The Pinery

The Pinery is the stone-walled remains of an 1858 Butterfield Overland Mail station in Guadalupe Pass, set in the rugged country below the Guadalupe Mountains. It is worth a pause if you want a tangible piece of the park's stagecoach history; expect open ruins and interpretive material, not restored rooms. The standard visit is an easy 0.75-mile paved round trip from Pine Springs Visitor Center.

The paved Pinery Trail leaves from Pine Springs Visitor Center and returns the same way. It is rated easy and wheelchair accessible, and dogs are allowed on leash. Accessible parking, public restrooms, and drinking fountains are at the visitor center.

Sections of stone wall sit among desert plants, with steep mountain ridges rising around the pass. For a photo, keep part of the wall in the foreground and the Guadalupe Mountains behind it; that shows both the ruin and its isolated setting. The masonry is fragile, so stay off the walls.

At 5,534 feet, the Pinery was the highest station on the Butterfield route. It was named for nearby pine forests, and water from Pine Spring supplied the station. The wider mail route linked St. Louis and San Francisco across 2,800 miles, with about 200 way stations; coaches ran twice a week and the full trip could take 25 days.

The station began in 1858 as tents and a pine-post corral. Within two months it had a limestone-and-adobe enclosure, with walls about 30 inches thick and 11 feet high. Three mud-roofed rooms backed onto the walls; a water tank, blacksmith shop, wagon repair shed, and horse corral made this a working stop, not just shelter. Station keeper Henry Ramstein supervised six to eight workers. Travelers were served meals including venison pie and baked beans.

Butterfield coaches used the Pinery for only 11 months, until the route shifted in August 1859 through Forts Stockton and Davis. The station keeper's job ended, but the site continued to shelter emigrants, freighters, soldiers, and drovers. Waterman L. Ormsby, the only through passenger on the first westbound coach, wrote about arriving at the station in September 1858, leaving an eyewitness account of the pass in the route's first months.