Pope's Crossing
Orla, Reeves County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Crossing site was 4.9 miles northeast, in Loving County. Now under Red Bluff Lake. (1964)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This marker commemorates Pope's Crossing, a historic fording point on the Pecos River in far West Texas, whose original site lay a few miles to the northeast in Loving County. Crossings like this were vital passages for travelers, surveyors, and settlers moving through an arid and roadless country. The actual site now lies submerged beneath the waters of Red Bluff Lake, an impoundment on the Pecos.
Why it matters
River crossings were the fixed points around which travel across the empty Trans-Pecos was organized, and this one's disappearance under a reservoir marks how modern water projects reshaped the landscape of the old routes.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Orla
Orla, TX
Orla sprang up in 1890 as a stop on the Pecos Valley Railroad, growing during the era's land promotions into a town with a school, general stores, a hotel, and a livery stable. When the highway bypassed it, the last merchant and postmaster, Hal Olds, simply moved a quarter mile west to the new road in 1931. Today the site serves mainly as a gateway to Red Bluff Lake, the Guadalupe Mountains, and Carlsbad Caverns.
Goodnight-Loving Trail
Mentone, TX
This marker recalls the legendary Goodnight-Loving Trail, the cattle route pushed from the Fort Griffin–Dodge City road across New Mexico and into Colorado in the mid-19th century. It honors Oliver Loving (1812–1867), remembered as the first Texan to trail cattle north to distant markets, whose partnership with Charles Goodnight helped open the great era of Texas cattle drives.
Route of Old Butterfield Stagecoach Road
Mentone, TX
From 1858 to 1861 the Butterfield Overland Mail rolled across this ground, offering for the first time a combined passenger-and-mail link from the Atlantic to the Pacific. John Butterfield's company ran Concord coaches and wagons behind some 1,350 mules and horses, switching to hardier mules west of Fort Belknap to make his teams less tempting to raiders. A one-way journey of 2,700 miles took about twenty-five days and cost $200, with armed passengers and crew and stations spaced from twelve to over a hundred miles apart — this stretch marking a 113-mile run along the Pecos with no team change on the inaugural trip.
Loving County
Mentone, TX
Loving County was carved from Tom Green County in 1887 and organized in 1893, in the last decades when the arid Trans-Pecos of West Texas was being fenced, ranched, and settled. It honors Oliver Loving (1812–1867), the pioneering cattleman whose long drives helped open northern markets to Texas herds after the Civil War. Mentone, the county seat, anchors what remains one of the most sparsely populated counties in the United States.