Corpus Christi History by Murphy Givens

Stagecoach days in South Texas

W. E. Caldwell, a pastor in Corpus Christi, took the stagecoach to Brownsville in 1873. Relays of mustangs pulled the coach.
   A mustang [he wrote] is as wild a thing as nature affords. The harnessing of these creatures is an exciting scene. With much ado and by mere force of muscle, the harness is fastened upon them. The driver, reins in hand, is seated on the coach and requests the passengers to sit perfectly still. He orders the peons to hold the bit of each horse until the word is given. This proceeding awakens suspicions that something is going to happen. There is a moment of stillness, of suspended action, then the command is given to turn them loose.
   The peons jump out of the way. The horses tangle up in a heap, then fly in all directions in an explosion of motion. They run like the whirlwind describing curves over the prairies. You fear they will never stop. You soon perceive that on such smooth prairie there can be no danger and your only concern is that they be kept in the right direction. The speed is kept up without a halt until the next station 15 or 20 miles distance is reached. And the same scene is re-enacted.
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  ???Corpus Christi saw stagecoach lines come and go. In 1849, the Corpus Christi Star said a line of stages would begin running between Corpus Christi and San Antonio, leaving each Monday. A man named Hall operated a stagecoach line from San Antonio to Brownsville, stopping in Banquete at Ada Fogg's stand. A line owned by Gen. Armstrong ran to Laredo in the 1850s.
   The San Antonio-Corpus Christi line stopped at the Echo Stagecoach Inn at George West. In 1858, stage stops after leaving Corpus Christi were Tula Lake, Santa Margarita, Mathis, Echo, Gussettville, Oakville, and San Antonio. The distance between each stop was called a stage - hence stage lines.
   Butterfield's Overland Mail and the San Antonio-San Diego Mail (nicknamed the Jackass Mail) used Concord coaches pulled by six-horse teams, usually mules. These coaches could carry up to 15 passengers without crowding. But in South Texas, the lines provided small two-horse hacks and four-horse coaches, which were crowded and uncomfortable; people would take them only if there were no other means of travel. The stagecoach's main purpose was to carry the mail, under lucrative government contracts.
   A former Confederate captain, Tom Beynon, bought a livery stable in Corpus Christi and began running a stagecoach line to Brownsville in 1871. It's not known what route his stages took, but they probably followed the old Camino Real.
   It was expensive to take a stagecoach. The 160-mile trip to Brownsville cost $15; for $10 more, you could go by boat to New York. Rockport attorney James B. Wells, hired to join the firm of Stephen Powers in 1878, sold a shotgun to pay his fare to Brownsville. Except for isolated ranch houses and cow camps, this was empty country when Wells rode south: There wasn't a village or post office between here and Brownsville. The trip took 84 spine-jolting, liver-punishing hours. Because there were few graded roads, the coaches traveled over rutted trails and passengers sometimes had to get out and walk.
   A family named Truitt left Corpus Christi in the summer of 1902 in mule-drawn wagons for the Valley, where Alfred Truitt was moving to become foreman of a ranch. As the Truitts traveled down the Camino Real, they watched for the Alice-Brownsville stagecoach. A family member described the scene:
   The coach left Alice for the Valley every day at 6 a.m. [Lee Truitt wrote]. With four horses traveling at breakneck speed, they made the trip in 36 hours. Their aim to make time regardless of the consequences made rough traveling for the grimy, dusty passengers. Their route covered miles of shifting sand dunes. Where there was a road today, tomorrow there might be a sand bank high as the top of a stagecoach. Although the Truitts got only a fleeting glimpse of the driver and passengers as they passed by, they looked forward to the brief encounter every day. There was a relay of horses every 10 miles. At one stop, at Encino del Poso, they watched while the driver changed to fresh horses, then they were on their way, wasting no time, traveling at a fast clip.
   "We watched until they were out of sight and could see the stagecoach for a long way - it finally became only a tiny black speck on the horizon."
   Even as the Truitts watched the stagecoach disappear from sight, it was already a specimen of the past. In two years, this last stage line in Texas shut down when the St. Louis, Brownsville and Mexican Railway reached Brownsville. The stagecoach era in Texas was over.
   (Sources: Caller-Times archives; "Rincon" by Maude T. Gilliland; "Travelers in Texas" by Marilyn McAdams Sibley; "Old Stage Routes," Frontier Times. Specific information on stage routes, stops and fares in South Texas is scarce.)
  

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