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Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Stagecoaches: Forging the Way West


A stagecoach outside the Twin Falls News
office in Twin Falls, Idaho.
Celia Valentine Yancey, the heroine in Jacquie Rogers’s short story “A Flare of the Heart,” is no half-starved, delicate flower of womanhood. A spinster blessed with a built-in bustle, she heads to Idaho to marry a preacher she’s never met. The journey, by stagecoach, isn't exactly a pleasant introduction to life in the west:

She finally had the stagecoach to herself on the last leg, which was a vast improvement over the fourteen passengers crowded inside and on top of the stage that left from the train station in Winnemucca, Nevada. Unfortunately, this coach also carried luggage and several bags of mail, one of which she had to hold on her lap, along with her own valise. Her trunks had been loaded onto a freight wagon and wouldn’t arrive in Silver City for a week.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

The coach lurched, hurtling down the rutted road, and Celia could barely keep herself upright. Gunshots! She dropped in a heap onto the floorboards, praying the driver and messenger fared well.

The coach clattered and rumbled as it lurched about. Bags of mail thudded on her back and mashed her face into the buckle on her valise. She grasped the leg of the center bench, the only thing that was stable, and hung on for dear life. The coach veered side to side, bouncing violently over ruts and washouts.

More gunshots, the horses’ neighs sounding like screams. She gripped the bench leg even tighter as the coach veered around, and heard the loud crack of wood splintering as it tipped, flinging her onto the window, which was now scraping the ground. With another crash just beside her head, boards poked through the coach wall. Piglets squealed and as their box broke, they scrambled into the coach on top of her.

Celia heard more shots, this time much louder and closer. Her heart raced and she felt hot, like she wanted to run, but she was trapped under mail pouches and squealing pigs. They stepped on her head and one of them caught its leg in her bonnet.

Reverend Cheasbro’s mine better be rich. If she lived to see it.

The piglets belong to an incorrigible farmer named Ross Flaherty, who puts an even bigger crimp in Celia’s plans.

A stagecoach in front of the Idaho Hotel in Silver City, Idaho.
Imagine being trapped in an overturned stagecoach with a dozen hungry piglets. As odd as it seems, a shipment of piglets very well might have traveled by stagecoach. Stagecoaches carried not only passengers, but also mail, money, and cargo of all kinds. Drivers often delivered packages much as a modern mail carrier might. They also transacted business for important clients of the stagecoach line.

A few stagecoach facts:

  • The first Concord stagecoach was built in 1827 by the Abbot Downing Company, which improved earlier coach designs by using leather strap braces instead of a spring suspension. The coaches were so sturdy, they usually wore out before they broke down. The company built more than 700 Concord coaches in the twenty years of its existence, selling its products not only to lines in the U.S., but also in Australia, South America, and Africa.

  • In 1827, Boston served as a hub for 77 stagecoach lines. By 1832, the number had grown to 106.

  • The U.S. government authorized the first transcontinental overland mail route in 1857. By federal law, the stagecoaches that ran the route were required to transport supplies, mail, and passengers from the Mississippi River to San Francisco, safely, in twenty-five or fewer days.

  • The Butterfield Overland Express won the first federal contract for transcontinental stagecoach delivery: a six-year, $600,000 job. In 1858, John Butterfield established two starting points: Tipton, Missouri (near St. Louis) and Memphis, Tennessee. The trails converged at Fort Smith, Arkansas, and then proceeded through Arkansas, Texas, and the New Mexico Territory to California. Covering approximately 2,812 miles, the Butterfield Trail was the longest stagecoach line in history. The service ran only until the Civil War began in 1861.

  • Charley Parkhurst may have been the most famous stagecoach driver in history. So tough that bandits would not attack his stages, he became a legend in his own lifetime. But Charley had a secret: He was born a woman. After living as a man for 55 years (from the age of 12), he died of cancer in December 1879. Only when friends laid out his body after his death was his genetic identity discovered.
Concord stage with military guard riding on top, ca. 1869.
(U.S. National Archives and Records Administration)



 Piglets, outlaws, and a farmer who’s much more than he seems beset poor Celia all the way through “A Flare of the Heart.” She gives as good as she gets. Read her story and eight other western historical romances in Hearts and Spurs, available in print and ebook at your favorite online bookstore.






