Trail Dust: Longest-ever stagecoach line crossed New Mexico

by Marc Simmons

...(John Butterfield) was a business tycoon from Utica, N.Y., with an interest in transportation. In 1857, he formed the Overland Mail Co. and the following year launched stagecoach service between St. Louis and San Francisco.

The route used, across the Southwest, stretched 2,700 miles from one end to the other. It has been called, and rightfully so, the longest stagecoach line in world history. A noted Texas historian has referred to development of the Butterfield Trail as a “romantic high point in the westward movement.”

Butterfield’s pockets were not deep enough to fully finance his visionary enterprise. So he obtained loans from Wells, Fargo & Co. and also managed to get a $600,000 annual subsidy from the government.

Federal officials went along because they were eager to establish quicker contact with California.

Butterfield stages would carry U.S. mail bags and deliver them to San Francisco in a mere 24 days.

The obstacles to getting the overland business up and running proved daunting. Through much of West Texas, Southern New Mexico and Arizona there were few if any towns.

In those sections, isolated stage stations had to be built every 20 miles, then staffed and provisioned. And in places where the route crossed rivers or arroyos, workmen had to cut down banks at fords and in some cases build bridges.

By Sept. 15, 1858, all was in readiness. On that date, the inaugural westbound stage departed from St. Louis.

...Ormsby had been sent by the New York Herald to make this historic journey, write up a series of reports as it unfolded, and send them back to be published serially in the newspaper.

The young man wrote in a fresh and lively manner, providing rich details of his experience and picturing the changing country through which he passed.

At El Paso, roughly the midway point, the stage turned north up the Rio Grande as far as New Mexico’s town of Mesilla. There it turned west, heading for Cooke’s Peak and then Picacho Pass. Between those two places, Ormsby’s coach passed the eastbound stage coming from San Francisco.

The journalist described this stretch of New Mexico as one of “the driest and most tedious portions of the route.” Brief relief came with a stop at Soldier’s Farewell, where copious springs bubbled forth northwest of the later Deming. But no station had yet been built and the keeper was living in a tent.

The stage road continued to Stein’s Peak Station then crossed into the future state of Arizona.

Eventually, Ormsby arrived in San Francisco and watched the dusty mail pouches unloaded. The entire journey had taken just a few hours under 24 days, all grueling.

...John Butterfield, however, fared less well. Two years into his operation, he faced a financial crisis.

The huge sums borrowed for development could not be repaid. When Wells, Fargo & Co. threatened foreclosure, Butterfield’s own directors removed him from the presidency.

With the country racing toward Civil War, the reorganized Overland Mail Co. closed down its service on the Butterfield Trail. The grand but expensive venture had lasted only three years.

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