This is the classic firsthand account by Waterman L. Ormsby, a reporter who in 1858 crossed the western states as the sole through passenger of the Butterfield

This is the story of the antebellum frontier in Texas, from the Red River to El Paso, a raw and primitive country punctuated by chaos, lawlessness, and violence

Today, more than a century and a third after the first Butterfield coaches rolled, we are hard put to imagine how awesome, how fearful the actual passage was.