These lands were home to the Chiricahua, Membreno, White Mountain and Mescalero Apaches. Two of their chiefs became very famous in stories of the American West. They were Cochise and Geronimo.

The Native Americans were experts at surviving in the mountains and deserts of the Southwest. They were also fierce fighters.

Butterfield workers were instructed not to incite the Apaches in any way. Often the company would use mules instead of horses to pull its stagecoaches because the Indians had no interest in mules. But there was still trouble. Workers were killed, animals were stolen and stations were burned.

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BOB DOUGHTY: The first Butterfield Overland Mail stagecoach left Missouri on September sixteenth, eighteen fifty-eight, on its way to California. It made the trip in twenty-three days, twenty-three hours.

The only passenger on that first stage to travel all the way through to San Francisco was a newspaper reporter named Waterman Ormsby. He worked for the New York Herald. He wrote several stories about the trip; later, they were put together in a book, "The Butterfield Overland Mail." Here is part of what he wrote about that trip.

READER: "We finally got under way again and pursued our weary course along the edge of the plain, thumping and bumping at a rate which threatened not to leave a whole bone in my body. What with the dust and the sun pouring directly on our heads … I found that day’s ride quite unpleasant, and at our several camps readily availed myself of the opportunity to plunge into the Pecos, muddy as it was; and I was heartily glad when about 10 p.m. we reached a station fifty-eight miles from our starting point in the morning ... "