Route of the Southern Overland Mail Line
Bronte vicinity, Coke County, Texas
Marker Inscription
One mile southeast to Fort Chadbourne, a station on the Butterfield mail and stage line, which linked St. Louis and San Francisco, 1858 - 1861. The fort was established in 1852, occupied until its surrender to state forces in 1861, and garrisoned at times after the Civil War.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
A mile southeast stood Fort Chadbourne, established in 1852, which from 1858 to 1861 served as a station on the Butterfield Overland Mail — the sprawling stage line that carried letters and passengers between St. Louis and San Francisco. For a few short years before the Civil War severed it, this remote West Texas outpost was a link in the first reliable overland connection binding the young nation's coasts.
Why it matters
The Butterfield route was a landmark achievement in national communication, knitting the far West to the East on the eve of the Civil War and foreshadowing the transcontinental networks to come.
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Related events
- · Butterfield Overland Mail
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Fort Chadbourne
Bronte vicinity, TX
The U.S. Army planted Fort Chadbourne on the West Texas frontier in October 1852 to shield settlers pressing into country still held by Comanche and other Plains peoples. It honored Lieutenant T. L. Chadbourne, killed at the Battle of Resaca de la Palma during the Mexican-American War. From 1858 to 1861 the post doubled as a key station on the Butterfield Overland Mail route, watering stagecoaches carrying passengers and mail toward California.
Southern Overland Mail, 1858-1861
Robert Lee vicinity, TX
From 1858 to 1861, John Butterfield's Southern Overland Mail rolled past this spot, knitting the Atlantic and Pacific coasts together with the first combined passenger and mail line. Stagecoaches ran day and night across rough country, changing horses and mules at stations spaced miles apart, with crews and passengers armed against attack. The 2,700-mile journey took about 25 days — seven of them just crossing Texas — until the Civil War ended the service.
Valley Creek Station
Bradshaw, TX
Beginning in 1858, the Butterfield Overland Mail kept a stage stop at the falls and crossing of Valley Creek, a vital link on the twice-weekly line running between San Francisco and St. Louis. The route's Texas leg, the Oxbow, added roughly 600 miles to the journey and passed just west of present-day Abilene. The line withdrew from Texas in March 1861, leaving the area sparsely settled until ranchers established the nearby community of Shep in the 1880s.
Winters
Winters, TX
Winters began in the 1880s when the Curry and Bell families staked claims on the west-central Texas prairie, and it took its name in 1889 by a vote in a new schoolhouse built on land from agent J.N. Winters. Cattle, feed, and cotton gave it an early economy, and the arrival of a rail line from Abilene in 1909 — with blacktop roads and the automobile close behind — brought a wave of prosperity. Oil strikes in 1949 and local milling and manufacturing kept the town growing, though it never followed a planned grid.