water at Hueco Tanks, good timber near the mountains, and an easy path through Guadalupe Pass to the Pecos. This road, which became known as the "upper" road, to distinguish itself from the original "lower" road through Fort Davis and up the Rio Grande to El Paso, soon became popular among traders and emigrants, their long trains of wagons and mules passing near the brooding face of El Capitan. This traffic increased in 1858 as the Butterfield Stagecoach began to use the upper road between El Paso and the ford on the Pecos called Pope’s Crossing, after John Pope, the Army officer who had surveyed the crossing two years before. Taking advantage of the water and timber available, the stagecoach line constructed a station at the Pinery, later called Pine Springs, 3 miles southeast of El Capitan. Though this station only lasted a year before the route was moved south to come under the protection of Forts Stockton and Davis, the Pinery station continued to be used by soldiers, freighters, and emigrants long after. During this period, El Capitan also bore witness to the El Paso Salt War, a violent struggle between Mexican-American residents and Anglo businessmen over access to the salt flats extending west from the base of the mountain. Long known to the Apache, the salt flats were first identified by Europeans in 1692 by the expedition of Diego de Vargas. Quickly becoming an important local resource, generations of Mexicans, and later, Mexican-Americans, braved the hot, dangerous, four-day trail from San Elizario on the Rio Grande to the Hueco Mountains and then east towards El Capitan to fill their wagons with the precious salt. This all changed in the late 1840s, when the region began to have a larger Anglo presence. While Mexican law and tradition had held the salt flats as communal property, American tradition considered them unclaimed lands, which could be claimed by any citizen and purchased as private property. By the 1870s, attempts by local businessmen to claim the salt flats were being met with violent opposition by local residents, for whom the free salt was an important adjunct to the regional economy of farming and ranching. The conflict came to a head in December 1877, when Charles Howard, who had attempted to claim the salt flats, and two colleagues were murdered by an angry mob. This quickly led to widespread violence against local Mexican-American