When Death Rode the Butterfield Stage

THE PERILOUS BUTTERFIELD ROUTE WEST WITH THE STAGE

About 140 years ago, A Waterman Lily Ormsby, 23, a correspondent for The New York Herald, rode the first Butterfield stage westward over “the longest stagecoach route in the world.” He'd left Saint Louis, Missouri, on September 16, 1858, to ride all the way to San Francisco.

In his dispatches back to the Herald, Ormsby noted that southern Arizona was one of the most dangerous parts of the 2,800-mile journey. This was, after all, the heart of Apache country, where in the decade of the 1850s a great number of Butterfield men would lose their lives.

The trail, the first successful transcontinental mail and passenger route across the United States, began in Saint Louis and headed southwest through Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California, where it ultimately curved northward to San Francisco.

The trail into southern Arizona began at Stein's Peak Station. From there it wound through Doubtful Canyon and into the plain of the San Simon Valley. The road then gradually climbed to Apache Pass and crossed Sulphur Springs Valley to Dragoon Springs.

Then it dropped into the San Pedro Valley, crossed the San Pedro River, and climbed the western slopes of the valley to follow Cienega Creek to Tucson.

Leaving the Old Pueblo, the route went north past Picacho Peak to the Pima Villages, then turned west to Maricopa Wells, crossing the Fortymile Desert through the Maricopa Mountains to the bend of the Gila River, west to the Colorado River and Fort Yuma.

This historic route, which witnessed the Bascom Affair (the spark that ignited the Indian wars) and the massacre of the Oatman family, passed through the lands of the Apaches, the Pimas, the Maricopas, the Yumas, and the Tohono O'Odham into such diverse desert regions as the juniper-oak forest of Apache Pass and the creosote and cactus flats of the Maricopa Mountains.

Today, only a few stone remnants are left of the 18 Butterfield stage stations where once travelers were fed and fresh horses exchanged. The trail that linked them lies mostly forgotten on the edge of farms and ranches and submerged beneath the sprawling cities of the Southwest.

But here and there, especially in Apache Pass and in the Maricopa Mountains, parts of the old trail can still be found. It awaits the curious photographer.

Author's note: Though stagecoach days are gone, a legacy remains from John Butterfield. It is a little piece of plastic carried by millions of Americans in their wallets and purses: the American Express Card. Butterfield was one of the company's founders in 1850.

Photographer Virgil Hancock III is a physician at Kino Hospital, Tucson, and a faculty member of the University of Arizona Health Sciences Center.

(LEFT) The area at the top left of the photograph is where the Butterfield Route entered the San Pedro Valley. The Dragoon Mountains are in the foreground.