Castle Gap

Duane's take

The way I hear it, this one comes straight off the official marker for Castle Gap in Upton County — let me pass it along to you. Fourteen miles northwest, right along the Upton-Crane County line, there's a gap in the rock that doesn't look like much from a distance. A mile long, squeezed between Castle Mountain and King Mountain.

But don't let the quiet fool you, because Castle Gap has seen just about every kind of human being Texas ever threw at the landscape. We're talking the full panorama, as the marker puts it. Indian, Spaniard, stage driver, trail driver, settler, and gold-seeker — all of them threading through that same narrow corridor like history itself couldn't find another way around.

In prehistoric time, nomadic Indian tribes already knew this gap. It was a landmark. And later, the Comanches used it as a waypoint on their war trail down into Mexico.

So by the time any European eye ever found the place, it had already been serving as a crossroads for longer than anyone could count. The first white man to discover the pass was probably — and that word probably is doing some heavy lifting — the Spanish explorer Felipe Rabago y Teran, in 1761. Probably.

History being what it is out in the Trans-Pecos, certainty is a luxury. Then came 1849 and the gold rush, and the Forty-Niners came scrambling through in their frenzied rush to the California gold fields. Not stopping to admire the scenery.

Moving. Always moving. But the outfit that really put Castle Gap on the map — in terms of regular, scheduled, this-is-a-business traffic — was the Butterfield Overland Mail.

From 1858 to 1861, those coaches rumbled through the gap on their twenty-four-day journey from St. Louis to San Francisco. Twenty-four days.

The coaches would pause — briefly, always briefly — at the adobe-walled Castle Gap station, swap out for fresh teams, and then they were off again, fording into the sunset. That's not my poetry; that's just what happened. By 1866, the Goodnight-Loving cattle trail was firmly established at the gap, funneling tens of thousands of brawling longhorn cattle through that same mile-long corridor, up toward the northern markets.

You stand there now and try to picture it — the dust, the noise, the sheer mass of livestock pushing through those mountains — and the gap starts to feel a lot smaller. And then there's the legend. During that same period, the story goes that a treasure-laden aide of Emperor Maximilian of Mexico — fleeing the country when the regime collapsed — buried gold and jewels somewhere in the area.

The marker calls it a legend, and I'll honor that. But I'll note that treasure hunters are still showing up, so somebody finds the story persuasive. Dust of the pioneers settled long ago.

Today Castle Gap slumbers peacefully, disturbed only by visitors, the occasional treasure hunter, and those who go looking for the ruins of the Butterfield station and the rapidly fading ruts of coach and wagon. Fading, but not yet gone. Fourteen miles northwest.

Right there between the mountains, if you know where to look.

What the marker says

Castle Gap, famous early pass for southwestern trails, lies 14 miles northwest along the Upton-Crane County line. Through this mile-long gap between Castle and King mountains flowed the full panorama of Texas history-- Indian, Spaniard, Stage and Trail Herd Driver, Settler, '49er. In prehistoric time Castle Gap was a landmark for nomadic Indian tribes and later guided the Commanches on their war trail into Mexico. The first white man to discover the pass was probably the Spanish explorer Felipe Rabago y Teran in 1761. Then came the '49ers in their frenzied rush to the California gold fields, to be followed by other, more permanent settlers. From 1858 to 1861 the famed Butterfield Overland Mail coaches rumbled through the pass on their 24-day journey from St. Louis to San Francisco, pausing briefly at the adobe-walled Castle Gap station for fresh teams. Then they were off again, fording into the sunset. By 1866 the Goodnight-Loving cattle trail was firmly established at the gap, funneling tens of thousands of brawling longhorn cattle to the northern markets. During this same period, legend holds that a treasure-laden aide of Emperor Maximilian of Mexico, fleeing the country when the regime collapsed, buried gold and jewels in the area. Dust of the pioneers settled long ago. Today Castle Gap slumbers peacefully, disturbed only by visitors, occasional treasure hunters and those who probe for ruins of the Butterfield station and the rapidly fading ruts of coach and wagon.