As a young boy I can remember Dad bringing home random arrowheads and stone rock Indian artifacts from out on the range. While I never witnessed one of his lucky chance finds, I was with him once when he pointed to another piece of western history — ghostlike narrow tracks through dry hard packed alkali ground. From out of nowhere and scattered tumbleweed these parallel impressions were the dirt markings of the old Butterfield Stagecoach he explained. This seemed so incredulous to me that day and I retained the memory.

That was 60 years ago and even at the time the trail remnants would have been dated by a century. Local knowledge. I categorized his factoid as legend or folklore.

Present day and watching an old James Stewart/John Wayne cowboy western re-run (1962 and available on streaming media), I spied a stage. This movie prop rekindled my early intrigue, for barely legible on the side of the coach roof in faint paint was Butterfield.

This prompted a deep dive [web] search. There was in fact a stagecoach express so described: The Butterfield Overland Mail Company. Accordingly, it operated between St. Louis and San Francisco funded by a 4 year U.S. Postal Department contract. Recalling the glimpse of rutted arid San Joaquin Valley tracks gives one pause; it would have been a rough tough dusty ordeal and how far we’ve come…

Full circle. Dad was onto something! Excepting that reproduced historical map creations are not necessarily precision navigation and that evidential proof has been obliterated by agricultural progress the mapped area of trail discovery does happen to highlight the territory of my one time visit. I like to think that Dad was spot on.