High Lonesome Stage Stand
Ozona, Crockett County, Texas
Marker Inscription
First station after leaving Ozona on the San Angelo-Ozona mail line. Here, at the 20-mile point of an 86-mile run, fresh horses awaited. The stand, built in 1902, served one of Texas' last commercial stage lines. Ten horses were kept here, as at the three other stations: Shoeingstand (where the horses were reshod each six weeks), Sherwood, and Knickerbocker. Frequent riders were whiskey drummers (peddlers), lightning rod salesmen and preachers. Automobiles (1908) and finally the railroad (1910) put the "hacks" on this line out of business.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Built in 1902 as the first station out of Ozona on the San Angelo–Ozona mail line, this stand kept ten fresh horses ready at the 20-mile point of an 86-mile run. It served one of the last commercial stagecoach lines in Texas, its 'hacks' carrying whiskey peddlers, lightning-rod salesmen, and traveling preachers. Automobiles arriving in 1908 and the railroad in 1910 soon put the line out of business.
Why it matters
High Lonesome captures the final years of horse-drawn stagecoach travel in America, swept away within a decade by the automobile and the railroad.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Ozona-Barnhart Trap Company
Ozona, TX
By the 1920s, barbed-wire fencing across Crockett County had blocked ranchers from driving their sheep and cattle to the railhead at Barnhart. Organized in Ozona in 1924, the Ozona-Barnhart Trap Company solved the problem by buying and leasing land for a 34-mile corridor of trails, small pastures called "traps," pens, and water wells, letting drovers move stock without crossing a neighbor's fence. The trail rescued the county's ranching economy until trucking made it obsolete in the following decades.
One Fourth-Mile North to Ruins of Fort Lancaster
Ozona, TX
Established by the U.S. Army in 1855 above the junction of Live Oak Creek and the Pecos River, Fort Lancaster guarded travelers and mail on the long overland road between San Antonio and the far West. Garrisoned by the Second Cavalry, it was abandoned in March 1861 after Texas seceded from the Union, then briefly reoccupied by federal troops in 1868. Nearby, the deep ruts of one of the most-used pioneer fords of the Pecos are still visible where wagon wheels dragged down the hillside.
Powell, Ernest Malapert
Ozona, TX
Illinois native E. M. Powell came to Texas in 1874 and worked as a surveyor during the railroad boom, often taking land in payment and building up a 185,000-acre holding in present Crockett County. To draw settlers he advertised in newspapers and offered the first families forty acres of free land plus discounts on more. Ozona was founded on his property—complete with a public well, windmill, and lots for churches and a school—and his efforts led to Crockett County's organization in 1891 with Ozona as county seat.
Emerald Townsite
Ozona, TX
Emerald, the first platted town in Crockett County, was founded in 1889 by a railway immigration agent who advertised its mild climate and fertile land from Maine to Minnesota, hoping it would sit on a rail extension and become the county seat. It gained a post office, held the county's first school in a tent, and survived a prairie fire in 1890. When it lost the 1891 county-seat election to the site of present Ozona, residents drifted away and the post office closed, leaving Emerald one of West Texas's many failed colonization schemes.