An early stagecoach stop near Grape Creek helped form a frontier community. In the mid-19th century, stage lines were a primary way to move people, mail, and supplies through the region. John Butterfield, president of the Overland Mail Company, received a federal government contract in 1857 to carry mail twice weekly in both directions between the Mississippi River and the Pacific coast, linking the eastern and western states. Stations several miles apart usually offered a simple shelter, a corral for horses or mules, a meal, and a brief rest for drivers and passengers. During the inaugural run along the Butterfield Trail from St. Louis to San Francisco in the fall of 1858, Waterman Ormsby of the New York Herald arrived at a station on Grape Creek and praised its stream and nearby timber. Henry Roylan oversaw a small contingent living in tents within a corral of upright rough timber staked in the ground. The Butterfield Company later built a more permanent station with a building and palisade fence, and Joel Pennington operated a store with the station. The Grape Creek station remained open until the spring of 1861, when the Butterfield route shifted north out of Texas. By 1861, Mount Nebo School, the forerunner of Grape Creek schools, had opened nearby, and the stop became the beginning of one of Tom Green County’s oldest settlements.