Overland Route

One of several early land routes in the USA from the Midwest to California, used especially by stagecoach companies in the mid-19th century.

The general term ‘overland route’ was used loosely in reference to several westward trails, including the Oregon Trail, but the name came to refer in particular to other, more southerly routes. Chief among these were the Southern and Central overland routes, which thrived from the late 1850s until the 1870s, when the advent of the transcontinental railway wiped out the stagecoach business.

The Southern Overland Route, otherwise the ‘Butterfield Southern Route’ or ‘Butterfield Trail’, was used in 1858-61 by carriers for the Butterfield Stage (American Express) company. Their route, which covered 4,500 km/2,800 mi, began at Tipton, Missouri, 48 km/30 mi southwest of Jefferson City, which the Pacific Railroad had reached from St Louis. It ran across southwestern Missouri, through Springfield, into northwestern Arkansas, through Fayetteville and the Boston Mountains, to Fort Smith. Continuing through southeastern Oklahoma, past McAlester, it crossed the Red River at Preston, Texas. From Denison, founded on the trail, it then cut southwest across north-central Texas, around the Guadalupe Mountains, and west, via the Hueco Tanks, to El Paso, the halfway point. From El Paso it ran through Mesilla, Deming, and Columbus, New Mexico, and across south Arizona, via the Apache Pass, to Yuma. Finally, it crossed the Mojave Desert to Los Angeles and then turned northwest to San Francisco. The Southern Overland Route was abandoned when the US Civil War began, and Butterfield business shifted to the Central Overland Route. This basically followed the Oregon Trail into southern Wyoming, where it diverged from the North Platte River and ran through desert areas to Fort Bridger and southwest into Utah. From the Great Salt Lake, it proceeded west along the route roughly followed later in the decade by the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads, across northern Nevada and through the Sierra Nevada (via the Carson Pass, also used by the Pony Express) to San Francisco Bay.