DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker says, two miles southwest of where we're rolling now. Pull your eyes to the horizon and let me paint you a picture of Horsehead Crossing. Now, if a place ever earned its name the hard way, this is the one.
The banks of the Pecos River right here were lined — lined — with the skulls of horses and mules. Not a few. An abundance, the marker says.
Animals stolen in Mexico by Indians, driven hard along the Comanche War Trail, and when they finally smelled water after miles of that merciless west Texas scrub, they ran to the river and drank too deeply. The Pecos gave, and then the Pecos took. Those skulls told that story to every traveler who came after, in the nineteenth century and beyond.
And travelers did come. After the California gold strike in 1848, Horsehead Crossing became a major landmark on the trail west — and you want to know why it mattered so much? Because it provided the first water for about seventy-five miles on the route coming from the east.
Seventy-five miles of dry. So when emigrants finally dragged themselves to this crossing, it wasn't just a river. It was a decision point.
Turn northwest along the Pecos, or cross over and push southwest toward Comanche Springs at Fort Stockton. The crossing didn't just offer water. It offered a choice about what kind of hardship you wanted next.
By 1858, this ford had gotten official. The Butterfield Overland Mail route — St. Louis to San Francisco — came right through here, and they built an adobe stage stand and put a ferry into operation.
For a few years, Horsehead Crossing was a working stop on one of the most ambitious mail routes the country had ever attempted. Then 1861 arrived, mail service was terminated, and just like that — the stage stand abandoned, the ferry abandoned. The Pecos went back to keeping its own counsel.
The Civil War brought a different kind of attention. In late 1862, federal forces kept a close watch at the crossing, reacting to a threatened Confederate invasion. Out here in this emptiness, armies were playing chess with geography, and Horsehead was a square worth watching.
Then came the cattle. Herds began crossing the Pecos right here in 1864. And in 1866 — here's the name you've been waiting for — Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving blazed their famous trail, which came to this very point and turned upriver.
Those two men looked at the same skulls, the same muddy banks, the same hard Pecos water, and they made history anyway. The crossing's end came quietly, as endings often do. In the early 1880s, two railroads were completed across west Texas, and Horsehead Crossing was simply abandoned.
No drama. No final stand. Just iron rails drawing travelers away from the river, and the Pecos going right on flowing, indifferent as ever.
All those skulls, all those emigrants, all that beef and ambition and mail — and in the end, it took a railroad to finally outlast the Pecos. That's west Texas for you.
What the marker says
(2 miles NE) Famed ford of the Pecos River, named for abundance of horse and mule skulls lining the banks in the 19th century. Many water-starved animals, stolen in Mexico by Indians and driven along the Comanche War Trail, died after drinking too deeply from the river. After the California gold strike in 1848, Horsehead Crossing became a major landmark on the trail west, as it provided the first water for about 75 miles on the route from the east. Emigrants arriving here either turned northwest along the river or crossed and continued southwest to Comanche Springs at Fort Stockton. In 1858, the crossing became an important stop on the Butterfield Overland Mail route from St. Louis to San Francisco. An adobe stage stand was built and a ferry put into operation, but both were abandoned in 1861, when mail service was terminated. In late 1862, during the Civil War, federal forces kept a close watch at the crossing in reaction to a threatened Confederate invasion. Cattle began to be trailed across the Pecos in 1864, and in 1866, Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving blazed their famous trail, which came to this point and turned upriver. Completion of two railroads across west Texas in the early 1880s caused abandonment of the crossing. (1974)