DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker at Emigrants' Crossing tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, the Pecos River has a reputation. Anyone who's spent time in West Texas knows it — deep, treacherous, and not exactly eager to let you pass.
So when travelers needed to cross it, they didn't just pick a spot and wade in hoping for the best. They needed one of the rare places where the river flows over exposed rock, where the bottom is solid enough to trust your wagon wheels, your horses, and your life. Out here in Reeves County, there is one such place.
Emigrants' Crossing. In a sixty-mile stretch of that river — sixty miles — there are only three fords. Three.
And this was the one that caught on. Back in 1849, parties migrating from the eastern United States toward the west coast gold fields came through here in numbers. They called it the California Emigrants' Crossing.
Some called it the Red River Trail crossing. Either way, word spread that this was the spot. When you've got a deep, treacherous river standing between you and the goldfields of the west coast, you remember the name of the place that let you through.
A decade later, the Butterfield Overland Mail came rolling through in 1858, and those coaches made the same choice the forty-niners had — this crossing, this ford. The Butterfield operation didn't just pass through either. They built.
An adobe station went up right there, and a high-walled adobe corral to keep the stock secure in a country that gave you every reason to want high walls. One of only three fords in sixty miles of some of the most stubborn river in Texas. Gold seekers, mail coaches, pioneers pushing west — they all stood on that same exposed rock and made the same calculation.
The Pecos let them across. Not for free, I suspect. But it let them across.
What the marker says
One of the few spots where pioneer travelers could cross the Pecos River by fording. At Emigrants' Crossing, the deep, treacherous river flows over exposed rock. It is one of only three fords in a 60-mile segment of the stream, and was the one favored by parties migrating in 1849 from the eastern United States to west coast gold fields. Often called the California Emigrants' Crossing, or the Red River Trail crossing, it was also the one used in 1858 by coaches of Butterfield Overland Mail, which had an adobe station and a high-walled adobe corral there. (1972)