20 comments:

  1. Our family rode in a stagecoach during rodeo week several years ago. Those benches are small and hard. The center bench is decidedly uncomfortable, and none of the benches are wide enough for three modern butts, let alone bustles and petticoats. I was plenty ready to get out when our 15-minute ride was over and can't imagine spending days and days in one, traveling over dusty, bumpy roads in hundred-degree heat. Whew! Excellent article, Tex, and thanks for including Celia. ☺

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    1. Ugh. I've often thought I'd like to travel back in time and experience the Old West (briefly, before returning to modern conveniences), but I think I'd have to stay well away from stagecoach travel. I'm sure it was billed as the height of comfort and convenience for its day, but I'm afraid all that crowding on those hard benches would have introduced folks to my evil twin. (Hard to believe, I know, but I can be even meaner than usual when provoked. ;-) )

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  2. Kathleen, I've often wished for an opportunity to ride a stagecoach and regret that I never got the experience. At least not yet. But I certainly wouldn't want to travel over ten miles. No more than that. Don't think my bony rear could take it. LOL And I certainly wouldn't want to ride in one with fourteen other people and a bunch of piglets. Good heavens.

    Jacquie's story is excellent. LOVE her humor. So many funny moments, too many to count. She have a wonderful gift for storytelling.

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    1. I hope you do get the chance to ride in a stagecoach, Linda. It's an eye-opener to sit in one and imagine how it would feel if you were dressed in 19th century attire, all squished in there with the baggage and mail. Of course, there was no heat or AC so generally you'd either be too hot or too cold. We're so spoiled today! And I'm glad of it, too. Love my Camry. LOL.

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    2. And thanks! I'm glad you got a chuckle or two out of it. :)

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  3. Jacquie's stories usually make me laugh, darn her. :-D This one is full of "Rogersisms" and laugh-out-loud moments. And isn't Ross a hunk? Mmm-mmm-mmm.

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    1. I'm not sure how that happened exactly, Tex, because I didn't start out with that intention. The pigs made me do it.

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    2. I understand pigs can be sneaky that way. ;-)

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  4. The story was so much fun. Stagecoaches are fascinating. There was also a woman driver in the Montana area also I believe. I'll need to find that now. Doris

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    1. Doris, we've got to stop meeting like this. We keep egging each other into to more research! :-D

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    2. But it is the reason for my existence! (At least that's what I tell myself and anyone else who will listen) (Grin)

      Here is the link to Mary's story. http://www.blackcowboys.com/maryfields.htm

      Doris

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    3. Doris, Mary Fields was amazing and I'm glad you brought her up. She was a mail carrier for years. Of course, since I grew up in the PNW, she's no secret to us. I'm glad the rest of the country is finding out about her and the other amazing women who were truly "western" women, not the Victorian variety. We had a lot of 'em. :)

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  5. Kathleen, this is a wonderful article. You always pack so much into your blog posts! Love these pictures too. And of course, Jacquie's story gave me a laugh with her crate of piglets hitching a ride. LOL Thanks for getting this together and posting--You are a lifesaver for me!
    Cheryl

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    1. Ditto--Kathleen always comes up with good stuff. And I like her blurb for my story much better than the one I wrote. Bonus!!!

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    2. Hey -- y'all don't get too carried away with patting me on the head, now. The images and the blurb came from Jacquie. I just filled in around the edges with some historical "stuff" that I needed to offload before my head exploded. :-D Blogs are a safety valve for my social life. If I didn't write a blog every so often to dispense some of this information before it sneaks out in party chat, my reputation as a scintillating conversationalist would be history. ;-)

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  6. Having experienced motion sickness since I was a child - and that in the relative luxury of the family station wagon, I'm sure I would have a hellish time traveling by stagecoach. In one of my WIPs (set aside for now) my heroine makes an indelible first impression on the hero by throwing up.

    Love the excerpt, Jacquie! Great article Tex! You've also answered a question I had about getting pigs.

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    1. Glad to be of service, Ali! We in the Leave No Pig Question Behind movement are always gratified when another soul is brought forth from the darkness. ;-)

      Nice to see you, Crazy Canuck! :-)

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    2. Same here, Alison. To this day, I can't ride in the back seat for very long. But I don't get seasick, so go figure. My guess is that I wouldn't do well at all on a stagecoach, especially if I had to sit on the backward-facing seat.

      Pigs? Dang right we ship pigs. Some of 'em are even in the box.

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  7. I can see a short trip in a stage coach as a fun experience, but I can't imagine how unpleasant it would be to travel for days in one. And then of course, there are those pesky Indian attacks and robbers to contend with. I loved the pictures of all the different stage coaches. A very interesting and entertaining article, Kathleen. I apologize for showing up late.

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    1. We can imagine the jostling over rutted roads and that sort of thing, but a lot of times we forget how hot it was in the winter and how cold it was in the summer. No heaters or AC in those things. And the dust. Can you imagine dust so think you could cut it with a knife, and then some drummer lighting up a cigar? Smoking was frowned upon, but it still happened. So motion sickness, sweating/freezing, no air, all in a cramped up space where everyone's legs are jostling for a place to be. But they traveled like this for decades.

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