Please remember to exercise caution when exploring Nevada's Ghost Towns & Mining Camps. Open shafts, drifts going into mountainsides, and old buildings, are all DANGEROUS. Be aware of your surroundings, and let someone know where you are, especially if your plans change.

Dry Creek Station
(Capehorn Overland Stage Station)

DIRECTIONS: From Austin, take U.S. 50 east for 22 miles. Exit left and follow good road for 2.75 miles. Exit left and follow for 3 miles to Dry Creek.

"Dry Creek was a stop on both the Pony Express and the Overland Stage routes. The station was built in the spring of 1860, making it one of the last stations built by the Bolivar Roberts division of the Pony Express. Dry Creek was the scene of constant Indian troubles, the most horrible of which occurred on May 21, 1860. Sir Richard Burton reported the following:

At the time of the fight, there were four men at the station: Silas McCanless, the station-keeper, John Applegate, Ralph M. Lozier, and W. L. Ball, the Pony Express rider. McCanless was living with a squaw and it appears that the Indians were dissatisfied with this fact, and wanted the squaw to return to the tribe. Early in the morning of the fight, the Indians, numbering about fifteen or twenty, who were camped near by, came to the station and demanded of McCanless to give up the squaw. Considerable wrangling and high talk was engaged in, but she was not given up, and McCanless, having given the Indians a generous supply of rations and in a manner pacified them, they went off evidently satisfied. They returned, however, at about seven O'clock, and creeping up to the station, which was built of cottonwood logs, and being newly constructed, had not been "chinked" with logs, and at the first volley, killed Lozier and severely wounded Applegate, he being shot through the fleshy part of the thigh, the ball ranging up and coming out through the pocket in his pants. Leaving Lozier dead in the station, the three men, McCanless, Applegate and Ball, fled from the place for dear life, with the Indians in hot pursuit. Applegate, at the outstart, had handed his revolver to Ball. After running about a quarter of a mile, McCanless' squaw in the meanwhile running between them and the Indians, and endeavoring to keep the latter back, Applegate, who was badly wounded and was fast failing from loss of blood, knew that he could not hold out in the race, and halting he asked Ball for the revolver, and rather than be overtaken by the Indians, who were close upon them, and dreading the torture they would inflict, placed the pistol to his ear and deliberately blew his brains out. McCanless and Ball continued to run for their lives. In order to lighten themselves they fairly stripped to their underclothing, and after a most desperate flight of several miles managed to outstrip the Indians, who gave up the chase. The two men continued on until they reached the station at Robert's Creek, thirty miles distant from Dry Creek.

After that incident, a new stationmaster, named Colonel Totten, was appointed. He remained until the station closed. The completion of the telegraph in 1861 reduced the need for the Pony Express. After the Pony Express folded, Dry Creek served as an Overland Stage stop from 1861 to 1869. After that station closed, Dry Creek reverted to being a ranching operation, which is still active today. There are very few remains of the two stations. A few overgrown stone foundations near the ranch mark the Pony Express station, while a partially standing stone structure is all that remains of the Capehorn Overland Stage station, located six miles to the southwest. A commemorative plate was placed here in 1960 by the Pony Express Centennial Commission. The Damele family lives at Dry Creek and has owned the ranch for almost 100 years."

Return to: Ghost Town & Mining Camp Map