Butterfield Overland Mail

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Butterfield Overland Mail (officially Overland Mail Company) was a stagecoach service in the United States operating from 1858 to 1861. It carried passengers and U.S. Mail from two eastern termini, Memphis, Tennessee, and St. Louis, Missouri, to San Francisco, California. The routes from each eastern terminus met at Fort Smith, Arkansas, and then continued through the Indian Territory (Oklahoma), Texas, the present-day states of New Mexico and Arizona, parts of northwestern Mexico, and then into California, ending in San Francisco. Before the late 1850s, there was no regular overland mail delivery service through the interior of the Western United States; parcels traveling from the Eastern United States to the Far West or vice versa had to be sent by ship on the long voyage around South America, or had to be carried overland personally. There were few reliable trails across the American frontier and all of the routes were long, arduous, and frequently dangerous. On March 3, 1857, Congress...

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