Although the Butterfield Overland Mail operated in Texas for just thirty months, during that time it influenced and intersected much of the states history. In West Texas especially, Butterfield, in conjunction with the U.S. Army, helped develop the regions initial infrastructure and economy. In Texas, the Army spent four dollars for every one dollar expended by Butterfield. The Overland Mail Company, however, made a greater economic imprint on some parts of West Texas than the army. Between the Colorado and Pecos rivers lay the heart of the Butterfield frontier. Here the Overland Mail Company proved the primary economic force, building, supplying, and defending its remote stations with little to no support from the military. Along this frontier, Butterfield, not the army, built the regions infrastructure and primed its economic pump.
For those living on the Texas frontier, the postmaster generals establishment of a transcontinental mail line between St. Louis and San Francisco and the U.S. Armys outposts offered the real prospect of making money from the federal government and related agencies. Neither the overland mail service nor the military forts could survive without regular supplies and services. The federal frontier economy was a powerful magnet that pulled people to the western frontier. Many migrated westward to get a fresh start in life. Some came to fulfill their dreams and aspirations, and perhaps get rich off of the burgeoning frontier economy. While a few of the regions inhabitants became wealthy, others lost everything they had. Some even lost their lives.
The overland frontier in Texas is best seen as a series of fluid, multiple frontiers rather than one monolithic, linear, Old West frontier common to a number of previous interpretations. Woven into the narrative is a hybrid of different perspectives and interpretations of West Texas. This work combines environmental history, economic history, and ethnohistory to obtain a more complete understanding of the region, its people, and its stories. Antebellum West Texas was a series of meeting places, zones of convergence, and encounters.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TCU/oai:etd.tcu.edu:etd-01162009-153012 |
| Date | 16 January 2009 |
| Creators | Ely, Glenn Sample |
| Contributors | Todd M Kerstetter, EMBARGOED PERMANENTLY - 6/6/2011, FILES ARE UNDER /withheld DIRECTORY |
| Publisher | Texas Christian University |
| Source Sets | Texas Christian University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf, application/msword |
| Source | http://etd.tcu.edu/etdfiles/available/etd-01162009-153012/ |
| Rights | withheld, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to TCU or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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