Tate's Stage Station 1886 1901
Nye County, Nye County, Nevada
Marker Inscription
Tate’s Stage Station 1886 1901. Long after the railroads came to Nevada and branch lines were extended towards the heartland of the state, horse-drawn stages continued to transport people and mail from railhead to the hinterlands.The principal routes were covered by such well-known lines as Overland Mail and Stage Co., William Hill Beachey Railroad Stage Lines, Butterfield’s, Wells, Fargo and Co., Pioneer Stageline, Carson and Columbus Stage Line, and other lesser-known lines.Thomas Tate sub-contracted mail routes in central Nevada for over thirty years. In 1886, he and his wife established a station due east as an overnight stop between the county seats of Austin and Belmont. Stages met here and exchanged passengers and mail and obtained fresh horses. Tommy’s wife fed and lodged the passengers, in what became a local social center. Ester Tate organized the first school in the area.The Tates maintained this station until 1901. Belmont lost the Nye County seat in 1905.
Erected by Myrtle Tate Myles
The Story
Long after railroads reached Nevada, horse-drawn stages still carried people and mail from the railheads into the state's remote interior. Thomas Tate subcontracted central Nevada mail routes for more than thirty years, and in 1886 he and his wife established this station as an overnight stop between the county seats of Austin and Belmont, where stages swapped passengers, mail, and fresh horses. Ester Tate fed and lodged travelers — making the station a social center — and organized the area's first school. The Tates ran it until 1901.
Why it matters
Tate's Station shows how stagecoaches remained the essential last link to Nevada's back country in the railroad age, and how women like Ester Tate anchored frontier community life.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Thomas Tate
- · Ester Tate
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Huffaker's
Reno, NV
When Granville W. Huffaker drove 500 head of cattle into the Truckee Meadows in 1858, the valley's main settlers were Mormons; he established his ranch the following year just as the Comstock Lode focused new attention on the region. Through the 1860s Huffaker's grew into a bustling stage stop and community center, with a stage line, post office, and an 1868 schoolhouse, hosting dances, horse races, and even a literary society. In 1875 the "Bonanza Kings" completed their great lumber flume from the Tahoe basin to a nearby terminus, where the Virginia and Truckee Railroad built a depot and spur to transfer the timber.
Big Smokey Valley
Nye County, NV
Named for its smoky-blue distances, Big Smokey Valley lies in Shoshone country between the Toiyabe and Toquima ranges and saw a procession of Western legends pass through. Jedediah Smith crossed in 1827 and John C. Frémont, with Kit Carson, came in 1845; by 1859 the valley carried the Jackass Mail, Pony Express, Overland Telegraph, and Overland stagecoaches. Silver strikes at Austin in the 1860s sparked its first mining boom, dotting the ranges with camps like Ophir Canyon and Jefferson. The Tonopah strike of 1900 revived the rush and gave rise to Manhattan and Round Mountain.
The Surveyors
Lander County, NV
After the nation's domain reached the Pacific in 1848, the federal government mounted a series of surveys to map railway routes, wagon roads, water transport, and military relationships across the new territories. Nevada figured in two notable efforts: Captain F.W. Lander's Honey Lake to Fort Kearny wagon road, completed in 1860, and Lieutenant Simpson's 1859 route from Camp Floyd to Genoa. Military engineers such as Stansbury, Marcy, Whipple, Beale, Simpson, and Lander lent their names to the landscape, Lander to a whole Nevada county.
Jacobsville
Lander County, NV
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.