At this crossing on the Pecos River, the undated Comanche Trail passed from Llano Estacado to Mexico. In 1850, while surveying the Mexican boundary, John R. Bartlett found the crossing marked by skulls of horses, giving rise to the name Horse Head. The Southern Overland Mail route, also called Butterfield, running from St. Louis to San Francisco from 1858 to 1861, crossed here, as did the road west from Fort Concho. The Goodnight-Loving trail, established in 1866 and traveled by tens of thousands of Texas longhorns, reached this point and then turned up the east bank of the Pecos toward Fort Sumner and into Colorado.