Rock Creek (Cold Springs Station)
Churchill County, Churchill County, Nevada
Marker Inscription
Rock Creek (Cold Springs Station). Rock Creek was an important stagecoach stop on the Overland Mail & Stage Company’s historic line along the Simpson route between Salt Lake City and Genoa, Nevada, which was operated by John Butterfield (1861-1 866) and later Wells, Fargo & Company (1866-1869). Fresh horses, blacksmith services, and wagon-repair facilities were available here.The Pony Express constructed the Cold Springs station in 1860 on the sagebrush bench eastward across the highway. To the north are the ruins of a telegraph repeater and maintenance station which serviced this segment of the transcontinental line, which was completed between Sacramento and Omaha in 1861. The line was abandoned in August 1869. The coming of the transcontinental railroad and its parallel telegraph line along the Humboldt River to the north spelled the demise of both the telegraph line and the stage route here.
Erected by Austin Chamber Of Commerce
The Story
Rock Creek was a vital stagecoach stop on the Overland Mail & Stage Company's line along the Simpson route between Salt Lake City and Genoa, offering fresh horses, blacksmithing, and wagon repair to travelers under John Butterfield and later Wells, Fargo & Company. Nearby stood the Pony Express's Cold Springs station of 1860 and a telegraph repeater serving the transcontinental line completed in 1861. When the transcontinental railroad and its parallel telegraph reached the Humboldt corridor to the north, both the stage route and telegraph here were abandoned.
Why it matters
This lonely bench of sagebrush marks how quickly the technologies of continental connection rose and fell, as rails and wires made the heroic Pony Express and Overland stages obsolete within a decade.
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Related people
- · John Butterfield
Related events
- · Pony Express
- · Overland Telegraph
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Edwards Creek Valley
Churchill County, NV
The springs and streams of Edwards Creek Valley made it a vital gathering ground for Native peoples, where Shoshone families moved seasonally for seeds and small game and wintered in camps later shared by Northern Paiutes. In 1854 Colonel John Reese found a route through the valley shorter than the Humboldt trail, and after surveyor James Simpson formalized it in 1859 it carried the Pony Express, the Overland Telegraph, and the overland stages. Serving too as a passageway to the 1862 Austin gold rush, it remained the region's principal commercial artery until 1880.
New Pass Station
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When John Butterfield's Overland Mail & Stage Company began running the Central (Simpson) Route between Salt Lake City and Genoa in July 1861, this stone station—roofed with bundles of willow twigs—was a key stop for watering and changing teams. Because the hillside spring was too weak for both people and horses, a support ranch a mile west kept the station functioning. The transcontinental railroad soon doomed the stage line; Butterfield sold to Wells, Fargo in 1866, and Central Route operations ceased in 1869.
Jacobsville
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Founded on the banks of the Reese River in 1859 by George Washington Jacobs, Lander County's first sheriff, Jacobsville served as an Overland Stage and mail station and became a Pony Express stop in 1860. In its early-1860s prime it held some 400 people and claimed the first telegraph relay station, a post office, courthouse, three stores, and two hotels, and was the first seat of a Lander County that then sprawled across northeastern Nevada. The seat soon moved to booming Austin, and today only a few foundation stones remain.
Stillwater
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