>>>>>>Vallecito, as the name implies, is a little valley; and the old stage station at the spring is known as the Vallecito Station. It was built shortly after 1850 by James R. Lassiter, who established a store and camp ground there to accommodate the early emigrants to California. In 1854 a semi-monthly pony express for carrying military mail between San Diego and Fort Yuma was opened by Warnock and Swycaffer, who continued the service until the Butterfield line was started in 1858. With the Butterfield passenger service, Vallecito became a place of prominence, retaining its prestige during the entire era.
>>>>>>The station is no longer a place of activity and, until its recent rehabilitation, was fast falling before vandals and the elements. No more is it a haven for desert-worn travelers, as it was a hundred years ago when they hailed its sod-and-adobe walls as they would the protection of a castle. The four-or six-mule teams no longer swing the “Overland” bravely up to the portals. It is abandoned, quiet, a dreamy place clothed in garments of mystery. For the old stage station is haunted.
>>>>>>With the coming of the stages, the public felt at last a sure and easy route to California was theirs for the price of a ticket. Compared with previous modes of travel this was true. Advertisements read: “Travel in our luxurious coaches!” But as the way was long-a month or more to the coast-the trusting passengers soon began to realize that, while they were progressing, it was not with grandeur and certainly not with luxury.
>>>>>>Traveling companions became bores of high rank when their jokes and stories were exhausted. After weeks of listening to their recitals of aches and pains, personal histories and opions, one tolerated them from necessity, for there was no escape. The stage became a torture chamber. Body muscles turned into unoiled straps that grated over complaining ribs; while heat, sand, and the odors of horses and perspiration numbed the senses. The stage station became a haven, a brief respite from the miseries of the road.
>>>>>>These station buildings were the scenes of murders, deaths, robberies, and countless events of dramatic interest; and now that they are abandoned they have an atmosphere of deep mystery. I have yet to find a long-deserted building that is not credited with strange happenings. One has a sense of expectancy that prevents whistling or other frivolity as he enters an old house. He feels that unseen and disapproving dwellers observe his every move, and a creaking floor board brings him to rigid halt. An old cupboard door he opens at arm’s length, as though it might reveal an indignant, long-dead owner, demanding why the intrusion.
>>>>>>Vallecito is not free of the ghosts of yesterday; a ghostly occupancy pervades the place even after its rehabilitation. An old, wise desert-man, now living in Julian, told me that no one who knew the story of Vallecito would sleep within its once friendly walls. The place was haunted; guarded by the spirits of those who had met their death there-natural or otherwise.
>>>>>>There is the terrifying specter of the THE WHITE HORSE GHOST OF VALLECITO. There are the ghosts of Buck and Roland, the two Texas emigrants who shot it out to the utter loss of both. There is the phantom stagecoach driver that drives to the door with every detail correct, even to the clatter of horses’ hoofs-and dissolves into thin air. But the ghost who makes the visitor the most uncomfortable, although she is the most harmless and pitiful of apparitions, is that of the White Lady.
>>>>>>Late in the fifties, when the Butterfield line was new, a young girl from somewhere in the East stopped at Vallecito on her way to Sacramento, where she was to meet her lover and be married. He had made a lucky find in the diggings and had sent for her.
>>>>>>She was a rather frail, delicate girl, worn with the hardships of travel, ill from improper food and doubtful water. She was carried from the coach and put to bed in the best accommodations Vallecito afforded. But nature has its limits of abuse, and her fight was a losing one. The journey came to an end in a dark room of the “dobe house in the valley.
>>>>>>When her baggage was examined, a brand-new white dress was found, decorated with lace and sewed with a fine seam. It was to have been her wedding gown. She was dressed in this and buried in the Campo Santo a few feet below the stage station, and they thought they had put her to rest. But almost every night she rises from her lonely grave and in her white dress walks restlessly about the station. She harms no one with her nocturnal promenades. Nevertheless, her presence is disturbing-and even to the most obstinate nonbeliver.
