Lincoln County developed from a frontier region shaped by gold discoveries in the Colorado mountains, which drew large cattle ranching operations to supply meat to miners and stagecoach services to provide transportation. With the coming of the Kansas-Pacific Railroad in 1870, small towns grew around watering stops, and for many years the railroad and ranches supported the region’s economy. President Theodore Roosevelt’s breakfast with cowboys at Hugo in 1903 came to symbolize the close of the cowboy era and the beginning of farming in the region. Changes in homestead laws then brought many farmers, dryland wheat became important, and agriculture remained the financial backbone of Lincoln County. During the Civil War era, travelers reached the county by way of the Smoky Hill Trail, the Leavenworth and Pikes Peak Express Company, the Butterfield Overland Dispatch, and eventually the railroad, while after the war cattle trails carried Texas cowboys and their herds through the county to northern markets. The Smoky Hill Trail served as the primary route for western migration and later became the basis for stage and railroad lines. The Leavenworth and Pikes Peak Stage Station No. 23 stood on the South Fork of the Republican River about 16 miles east and a little north of Hugo, just inside the county line, and Station No. 24 lay between Hugo and Limon. In 1859, gold seekers used this direct route to the Pikes Peak region, but it failed financially and ended on November 23, 1859. The Butterfield Overland Dispatch, organized in 1866 for freight, mail, and travel, followed the south branch of the Smoky Hill Trail along Big Sandy Creek, joined the north branch west of Hugo, and stopped at Willow Springs and Lake. When the Kansas-Pacific Railroad arrived in 1870, stage travel in this area ended. The Texas-Montana Cattle Trail followed Big Sandy Creek to a point about 23 miles southeast of Hugo, then turned northwest to Bovina for water and continued past Walks Camp to Wyoming and Montana, with the last cattle reportedly passing through in 1902.