DUANE
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Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about Star Post Route Number 31454: the Fort Worth-Yuma Mail. Now, you've got to picture the frontier in the 1870s. The railroads were pushing west, sure; but they hadn't gotten everywhere yet.
Out in the remote stretches, far from any iron rail, folks still needed their mail delivered. Letters, newspapers, news from back home. So the U.S.
Post Office Department, in 1873, started doing something about it. They began establishing what were called Star Post Routes, a network of mail lines reaching into the places the trains couldn't. And then came August 15, 1878.
That's the day Star Route Number 31454 opened for business, running all the way from Fort Worth, Texas, to Yuma, Arizona Territory. Let that sink in a moment. Fort Worth to Yuma.
That is a considerable stretch of American earth, friend: desert, mountains, open plain, and somebody had to carry every letter across it. That somebody, or at least the man who held the contract, was J.T. Chidester.
Stagecoaches rolled that route under his contract, carrying the mail along much the same path that the Butterfield Overland Mail had cut through the country back in the late 1850s. Old trails have a way of staying useful. But the railroad doesn't wait on history, and it doesn't wait on stagecoaches.
When the southern transcontinental railroad was completed in 1881, the Fort Worth to Yuma mail was discontinued. Just like that; three years of hard riding, and the iron horse made it all unnecessary. Star Route Number 31454.
Opened with a contract and closed with a locomotive. That's the frontier in a nutshell.
What the marker says
By the 1870s remote areas of the frontier not served by the railroads needed mail delivery routes. In response the U.S. Post Office Department, in 1873, began establishing Star Post Routes. On Aug. 15, 1878, Star Route No. 31454 was opened between Fort Worth and Yuma, Arizona Terr., under contract to J.T. Chidester. Stagecoaches carried the mail along much the same route used by the Butterfield Overland Mail in the late 1850s. Fort Worth to Yuma mail was discontinued after completion of the southern transcontinental railroad in 1881. (1976)