Upton County is a county located on the Edwards Plateau in the U.S. state of Texas. As of the 2010 census, its population was 3,355. Its county seat is Rankin. The county was created in 1887 and later organized in 1910. It is named for two brothers: John C. and William F. Upton, both colonels in the Confederate Army.
Reeves County is a county located in the U.S. state of Texas. As of the 2010 census, its population was 13,783. Its county seat and most populous city is Pecos. The county was created in 1883 and organized the next year. It is named for George R. Reeves, a Texas state legislator and colonel in the Confederate Army. It is one of the nine counties that comprise the Trans-Pecos region of West Texas. Reeves County comprises the Pecos micropolitan statistical area.
Pecos County is a county located in the U.S. state of Texas. As of the 2010 census, its population was 15,507. The county seat is Fort Stockton. The county was created in 1871 and organized in 1875. It is named for the Pecos River. It is one of the nine counties that comprise the Trans-Pecos region of West Texas.
Fort Stockton is a city in and the county seat of Pecos County, Texas, United States. It is located on Interstate 10, future Interstate 14, U.S. Highways 67, 285, and 385, and the Santa Fe Railroad, 329 mi (529 km) northwest of San Antonio and 240 mi (390 km) east of El Paso.
The Llano Estacado, commonly known as the Staked Plains, is a region in the Southwestern United States that encompasses parts of eastern New Mexico and northwestern Texas. One of the largest mesas or tablelands on the North American continent, the elevation rises from 3,000 feet (900 m) in the southeast to over 5,000 feet (1,500 m) in the northwest, sloping almost uniformly at about 10 feet per mile (1.9 m/km).
The Santa Fe Trail was a 19th-century route through central North America that connected Franklin, Missouri with Santa Fe, New Mexico. Pioneered in 1821 by William Becknell, who departed from the Boonslick region along the Missouri River, the trail served as a vital commercial highway until 1880, when the railroad arrived in Santa Fe. Santa Fe was near the end of the El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, which carried trade from Mexico City.
Sheffield is an unincorporated community in Pecos County, Texas, United States. According to the Handbook of Texas, the community had an estimated population of 600 in 2000.
The Neighbors Expedition, led by Robert Neighbors was one of several expeditions sent by the military to explore the area between San Antonio and El Paso with the purpose of opening a practical road to the west, which could be used by settlers and stages. The Neighbors Expedition, along with that led by Col. John C. Hays of the Texas Rangers in 1848, and that of Lieutenants William Henry Chase Whiting and William F. Smith of the United States Army Corps of Engineers in 1849, were the most important of these expeditions.
Preston, also known as Preston Bend, is an unincorporated community and census-designated place located on the Red River in Grayson County, Texas, United States. It grew in the 19th century at the intersection of several military and trade roads and was an important crossing on the Shawnee cattle trail. Preston lost prominence after the MK&T railroad bypassed the town to the east, leading to a decline in traveler and cattle drive traffic. Much of its former town site is submerged beneath the waters of Lake Texoma. Its population was 2,096 as of the 2010 census.
Tunas Creek formerly known as Arroyo Escondido, is a Stream tributary to the Pecos River, in Pecos County, Texas. Its source is at 30°52′53″N102°34′59″W on the southwestern side of Big Mesa.
The Goodnight–Loving Trail was a trail used in the cattle drives of the late 1860s for the large-scale movement of Texas Longhorns. It is named after cattlemen Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving.
The San Antonio–El Paso Road, also known as the Lower Emigrant Road or Military Road, was an economically important trade route between the Texas cities of San Antonio and El Paso between 1849 and 1882. Mail, freight, and passengers traveled by horse and wagon along this road across the Edwards Plateau and dangerous Trans-Pecos region of West Texas.
Glenn Springs is an uninhabited place in the state of Texas, United States, which is of historical importance. The Glenn Springs area was a natural spring providing water for Apache and Kiowa routing the Grand Indian Crossing passage at Boquillas. The Comanche tribes beseech the fresh water crossing on the Comanche Trail during their equine incursions from and to the Mexican Plateau, Sierra Madre Oriental, and the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt regions of Mexico.
