Pinery Station
a.k.a. Butterfield Stage Station
Off U.S. 62/180, Gaudalupe Mountain National Park, TX"Pinery Station has the distinction of being the only ruin of an original company-built, Butterfield station standing on the route in close proximity to a national highway. ... The station named for the surrounding forests of pine and located but a quarter of a mile from Pine Spring, and in a region of good grazing, was one of the most favorably situated stations on the route. The location on the summit of Guadalupe Pass, ... was the highest point on the route as originally laid out. ... All the early expeditions camped here: Lieutenant Bryan on July 22, 1849, Captain March on September 10th of the same year, Commissioner Bartetton on November 10, 1850, and Captain Pope in February 1854.
"Pinery was the fourth of the stone fort stations constructed by the company on the route west from the Head of Concho. According to Ormsby, only the palisade corral had been built at the time of the arrival here of the first west-bound Butterfield Mail in the afternoon of Tuesday, September 28, 1958. The meal provided at the station on this occasion consisted of venison pie and baked beans. The station keeper, Henry Ramstine (who was connected with the El Paso District Surveyor's office in 1855) and his helpers were living in tents at the time. The station was completed in the early part of the following November by Superintendent Glover's men."
"The Pinery continued to be a meal and change station until in August 1859. when the route was changed to run to El Paso by way of Fort Stockton and Fort Davis. For years after its abandonment, however, even as late as 1883-1885, the old station continued to be a retreat for emigrants, freighters, drovers, soldiers, squatters, and renegades."
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1974.
The National Register of Historic Places is the official list of the Nation’s historic places worthy of preservation. Authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America’s historic and archeological resources.