Site of Mail Relay Station

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and here's how I'm going to tell it to you. About five hundred yards west of where you're sitting right now, something was humming along out on the flat West Texas plain long before most folks had a reason to come through Terry County at all. By 1903, W.J.

French, born in 1858, and Mary E. French, born in 1863, had built themselves a two-story home near this site. Two stories.

Out here. That alone ought to tell you something about the kind of people the Frenches were. They weren't just getting by.

They were setting up. Now, the freighters were coming through regular, hauling goods from the Texas and Pacific Railroad, and a freighter rig was no small operation. We're talking two wagons drawn by several horses, rolling across open country, drivers hungry and tired and in need of water and somewhere to pen those animals for the night.

The Frenches had all of it. A campground, water, hot meals, and a horse pen. Cattle drovers stopped here too, resting on their way through the area.

This place was a waypoint, a breath of relief in a long stretch of nothing. Then 1905 rolls around, and the French home steps up again. It became a stop along a mail route, forty miles of it, running from Lamesa, known at that time as Chicago, through Brownfield on to Gomez.

Forty miles of prairie mail. And those mail hacks, they weren't just carrying letters and parcels. They carried passengers too.

People moving through a country that was still figuring out what it wanted to be. It lasted until 1910, when the mail was rerouted and the service was discontinued. Just like that, the route changed, and the stop that had fed and watered and sheltered a whole moving world out here went quiet.

Mary E. French lived until 1958. She was born in 1863, and she outlasted the freighters, the mail hacks, the drovers, nearly all of it.

Makes you wonder what she made of the silence after the wagons stopped coming through.

What the marker says

(500 yards west) By 1903, W.J. (1858-1930) and Mary E. (1863-1958) French had built a two-story home near this site, and it was a stop for freighters from the Texas & Pacific Railroad. Freighter rigs usually consisted of two wagons drawn by several horses, and the Frenches offered a campground, water, hot meals and a horse pen. Cattle drovers also rested here on their way through the area. In 1905, the French home became a stop along a mail route from Lamesa, known then as Chicago, through Brownfield to Gomez, a 40-mile trip. The mail hacks also carried passengers. The mail service was discontinued in 1910 when the mail was rerouted. (1973, 2006)