Few images of the American West are more enduring than the stagecoach. On July 18, 1856, the United States mail line brought the first stagecoach to Fort Worth on its way to Fort Belknap. The stagecoach stopped at Steel’s Tavern at the present intersection of Bluff & Houston Streets, then headed west. At Fort Belknap, passengers and mail joined the Southern Overland mail line on its route connecting the East Coast to San Francisco. By the 1870s, daily service arrived and departed from Fort Worth’s El Paso Hotel on Main Street. With the arrival of the railroad in 1876, the city became the largest stagecoach terminus in the Southwest. In 1878 the Fort Worth and Yuma stage line was established, providing mail delivery on a “star route” to Yuma, Arizona. The six-horse team pulled the stage 1,560 miles on a 17-day trip, the longest daily stage line in existence at that time.

SPONSORED BY: WELLS FARGO