Site of Mark Fury Ranch Stage Stand

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and here's how I'm gonna pass it along to you. Out here in Schleicher County, there's a piece of ground that used to mean everything to the folks who lived in this remote stretch of Texas. This is the site of the Mark Fury Ranch Stage Stand, and the story it carries is worth slowing down for.

The land was originally part of the Mark Fury Ranch, and from 1894 to 1909, it served as a stagecoach stop on a line that connected San Angelo and Sonora. That's a run through some lonesome country, and somebody had to have the nerve and the sense to operate it. That somebody was Theodore Jackson Savell, born in 1872, who owned and ran the line himself.

Now, six mornings a week, a horn was blown to announce the arrival of the stage. Six mornings a week, that sound cut through the quiet out here and said, you are not forgotten. Help is comin.

Mail is comin. Somebody from the outside world is comin. And in emergencies on the road, help was prompt, because as the marker puts it, the line served as a thread of life for the remote area.

That's not poetry, that's a plain fact about survival. The Savell stages carried passengers, mail, and express service, and in doing so, they were instrumental in the early development of this whole region. Theodore Jackson Savell lived until 1954, long enough to see the world change around him in ways that would've been hard to imagine back when a horn blast at dawn was the most important sound a person could hear.

That horn is quiet now. But this ground remembers.

What the marker says

Originally part of the Mark Fury Ranch, this site was used as a stagecoach stop from 1894 to 1909. Theodore Jackson Savell (1872-1954) owned and operated the line between San Angelo and Sonora. Six mornings each week a horn was blown to announce the arrival of the stage. In emergencies on the road, help was prompt because the line served as a thread of life for the remote area. The Savell stages were instrumental in the early development of the region, providing passenger, mail and express service. (1980)