Tipton was a historic town in western transportation and in 1858-59 served as the eastern stagecoach terminus of John Butterfield's Butterfield Overland Mail. Under contract to carry mail and passengers between St. Louis and San Francisco over the Southern Route on a twice-a-week, 25-day schedule, Butterfield used Tipton as the stage terminus because the Pacific R. R. (Mo. Pac.) had been completed to that point and could cover the first 160 miles. The first westbound mail and passengers left Tipton on Sept. 16, 1858, and reached San Francisco 24 days later after traveling some 2,700 miles across rivers, deserts, mountains, and hostile Indian territory. At one time Butterfield maintained 1,500 horses and mules, 100 coaches, relay stations about 20 miles apart, and, at its peak, 2,000 employees. Butterfield coaches traveled south from Tipton to Arkansas by way of relay stations and stops in Missouri including Shackelford's, Munhollen's, Burn's, Warsaw, Bailey's, Quincy, Yoast's, Bolivar, J. H. Smith's, Molloy's, Evans', Springfield, Ashmore's, J. I. Smith's, Crouch's, Cassville, and Harbin's. Tipton was laid out by William Tipton Seeley in 1858 shortly before it became the Butterfield Overland Mail terminus. It was replaced as terminus when the railroad reached nearby Syracuse in the summer of 1859, and in 1861 Civil War conditions shifted traffic from the Southern Route to the Central Route. Near Tipton is the State Training School for Negro Girls, opened in 1916.