Castle Mountain
McCamey, Upton County, Texas
Marker Inscription
(2 mi. East) About 3,000 ft. elevation. Since 17th century, a landmark in travel from Texas points to Mexico and California. According to tradition, named by Spaniards for resemblance to ancient castles. Has associations with stories of lost trains of gold and other treasures. (1966)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Rising to about 3,000 feet a couple of miles east, Castle Mountain has guided travelers between Texas, Mexico, and California since the 17th century. Spaniards, tradition says, named it for its resemblance to ancient castles. Its craggy profile gathered the usual folklore of the desert Southwest—tales of lost trains of gold and buried treasure.
Why it matters
The peak is a centuries-old wayfinding landmark on the old routes linking Texas to Mexico and the Pacific coast.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Castle Gap
Crane, TX
Castle Gap, a natural notch in the Castle Mountains of West Texas, has funneled travelers for millennia — from prehistoric Native peoples who left flint points, to Spanish explorers, California-bound gold-seekers, the Butterfield Overland Mail stages of 1858–1861, and the great Goodnight-Loving cattle drives after 1866. A spring within the gap made it a vital watering stop on the road to Horsehead Crossing on the Pecos.
Horsehead Crossing of The Pecos
Crane, TX
For emigrants and frontiersmen crossing the arid Trans-Pecos, Horsehead Crossing was one of the few dependable fords of the Pecos River, its approaches long known before the stagecoaches came. From 1858 to 1861 it served as a key point on the Butterfield Overland Mail, the semi-weekly stage and mail line that linked St. Louis and San Francisco. Travelers pressed on across some of the harshest country in Texas, guided by the promise of water at this hard-won crossing.
Horse Head Crossing on the Pecos River
Girvin, TX
This ford on the Pecos was one of the great crossroads of the West, where the ancient Comanche Trail from the Llano Estacado to Mexico met the routes of American expansion. Surveyor John R. Bartlett found it in 1850 marked by horse skulls, giving it its name. The Butterfield Overland Mail, the road west from Fort Concho, and the Goodnight-Loving cattle trail all funneled through this single crossing.
Horsehead Crossing
Girvin, TX
Horsehead Crossing was the great ford of the Pecos River, named for the horse and mule skulls that littered its banks—animals driven up the Comanche War Trail that drank themselves to death after the long dry haul. After the 1849 gold rush it became a vital landmark, offering the first water in some 75 miles, and by 1858 it anchored a stage stand on the Butterfield Overland Mail. Confederate and Union eyes watched it during the Civil War, and in 1866 Goodnight and Loving blazed their famous cattle trail to this very point.