900 Miles on the Butterfield Trail

Part III. New Routes—Up the Pecos, via the Guadalupes; Crossing at Horsehead: to El Paso via Fort Stockton, Fort Davis and the Rio Grande

PART THREE Xew 1\gutes - Up the 'Pecos, via the Guada1upes; Crossing at liorsehead: to E1 Paso via Fort Stockton, Fort TIavis and the ~o Grande THERE are many places in Texas which can lay claim to being a part ofthe ButterfieldTrail even though Waterman Ormsby did not encounter them on his 1858 journey. The easternmost towns in this category are Decatur, Bridgeport, Wizard Wells, and Pilot Point. During the first fourteen months ofthe Butterfield Overland Mail service, Wise County's newly designated seat of Decatur was not on the route. But late in 1859 (about the time of the birth of Decatur's first white baby, Ben F. Allen), Colonel W. H. Hunt and other leading citizens formed a committee to propose to the Butterfield company that the route be changed to include Decatur as well as Bridgeport. As inducement, the Decaturites pledged to open "a traversible road" to the Jack County line and put secure bridges across Denton Creekin northeastern Wise County, as well as the West Fork of the Trinity River at Bridgeport. A state charter for the latter bridge was granted February 11,1860, and a wooden span was subsequently built! The Butterfield people and the Post Office Department accepted the new routing, and four new stations were opened, although the change added five miles to the route. The first new station, J. B. Brandon's, was on Denton Creek just below where the 1858 trail had swung west toward Earhart's! The Decatur Butterfield station was at the store of Absalom Bishop on the northwest corner of the town square. Colonel Bishop was the true father of Decatur, envisioning a city perched atop the prominent hill for years before it was built.3 Cliff D. Cates, in his history of Wise County, drew a romantic picture of the arrival of the Butterfield mail coach. The stage was due to arrive at Decatur at midnight where it depOSited mail and occasional passengers at Bishop's store. . . . The approach of a stage was announced by the sounding 95 of a long note on a bugle. Imagine the sleepy little village of Decatur being aroused from its midnight dreams by the shrill and alarming notes of the bugle coming from the far ravines and hilltops.~ From Decatur, the 1860 route reached Bridgeport, crossing the new bridge over the West Fork of the Trinity, then went west across territory now under Lake Bridgeport. A new station was established twelve miles from Bridgeport near Wizard Wells, the village that in the 1920S and 1930S became a well-known spa. The original wooden bridge at Bridgeport collapsed shortly after the Butterfield mail line halted and was not replaced until 1873, when an iron one was installed . The original town near the bridge became "Old" Bridgeport in 1893 after the Rock Island Railroad built through to Fort Worth. A new Bridgeport moved a mile east to the rails, leaving the old one to languish and die. The route east of Decatur was unchanged until the last month of service, March, 1861. By then Texas had already left the federal union and joined the Confederacy. The U.S. mail was hastily rerouted from Decatur to Denton, bypassing potential trouble spots at Gainesville and Diamond's station. Those last few weeks, the stages went from Denton through Pilot Point and then to Sherman. The final eastbound Butterfield stage arrived at the Denton square on the morning of March 14. Anson Mills of El Paso, hurrying north to join the Union army, was one of the eight passengers aboard. As related in his book, My Story, Mills met an old friend, Judge R. L. Waddill of McKinney in Collin County, where Mills had taught school in 1857-58. Collin County had voted 948 to 405 against secession, and although Texas had been a member of the Confederacy since March 5, Judge Waddill, who was against secession, assured Mills, 'The flag is still flying over the McKinney courthouse.", farther west along the trail, another station may have existed west of the Clear Fork, although Ormsby made no mention of one. One writer notes, "Local legend has it that Thomas Lambshead kept the station at the Clear Fork Crossing or the Butterfield relay station on the west side of the Clear Fork across Lambshead Creek a short distance from the crossing, whose stone foundations can still be seen."6 Joe B. Matthews, father of Watt...