Many of the cattle trails ran in north/south directions, bringing cattle from Texas north to Kansas shipping points, or hauling supplies from northern railheads to small towns in the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles. One such supply route, the Southern Stage Line, was developed to serve Southwest Kansas. A stagecoach is so called because it travels in segments or “stages” of 10 to 15 miles.
Established in 1885 by J.C. Plymell and William Leighton, their first order of business was development of a road south of Garden City, KS. With the aid of a surveying company a road was mapped on the township lines, and the first furrows were cut with farm plows. The journey started from Garden City’s Main Street in front of the Buffalo Hotel. The stagecoaches crossed the Arkansas River and travelled south to Fargo Springs on the Cimarron River north of Liberal. The fifty-mile trip returned on the same route, along the township lines of various boomtowns named Springfield, Loco, Santa Fe, and Ivanhoe.
Plymell Station was sometimes referred to as Plymell Ranch. While an important stop on the stage line, the station never grew into a town. The settlement did have a post office for a time, and a school was located in the area around 1885. In 1914, a church was established, and both the school and the church are still located at their original sites, though housed in new buildings. Plymell Station was the first stop out of Garden City, and afforded a change of horses after the hard traveling through the sand hills.
The trip took 12 hours one way, with a ‘nooning’ stop for dinner at the hotels in either Ivanhoe or Santa Fe. In addition to transporting passengers and a limited amount of freight, the line also provided mail service six days a week to towns along the route. The Southern Stage Line was quite proud of their coaches, which were manufactured in Racine, Wisconsin. Newspaper ads touted ‘the elegant mountain wagon which is used extensively in the mountain regions, where comfort and durability are considered’. Though they did not have mountainous terrain to deal with in the route across the rolling flatlands of Western Kansas, the coaches were still a selling point and acclaimed as the finest stage ever received in this area. As one ad proclaimed, “The coaches are easy, the drivers gentlemanly and careful, and the accommodations for both man and beast at the stops along the route are excellent. Prices are reasonable!”
Many of the communities along the route became ghost towns as the railroads made their way west, bypassing all the Southern Stage Line stops, and the line itself finally played out. However, the road those stagecoaches travelled - the road originally furrowed out with farm plows – has survived to become U.S. Highway 83, a major transport highway between Canada and Mexico.
Thanks to the Historical Museums in Finney and Haskell Counties for providing information used in the writing of this story. For High Plains Public Radio, I’m Barb Wood.
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High Plains History is a production of High Plains Public Radio. Special thanks to Lynn Boitano for additional production assistance.
