Decatur: The Stagecoach Stop That Changed Its Name

Wise County was organized by the Texas legislature in eighteen fifty-six, and the law called for a county seat to be placed near the center of the county and named Taylorsville, after General Zachary Taylor. But one of the men who laid out the town, Absalom Bishop, was a state legislator who had no love for Taylor's Whig politics. So in January eighteen fifty-eight, he arranged a name change.

The town became Decatur, in honor of the naval hero Stephen Decatur, who died in an eighteen twenty duel. That same year, the Butterfield Overland Mail stagecoaches began rolling through on their twice-weekly runs between Saint Louis and San Francisco. The route put Decatur on the map as a rest stop on one of the most famous mail lines in American history.

The Butterfield coaches ran here from eighteen fifty-eight until the Civil War shut the southern route down in eighteen sixty-one.