DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the marker on this site tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, out here in Schleicher County, the land has a long memory, and this particular patch of ground remembers the thunder of hooves and the creak of wheels going back to 1894. This was the site of the J.
D. Earnest Ranch Stage Stand — and during J. D.
Earnest's ownership, this place served as a rest stop on the stage line running between San Angelo and Sonora. Seventy-five miles of Texas terrain, and somebody had to cover it. That somebody was Theodore Jackson Savell, born in 1872, died in 1954, who owned and managed the operation from the very start.
It was Savell's line, Savell's stages, Savell's problem when the road turned to mud. And mud, out here, was no small matter. See, each weekday — not just now and then, but every single weekday — two stages made that seventy-five-mile run, each one pulled by four horses.
Mail. Passengers. Rain or shine.
Mostly shine, this being West Texas, but when the rare rainy occasion did come along and the hills turned slick and soft, well, the passengers didn't just sit there lookin' pretty. They got out and pushed. You bought a ticket to ride, and sometimes that ticket included a little manual labor on the uphill sections.
There's something almost poetic about that — paying for the privilege of helping your own stagecoach out of a ditch. The Savell line kept running, kept pushing through mud and dust and all the miles between San Angelo and Sonora, all the way until 1909. That's when mail was first delivered to the county by automobile, and just like that, the age of four horses and two stages on a seventy-five-mile run was done.
The future had arrived, and it didn't need anybody to push it uphill.
What the marker says
During the ownership of rancher J. D. Earnest, this site was used as a rest stop on the stage line between San Angelo and Sonora. Owned and managed by Theodore Jackson Savell (1872-1954), the operation began providing mail and passenger service to the area in 1894. Each weekday two stages pulled by four horses made the 75-mile run. On rare rainy occasions the passengers helped push the stagecoach up muddy hills. The Savell line remained in operation until 1909, when mail was first delivered to the county by automobile. (1980)