Rough Riding on the Butterfield Trail. (original) (raw)

Overland travel options in the early days of Texas and the country were limited. Before railroads came to Texas, the main options for long distance travel, aside from walking or riding a horse, were buggy or stagecoach. The buggy had its distance limitations and the stagecoach was great — if you were a piece of mail. "Remember, boys, nothing on God's earth must stop the United State mail!" stagecoach magnate John Butterfield vigorously reminded his drivers.

Instructions to conductors on the Overland Southern Mail Route, usually referred to as the Butterfield Trail, were as follows: "You will be particular to see that the mails are protected from the wet and kept safe from injury of any kind�and you will be held personally responsible for the safe delivery at the end of your route�of all mails and property in your charge."

Passengers, however, were mostly on their own. An information sheet from the Overland company warned passenger against jumping off the stage if the horses broke away and not to grumble if they had to get out and walk. They were told to anticipate extreme weather, hunger and thirst. Additionally, the company accepted no responsibility for Indian attacks. "You will be traveling through Indian country and the safety of your person cannot be vouchsafed by anyone but God."

The stagecoach stations suffered the most from Indian attacks. For the passengers, robberies were the bigger problem. Early day Texas humorist Alexander Sweet opined that stagecoach robberies were so common in West Texas that passengers "complained to the stage companies if they came through unmolested."

Overland also advised passengers that the seat closest to the driver was the best one, even if riding backwards brought on a bout of queasiness. "You will get over it and will get less jolts and jostling," the info sheet advised. "Do not let any sly elf trade you his mid-seat."

The Butterfield (or Southern) Overland Mail operated from September 15, 1858, until March 1, 1861, as a semiweekly mail and passenger stage service from St. Louis, Missouri, and Memphis, Tennessee across Arkansas to San Francisco. Congress authorized a mail contract for the route in 1857, calling for the conveying of letter mail twice weekly, in both directions, in four-horse coaches or spring wagons suitable for carrying passengers. John Butterfield, a New England coach maker with years of experience running stage lines in the Northeast, got the contract.

The classic stagecoach of movies and art is the Concord Coach, which was manufactured in New England and could carry six, nine or 12 passengers, depending on the size of the particular coach. These were the country's top-of-the-line coaches but that's not necessarily what you rode if you hopped on a stagecoach in Texas, especially along the Butterfield Trail's rugged western sections where the traveler would most likely be riding a celerity wagon.

Celerity wagons were four-horse (or mule) wagons covered with a canvas tarp, which was rolled up when it was hot and unfurled when it was cold or rainy. They were lighter and faster than the Concord and were ideal for the short, rugged routes of West Texas where mules were often called in to pinch-hit for the horses when the going got tough. People tended to call these stretches "the jackass route."

The big coaches generally had three wide seats — forward, middle and rear — each accommodating, more or less, three people. Some companies made accommodations for passengers to ride on top of the coaches, and sometimes people rode up there even without accommodations. The wagon seats could also make a bed. Reporter Waterman Ormsby, who rode the entire Butterfield route and wrote a valuable account of the experience, noted that the celerity wagon "was capable of accommodating from four to ten people, according to their size and how they lie."

In due time, railroads replaced stagecoaches, but the stagecoach era left its mark on the state, not only in art and history but in many of the roads most taken. First the railroads and later the country's highways and byways often followed the routes laid out by the stagecoaches, which often traced old Indian trails that began as trails established by the buffalo and other animals.