Comstock-Ozona Stage Stand, Site of
Ozona, Crockett County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Flagstone ruins nearby mark site of early 1900's stage stand, first stop on passenger and mail line connecting Ozona with Southern Pacific railhead at Comstock--80 miles distant. When stage pulled in about 8:30 A.M. (having left Ozona at 5:00) agent had fresh horses in harness for next 20-mile run. Agent's family lived in tent with a flagstone floor. Other structures here were rock pens for a pig and cow and probably a corral for horses. Automobile replaced stage about 1914, but wagon ruts are still visible.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In the early 1900s these flagstone ruins were a working stage stand, the first stop on the mail-and-passenger run linking Ozona to the Southern Pacific railhead 80 miles away at Comstock. A stage leaving Ozona at 5:00 a.m. arrived here about 8:30 to find fresh horses already harnessed, while the agent's family lived in a tent floored with flagstone beside rock pens for livestock. The automobile made the whole operation obsolete around 1914, though the old wagon ruts still scar the land.
Why it matters
It captures the brief, hard era of horse-drawn overland transport that stitched isolated West Texas towns to the railroad before the car erased it.
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Themes & tags
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