A stop for the Burney & Blair Stage Line, an early stage line through Salado linking Austin and Waco that was established in 1852, and for successive stage lines that operated through Salado until 1881, is located on South Main Street in Salado, right next to the Stagecoach Inn.
The old stage stand building, on the property of the Stagecoach Inn, is preserved as a Salado Historical landmark. In 2017 the stand is not available for tours as hotel property is closed for renovations.
A nearby state historic marker furnishes some history of the hotel built on this early stage line as follows:
"Constructed during the 1860s, the Stagecoach Inn was known as Salado Hotel and as Shady Villa before the current name was adopted in 1943. Military figures George Armstrong Custer and Robert E. Lee, and cattle baron Shanghai Pierce are among those thought to have stayed here. A good example of frontier vernacular architecture, the Stagecoach Inn features a two-story galleried porch with a second-story balustrade.
Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1962"
A second marker at the Salado Visitor Center mentions the stage line that drove the development of what is now known as the Stagecoach Inn:
"SALADO
Salado was officially established in 1859 when Col. E. S. C. Robertson donated land for a townsite and for a college. Col. Hermon Aiken drew a plat for the town, which developed along its main street. However, there had been activity here long before this time, as Native Americans and Spanish Explorers, among others, came through the spring-fed land. The explorers used the term salado, meaning salty, in referring to this area, likely confusing Salado Creek and the Lampasas River. By 1852, a post office opened to serve a growing community on the Burney and Blair Stage Line from Austin to Waco. Several hotels opened in the settlement, including the Salado Hotel.
By the 1860s, Salado developed a thriving economy based on farming ranching, milling, mineral baths, and education. Salado College opened in 1860, attracting many individuals to the growing community. Additional schools were built, including Thomas Arnold High School, which was established by Dr. Samuel Jones, and a school on land donated by W. K. Hamblen, which closed in 1969 and became a community center. In 1873, the first Texas branch of the Grange, a national fraternal agrarian order, opened in Salado. Salado hosted Bell county’s first Agricultural Fair that same year; the fair moved to Belton in 1876. By the 1890s, several churches had also organized in Salado.
Salado became a virtual ghost town in the early decades of the 20th century; the population was around 250 in 1950, but since that time, Salado has experienced continued growth. Revitalization occurred when retirees moved here and with promotion of the arts. In 2000, Salado again incorporated, and today remains a viable community into the 21st century. (2009)
Marker is property of the state of Texas"
More on the early history of Salado and this stage line from the Handbook of Texas: (
visit link)
"SALADO, TEXAS. Salado is a picturesque, historic village on Salado Creek just east of Interstate Highway 35 between Waco and Austin in southern Bell County. The clear, bubbling springs of the creek, which made it a favorite camping ground for Indians thousands of years before Spanish explorers arrived in Texas, have had much to do with the development of the area. Salado Creek was the first designated Texas natural landmark in 1966.
The first permanent Anglo-American settler at Salado was Archibald Willingham in 1850. In 1852 a post office was established when a stage line with terminals at Waco and Austin began a weekly run, more than a half dozen years before the town was laid out. . . .
by Elizabeth Silverthorne"
A book on early Texas wagon roads by Howard J. Erlichman mentions this stage line as follows: (
visit link)
"[page 97] As with the case with Spain’s Camino’s Reales, genuine road building in Texas was driven by military need. Roads were surveyed or built when deemed necessary to supply the continuing westward movement of US military forts (and tag-along businesses) and to provide regular communications by mail and eventually telegraph. San Antonio, Austin, and Waco emerged as important mail depots for the Western frontier. Military mail service was regular but slow; a civilian horseback rider required roughly 10 days travel between San Antonio and Fort Brown. In 1850 a mail route between San Antonio and El Paso took either thirty days by horseback or three months by wagon.
Otherwise, mail was carried by dedicated stagecoach lines. I. T. Brown and Lyman Tarbox of Houston had revived biweekly stage line between Austin and Houston in 1845, via Washington, La Grange, and Bastrop. The twenty dollar fare included up to thirty pounds of luggage, and the trip took around three and a half days. In August 1847, once the military (Preston) Road was in operation, Brown and Tarbox won the first annual contract for thousand dollars to operate a weekly, two horse coach service between Austin and San Antonio.
. . . .
North of Austin, the company Belton, Berney, & Blair operated a weekly mail and stage service between Austin and Waco along the Preston Road, until replaced by Sawyer and Compton in 1857. Sawyer and Compton continued to [page 98] run a daily service between the two towns until the Santa Fe Railroad arrived in 1881. An alternate day service between San Antonio and Waco began in 1861. One stop of note was the Shady Villa (the current Stagecoach) Inn insulative, built in eighteen fifty-two on the site visited by Indians for centuries, by Cook’s military Road expedition, and later by Chisholm Trail drivers. Salado served local stages and the Western stage companies piece of the great Northern line tween Memphis (via Little Rock) and San Antonio. By September 1858, Western was stopping at San Antonio, new Braunfels, San Marcus, and Austin, with connections to Waco in Dallas. When weekly mail service was extended to Laredo in eighteen sixty-one, Western and other stages were rolling along most of the future route of I-35. . . ."