In 1858 the Butterfield Overland Mail Company established stations at ten to twenty mile intervals to serve passengers and change horses, and one of those stations stood about a mile and a half east of here on the road from Packwoods to Visalia, where the road to Visalia split off from the Old Stockton-Los Angeles Road. The first stage left the East in September 1858 carrying U.S. mail and passengers from St. Louis to San Francisco, a trip of about twenty-four days and eighteen hours one way. The station was called Packwood Station. The first two men keeping it were brothers Charles and Isaac Putnam, and R. Porter Putnam, no relation, worked there from December 1858 to April 1859. Charles Putnam was given the Tule River Station late in 1859, and in 1864 R. Porter Putnam started the town of Porterville. In 1865, after the county began aligning roads to section lines, the station was moved north to the new Visalia Road, Avenue 280, and the new bridge on Outside Creek. The beginning of the Civil War ended Butterfield's Southern route, and by 1862 the stage lines were locally owned.