County of site: Barry County
Location of site: Farm Rd 2020, N. of MO TT, 7 miles SW of Crane, near Osa
Marker erected by Drywood Thrashers
Marker text:
SMITH
SPRING WATER
STATION
Butterfield Stage Line
Overland Mail
Erected by
Drywood Threshers
Sheldon, MO
Operated by John J. Smith.
Stage then Followed Flat Creek to Crouch's Station.
Today the foundaion of the tavern and farm house remain, the spring house and that's about all
John I. Smith built a homestead here. His intent was to farm, and farm he did.
But opportunity came his way, when John Butterfield was laying out his Butterfield Stage Line in 1858, Mr. Smith was contacted and agreed to be a relay station. A few meals and feed for horses which were changed out here, was offset by the income for being a station and providing meals.
He had found a good spring on the property for free water
John Smith was also locally involved and became A Road Commissioner for the county
Talked with a couple of local farmers in around the ghost town of Osa, and got a sense of where the old Drywoods Thrashers marker would be located. Talked with the home owner, he gave me permission to walk around his property and photo what I want, as long as what I was doing "did not bring a pack of fools to tramp on his ground."
Butterfield coaches traveled south from Tipton (1858) to Arkansas making stops at the following stations (approx. every 20 miles):
Tipton Station in Tipton, Morgan County
Shackelford Station in Syracuse, Morgan County
Munhollen (Munholland?) Station 2½ miles SW of Florence, Morgan County
Burn Station 6½ miles S of Cole Camp, Benton County
Warsaw Station in Warsaw, Benton County
Bailey Station in Fairield (today town site underwater), Benton County
Quincy Station in Quincy, Hickory County
Yoast's Station 2 miles S. of Elkton, Hickory County
J.H. Smith Station N. of Brighton, Polk County
Molloy's Station S. of Brighton in Polk County
Evans Station N. of Springfield, Greene County
Springfield Station in Springfield, Greene County
Ashmore's Station NW corner of Christian County
J.L. Smith's Station (7 miles W of Crane)NE corner of Barry County
Crouch's Station NE of Cassvile, Barry County
Cassville (not a relay station by passenger pick up point), Barry County
Harbin's Station in Seligman, Barry County (Found site but no marker exists)
"In March of 1857, realizing the need for an overland mail route from the east that serviced the west, congress passed a Post Office Appropriations Bill. While nine bids were being considered for this new contract, James E. Birch began carrying mail and passengers from San Antonio, Texas to San Diego, California. The first trip was in August 1857 and took a route that required passengers to be transported on mules over the Oriflamme Mountains. The route became known as the "Jackass Mail" and lasted only a short period until Birch drowned when his ship sank off Cape Hatteras while enroute from Washington D.C.
"Then, on September 15, 1857, one of the nine bidders, 56 year old John Butterfield of the John Butterfield Company was awarded the mail contract by congress. The Southern Postmaster General required the route that John’s company was to take be similar to the Birch route. This route, which was generally not accepted, was called the Ox Bow Route and had to go through El Paso, Texas and Fort Yuma, California. It added 600 miles over the more northern routes and required extra relay stations and frontier forts to be built. The total length of the new route was 2812 miles and had to be run twice a week. It was also required that the trips be completed within 25 days.
"It took a year for John and his company to secure sites for stage stations, buy equipment, obtain horses and mules, and find men to work for him. Bridges had to be built over rivers and streams, large rocks had to be removed from trails, wells had to be dug, and passes through mountains had to be cleared. Finally, on September 16, 1858, the first trip was launched from Tipton, Missouri. Butterfield’s son drove the first leg along with a reporter from the New York Herald named Waterman L. Ormsby. Their trip is recorded in a book called The Butterfield Overland Mail, ; published 1942 by the Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery, San Marino, California.
"The cost for one way fare was $200 or $.15 per mile for shorter trips and usually took 22 days as opposed to the contracted 25. The Concord stagecoaches carrying the passengers averaged 5-9 miles per hour and were fairly comfortable by the days standards. Only when the trail was very rough did the passengers have to switch to a more uncomfortable but rugged Celerity stagecoach. There were 139 relay stations and forts, 1800 head of stock, and 250 Concord and Celerity Overland Stage Coaches used by the 800 men that Butterfield employed.
"Butterfields men were rough tough frontiersman as no other men could handle the hardships that Butterfield would put them through. He gave them instructions such as ,"drivers and conductors to be armed but to shoot only when lives of passengers are endangered" and "no shipments of gold or silver to be carried to cut down on attacks by highwaymen." Each driver had a 60 mile route and then a return for a total of 120 miles." ~ Frontier Trails of the Old West
In Spring of 1861 Union troops moved into Syracuse, MO (a Southern sympathy freighter town). They drug Southern sympathizers into the street and killed them (over 180 civilians) and burned the warehouses for both the freight companies and the Butterfield stage warehouses and station. When this got back to Washington, the contract was withdrawn and given to Wells Fargo for the Northern Route