both to avoid fatigue for the stage drivers and to avoid the braking down of the stages. Correspondent Ormsby reported that "I understand they [Overland Mail Company] have bought horses and mules, and a wagon or coach for every thirty miles, of the route, while arrangements have been made at all the stations for changing horses, feeding, &c., so that they can run straight through." From these references it is seen that Butterfield employed 100 stages distributed along the 2,700-mile trail from Tipton, Missouri, to San Francisco, California. Approximately 34 western style J.S. & E.A. Abbot mail stagecoaches were used on the settled and partially settled sections of the trail from Tipton, Missouri, to Fort Smith, Arkansas, and from Los Angeles to San Francisco, California. Stagecoach trails had already been established between these points, with a few Butterfield improvements to the trail. About sixty-six J.S. & E.A. Abbot stage (celerity) wagons, partially designed by John Butterfield, were distributed on the 1,920-mile trail through the frontier from Fort Smith, Arkansas, to Los Angeles, California. Other wagons Other wagons used by Butterfield were water wagons and freight wagons. Water wagons were an important, but expensive, necessity. To straighten out the trail, so they wouldn't have to zigzag from water hole to water hole, water wagons were used to transport water from a source to stage stations that were built on the straightened-out sections. An example was Ewell's Stage Station in the Sulphur Springs Valley of eastern Arizona. At the beginning of Butterfield's service, after leaving Apache Pass, the trail jogged northwest to Dos Cabezas Spring and then southwest to Dragoon Springs Stage Station at the foot of the Dragoon Mountains. In the spring of 1858 a new trail was made from the western entrance of Apache Pass and then along an almost straight line to the north end of the Dragoon Mountains. At approximately the midpoint of this new section a station and cistern were constructed. A water wagon was used to supply the cistern with water from Dos Cabezas Spring, which was now four miles north of the new station. Water wagons were also used to supply unusually long stretches of trail that lacked water sources. A newspaper article tells us of one of these situations: "Chidester also informs us of the means to supply the stations in the Llanos Estecados [in Texas], or Staked Plains, with water. This desert, by