Twenty-eight hundred miles overland from St. Louis -- through New Mexico -- to San Francisco. . . filled with the dangers of desert suns, rattlesnakes, stubborn mules, Indians, mountain passes and racing rivers. This is the story of the Butterfield stage route, the first trans-continental United States mail delivery.

More in a moment . . .

We might well have been several nations, instead of one United States, had it not been for a New York City cab driver who became obsessed with the thought of going west in the 1850's. It was John Butterfield's idea to deliver the mail along the treacherous route to San Francisco.

Before Butterfield formed the Overland Mail Company, the only postal and passenger routes from New York to California were sea routes -- via the Isthmus of Panama or around South America's Cape Horn. Butterfield's overland route began at what was called "the end of the rails" in Tipton, Missouri, just west of St. Louis. The route meandered nearly 3,000 miles -- through Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona before entering California near Yuma.

The mail schedule allowed only 25 days to run the route, with stops just long enough to change mule teams. Coaches ran twice a week, both east and west. Postal rates were an expensive ten cents per letter. Passenger fare was $200 each way.

Butterfield's route crossed the southwestern edge of New Mexico, with stage stops at Fort Fillmore, La Mesilla, Picacho, Mimbres Stand, and Stein's Stand. What automobiles cover today in three hours was a two-week stagecoach trip across the bad lands of pioneer New Mexico.

To learn more about the Butterfield Overland stage route, visit the Palace of the Governors history museum in Santa Fe.