The grimly-signed Horsehead Crossing of the Pecos was one of the few safe fords across the Pecos River where animals and wagons could cross without the hazard of being trapped by high or unstable river banks. This made Horsehead Crossing a valuable and well-used fording point for every mail road that came through this part of West Texas.
The history of this important mail-route ford is told on a state historic marker at this roadside rest area along the US 67/385 southwest of McCamey TX as follows:
"HORSEHEAD CROSSING C.S.A.
(about 10 mi. NW)
One of the most important sites in the Old West. Named for skulls pointing toward crossing. Only ford for many miles where animals could enter, drink and leave Pecos River safely. Elsewhere deep banks would trap them. Ford mapped 1849 by Capt. R. B. Marcy, head of army escort for parties on way to California gold rush. Used in 1850's by frontier fighter and scout Henry Skillman, contractor for first mail route from San Antonio to El Paso. As change station, echoed with brass bugle call of Butterfield coach carrying mail from St. Louis to San Francisco, in first stage service to span continent, 1858-1861.
During the Civil War, 1861-1865, used by wagons hauling highly valuable salt scooped from bed of nearby Juan Cordona Lake, to meet Texas scarcities. Also scene of spying and counterspying of Federals and Confederates watching Overland Trail. Federals, operating out of El Paso, feared invasion by way of Horsehead. Confederates several times threw back armies that sought to enter the state in order to deploy along the old Overland Trail and conquer North and West Texas.
Later this became important crossing for cattle on Goodnight-Loving trail, mapped in 1866. (1965)"
The actual Horsehead Crossing itself is located on private property and is inaccessible to the general public, as the land is enclosed by locked gates and No Trespassing signs are posted.
The Skillman Mail Route passed through the Horsehead Crossing in from 1852-1854, when Skillman lost his mail contract with the US Government. For more, see here: (
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The Butterfield Overland Mail operated from 1857-1861, using the Horsehead Crossing ford the location for a change station to trade out tired horses for fresh ones.
The Butterfield Overland mail moved mail from St Louis MO through Texas to San Francisco CA. (Fun fact: Henry Skillman was a driver for the BOM -- so he knew this ford well.)
The Butterfield Overland Mail was the first transcontinental mail route in the US, but was made obsolete by the opening of transcontinental railroad service which delivered mail cheaper and faster. See: (
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There were two routes of the California Trail in Texas: a northern route that followed the Canadian River through the Panhandle and the southern route, which followed a route from Fort Belknap in Young County of Northwest Texas to Fort Bliss, near El Paso.
The southern route of the California Trail, mapped by US Army Captain Marcy, used Horsehead Crossing over the Pecos to continue westward. Marcy had been assigned escort duty along the California Trail to protect the emigrants from Indian attacks that were common in lonely country far from protective forts.
See the map of the branches of the California Trail in Texas on wikipedia here: (
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For more on the California trail, visit the Oregon-California Trail Association website here: (
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The Goodnight-Loving trail ran from Young County Texas to Colorado via the Pecos River and Ft. Sumner NM.
An excellent explanation of the route can be found in the Handbook of Texas online: (
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"GOODNIGHT-LOVING TRAIL. The Goodnight-Loving Trail ran from Young County, Texas, southwest to Horsehead Crossing on the Pecos River, up the Pecos to Fort Sumner, New Mexico, and on north to Colorado.
In the spring and early summer of 1866 Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving drove their first herd of longhorn cattle over the Butterfield Overland Mail route from near Fort Belknap via the Middle Concho River and Castle Gap, to Horsehead (on some old maps marked Dead Horse) Crossing. Leaving the former mail route there, they worked up the Pecos, crossing it from time to time as the terrain and watering places required. They drove a second herd, bought from John S. Chisum, from his Concho River range to Fort Sumner later that same summer.
The northern extension of the Goodnight-Loving Trail was first blazed by Loving in the fall of 1866. Initially, it ran north from Fort Sumner up the Pecos to Las Vegas, then followed the Santa Fe Trail to Raton Pass and around the base of the Rockies via Trinidad and Pueblo to Denver, Colorado. Since that was a roundabout way, Goodnight in the fall of 1867 altered the route fifty or sixty miles to the east, crossing the Gallinas valley and the well-watered plains of northeastern New Mexico near Capulin Mountain before swinging back northwestward to Raton Pass. At Raton Pass "Uncle Dick" Wootton had established a toll station near the summit and charged Goodnight ten cents a head for passage. Goodnight complied, but not without protest. At the head of Apishapa Canyon, forty miles northeast of Trinidad, he set up a ranch and cattle-relay station.
In the spring of 1868 Goodnight entered into a contract with John Wesley Iliff in which he agreed to deliver his cattle to Iliff at the Union Pacific Railroad town of Cheyenne, Wyoming. From the Arkansas valley near Pueblo, Goodnight and his men struck out due north, passing east of Denver, to the South Platte River. They crossed that stream at the site of present Greeley and followed a tributary, Crow Creek, to Cheyenne, where the delivery was made. Afterward, Goodnight and his men went back to New Mexico to buy more cattle from Chisum at Bosque Grande. Returning north, Goodnight further "straightened out" the trail by leaving the Pecos north of Fort Sumner and traveling north to Alamogordo Creek and across the plains via Cuervo Creek and its tributaries to a spot on the Canadian River twenty miles west of Fort Bascom. From there he proceeded to the Cimarron Seco west of Capulin Mountain. In order to avoid Dick Wootton's toll road, Goodnight opened a new, easier passageway through Tinchera Pass into Colorado.
The Goodnight-Loving Trail was thus routed, and although Goodnight himself made only one more delivery at Cheyenne, many cattle concerns from Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado used all or portions of the trail extensively until the advent of railroads in the Southwest in the early 1880s. The trail was sometimes known simply as the Goodnight Trail.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
J. Evetts Haley, Charles Goodnight (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1949). C. Robert Haywood, Trails South: The Wagon-Road Economy in the Dodge City-Panhandle Region (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1986). J. Marvin Hunter, Trail Drivers of Texas (2 vols., San Antonio: Jackson Printing, 1920, 1923; 4th ed., Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985).
by T. C. Richardson"