauna, springs, rivers, grass and topography. For the first time, Northwest Texas had been carefully explored and mapped.

He published the journal and it sold. This led to the creation of a slightly different route, suitable for loaded wagons.

A few brave souls set out following Marcy’s map along what became known as the Immigrant Trail. It avoided river crossings wherever possible and never missed a waterhole or a chance to graze. It was never a flood, but the covered wagons rolled through North Texas. The main east-west axis through Gainesville is Cali­for­nia Street. Go figure.

Marcy’s route was long and difficult but not impossible. The Rockies were impossible for wagon traffic in winter. El Paso (the pass to the north) was a mostly snow-free route to the coast. Wagons took it, desert and all.

As California grew populous and rich, the state began to insist on a plan to move mail and passengers cross-country instead of making the long, dangerous sea journey around Cape Horn or a walk across Panama to catch another ship.

In order to fold California into the U.S., Congress acted. It voted to grant a $600,000 annual subsidy for coach service. San Francisco, St. Louis and Memphis would be the points of departure. It would launch two runs a week to take 25 days or less, with no timeouts for winter.

Butterfield had vast experience in the business, and he had backing from some folks who are still part of financial America (Wells Fargo and American Express). The postmaster general would finalize the contract and pick the route.

The bill passed on March 3, 1857. The first mail coaches rolled out on Sept. 16, 1858. In just 18 months, the route was surveyed, stations were built every 20 to 30 miles, equipment and stock were purchased and hundreds of employees were hired, trained a bit and set to work.

Eighteen months. In our complex world, we can’t complete a mile of highway loop in 18 months.

The 3,000-pound coaches left St. Louis by rail to Tipton, Mo., and rolled through the Ozarks to Fort Smith, Ark.

BUTTERFIELD TRAIL LECTURE

Bob Montgomery

Bob Montgomery will give a free presentation titled “Trails West: The Butterfield Overland Trail and Marcy Route” at 12:15 p.m. Friday at the Courthouse-on-the-Square Museum, 110 W. Hickory St. Montgomery will show a DVD of locations that cannot be readily seen from current highways and roads. The museum has a display of materials including maps, photographs and documents detailing the route the Butterfield Overland Mail Service and Stage took through Texas, focusing on the North Texas region from Grayson through Denton counties. 

For information, call 940-349-2850 or visit www.dentoncounty.com .

For a fee of $200 apiece, nine passengers jammed into a compartment much smaller than a sport utility vehicle. They bumped and swayed night and day, ate what was served and shared cups and basins for more than three weeks. Hostiles were always a threat. Maybe being packed into an aluminum tube at 30,000 feet is not so bad after all.

From Fort Smith, the trail ran to a crossing on the Red River just north of present-day Deni­son. A clever American Indian businessman named Benjamin Colbert ran a ferry there and offered free passage to the stage.

Sherman welcomed the first coach into Texas. It was just a village, but Sherman and El Paso were the most populous stops in Texas. At Whitesboro, the switch was made to a lighter wagon called a celerity, and mules took the place of horses. Taking quality horses into West Texas’ Indian country was asking for trouble.

From Gainesville, the trail went to Jacksboro and crossed the Brazos at Fort Belknap into the empty acres of West Texas. Even today, there are stretches where you check the gas gauge often and keep snacks and water at hand. I wonder what the Old Ones would say about the gigantic wind farms that follow the ridgelines?

From time to time, the route changed if an easier passage became available. The folks of Bridgeport and Decatur teamed up to build bridges over the Trinity River and Denton Creek, and in the spring of 1860 the stage stopped on the town square at Decatur before heading to Gainesville.

Today, Bridgeport is the proud owner of a replica stagecoach, built, at considerable expense, of original materials — no plastic.

By January 1861, the line was in trouble. Travelers from back East disliked running in slave states, and the line was losing money — lots of money. John Butterfield was out.

Abraham Lincoln would be the next president. The country was dividing and preparing for war. It must have been a terrible time.

On March 14, 1861, the mail coach pulled into Denton. Texas had left the Union, and the Denton-Pilot Point road seemed a safer route to Sherman. One passenger was a sharp young man named Anson Mills who was going north to join the Union Army.

Mills had a fine career. He became a general and a millionaire inventor. In his book, My Story, he details the travails of the last coach going east. It stopped in Denton for breakfast and a fresh team.

Mills had been a teacher in Collin County, and he heard that an old friend, Judge R.L. Waddill, had come over from McKinney to hold court in Denton County. In a brief conversation, the judge assured Mills that the U.S. flag still flew over the McKinney courthouse.

When that stagecoach left town, war was only days away, and the Butterfield Trail was history.

Today, you can make the trip in four hours. You can leap the dreaded Rockies in a single bound. Butterfield would love it — the world’s longest stage route reduced to an afternoon ride.

The next time you hear taps being played, don’t just think of its sad final notes. Dan But­ter­field, John’s son, wrote it to mark the day’s end, not death.

There will be other roads and faster ways to reach point X, but let’s never forget the work that went into getting us there.

BOB MONTGOMERY is a local historian.