In Texas, the Butterfield Overland Mail service created by Congress on March 3, 1857, operated until March 30, 1861. The route that was operated extended from San Francisco, California to Los Angeles, then across the Colorado Desert to Fort Yuma, then across New Mexico Territory via, Tucson and Mesilla, New Mexico to Franklin, Texas, midpoint on the route. The route through Texas followed first the northern route to the Pecos River and downstream to Horse Head Crossing. The route in West Texas was changed in 1859, in order to secure a better water supply on the route and to provide mail service to a more settled area, the stages between Franklin and the Pecos River followed the San Antonio-El Paso Road to Camp Stockton and then turned east to Horsehead Crossing. From Horsehead Crossing the route crossed Texas to the Red River and into Indian Territory. In 1860 the route was changed to another route from Jacksboro to Sherman via Decatur due to the building of a new toll bridge at Bridgeport, that avoided delays crossing the West Fork of the Trinity River when it was flooded. From Colberts Ferry the route went on to Fort Smith, then up across Arkansas and southwest Missouri to Tipton with the final leg by train to St. Louis. The Texas mail route was so long that the route there, like that in California, was divided into two divisions each under a superintendent.
The Comanche Trail, sometimes called the Comanche War Trail or the Comanche Trace, was a travel route in Texas established by the nomadic Comanche nation. The route ran from the Comanche summer hunting grounds to the Rio Grande, where the Spanish had established a line of missions and presidios during the eighteenth century in what was then called New Spain, which the Comanche would raid. Although called a "trail," the Comanche Trail was actually a network of parallel and branching trails, always following sources of good water. By 1857 parts of the trail had been named and appeared on maps.
The Pinta Trail is a historic trail in Central Texas that was first traveled by indigenous tribes, and later explorers, settlers, soldiers, and travelers. The 19th-century Germans who settled the Texas Hill Country used part of the Pinta Trail on their journey northward from New Braunfels to found Fredericksburg. A historic battle between a Texas Rangers patrol and a band of Comanches is often said to have occurred near a ford where the Pinta Trail crossed the Guadalupe River.
Lancaster Crossing, also known as Indian Ford, Pecos Crossing, Solomon's Ford, Crossing of the Pecos, Crossing Rio Pecos, Ferry of the Pecos, and Ford Canyon Crossing, is an historic ford and ferry on the Pecos River, between Crockett County and Pecos County just southeast of Sheffield, Texas. Named after nearby Fort Lancaster, it is one of the few natural fords on the Pecos River, otherwise known for its steep banks that made crossing difficult.
Leaving of Pecos was originally a camping place along the west bank of the Pecos River, on the wagon road called the Lower Emigrant Road, Military Road or San Antonio-El Paso Road in Texas. It was located 38 miles north of the Lancaster Crossing of the Pecos, and 16 miles east of the first crossing of Escondido Creek. It was also located a mile north of where the wagon road had its junction with a cutoff to the north to the wagon road called the Upper Emigrant Road between Fredericksburg, Texas and Comanche Springs, now Fort Stockton, Texas, where it joined the Lower Emigrant Road. It was later a stopping place on the route of San Antonio - El Paso Mail and the San Antonio-San Diego Mail Line.
Comanche Springs was an aquifer of six artesian springs geographically located between the Edwards Plateau and the Trans-Pecos regions of West Texas. The groundwater source originated from a Comanchean limestone fault combined within the bountiful Edwards Aquifer and the Glass Mountains.
Pope's Crossing was a ford on the Pecos River located one mile south of the New Mexico–Texas border on the modern Loving–Reeves county line. Discovered by members of an 1855 expedition tasked with drilling artesian wells east of the Pecos led by U.S. Army topographical engineer John Pope, the ford quickly became the primary crossing of the river on the "upper" military or emigrant road between San Antonio and the ford on the Rio Grande opposite the Mexican town of El Paso del Norte. Heavily used by emigrants, soldiers, traders, and freighters eager to avoid the more difficult and unpredictable crossings further south, Pope's Crossing became a well-traveled part of the network of transcontinental wagon roads that developed across Texas in the 1850s to facilitate settlement and commerce in the southwestern lands recently acquired as a result of the Mexican–American War.
