Horsehead Crossing of The Pecos

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about Horsehead Crossing of the Pecos. Now, some places earn their keep quietly, and some places earn it the hard way — out in the open, under a merciless sky, with everything riding on what's on the other side of the water. Horsehead Crossing of the Pecos was that second kind of place.

Out here in Crane County, this crossing was well known to frontiersmen long before most folks had even heard of it, and emigrants had been using it for several years before it stepped into something bigger. Because when the southern overland mail came through — the Butterfield route, they called it — Horsehead Crossing became an important point on a line that linked St. Louis and San Francisco.

St. Louis to San Francisco. You sit with that for a moment.

Semi-weekly mail and stage service, rolling through some of the loneliest and most demanding country on the continent, running from eighteen fifty-eight all the way to eighteen sixty-one. Three years of that, twice a week, and this crossing was one of the places that made it possible. The frontiersmen who already knew it could've told you — this is where you cross.

And they were right.

What the marker says

Well known to frontiersmen and used by emigrants for several years preceding, this crossing was an important point on the southern overland mail (Butterfield route) which Linked St. Louis and San Francisco with a semi-weekly mail and stage service 1858-1861.