Virginia Dale, founded in 1862, became one of the largest stagecoach stations on the Overland Trail, serving stage passengers, westbound emigrants, and nearby ranchers with meals, supplies, information, and social gatherings before trail traffic declined after the transcontinental railroad opened north of there in 1869; the station nevertheless remained a local gathering place, and the building, used as a community center since the 1940s, survives on private land about two miles away as one of the few original Overland Trail stations still intact. The site stood along a route shaped by the 1849 Cherokee Trail, when fourteen California-bound prospectors passed through the area and created a shorter path toward Fort Bridger that later proved useful to U.S. postal officials, who adapted it into the Overland Trail. Congress made that trail the West's official mail route in 1861, and with stations every ten to fifteen miles, a 1,900-mile course, and a South Platte River approach that connected well to Denver, it became a major westward conduit, especially as conflict in the mid-1860s shifted pioneer traffic there from the Oregon Trail. Virginia Dale was also associated with Jack Slade, the Overland Stage Line's division agent there in 1862, whose reputation for violence accompanied his skill in running an efficient stagecoach operation; after he was suspected of robbing sixty thousand dollars from one of his own stages, he was dismissed, sent to Montana, and died there in 1864 at the hands of vigilantes.