Butterfield Stage Line to Texas.

The Butterfield Overland Stage Route

crescent or hillhill

In 1858 John Butterfield of Utica, N.Y. won a government contract of $600,000 a year for six years to carry mail from St Louis to San Francisco twice a week. Butterfield spent more than a million dollars getting the company started. He ran between 100 and 250 coaches, 1000 horses, 500 mules and had about 800 employees. The large, high quality coaches were manufactured in Concord, New Hampshire, weighed about 2,500 pounds and cost $1,300 at that time.The Butterfield Overland Mail Company initially followed a southern route between St. Louis and San Francisco that skirted the Rocky Mountains and avoided the heavy winter mountain snows by traveling through Texas, southern New Mexico Territory and southern California. The trip, about 2,800 miles, was made in twenty-five days and sometimes less. Lack of water and hostile Indians plagued the route throughout its existence


Though the coaches had the mail as their first priority they also accepted as passengers any hardy souls who were game for the adventure. Passage for the whole route cost $200, and a passenger was allowed twenty-five pounds of baggage, two blankets and a canteen. The coaches traveled at breakneck speed twenty-four hours a day; there were no stops for bed and breakfast--only the hurried intervals at the station houses when they changed horses. Travelers were then offered meals of bread, coffee, cured meat and, on occasion, beans. Mark Twain described the beverage he was offered by one station keeper, who called it slumgullion: "It purported to be tea, but there was too much dish-rag, and sand, and old bacon-rind in it to deceive the intelligent traveler. He had no sugar and no milk--nor even a spoon to stir the ingredients with." (Mark Twain described travel in 1861 on the overland stage in Roughing It. Coaches passed through southeast Arizona twice a week on Sundays and Wednesdays. The route through southeastern Arizona from 1858 to 1861 crossed into what is now Arizona from Mesilla, New Mexico Territory at Stein's Pass, then headed west/southwest to San Simon, through Apache Pass, Ewell Springs, and Dragoon Springs (about twenty miles north of Tombstone). It crossed the San Pedro River just north of the present Benson and then veered slightly north to pass Cienega and head up to Tucson and on to San Francisco via Yuma and Los Angeles.

butterfield station apache pass.ruins of today

The ruins of the Butterfield Station at Apache Pass are part of the Fort Bowie National Historic Site near Willcox. James Tevis, an employee who helped build the Apache Pass station house describes it as follows: "A stone corral was built with portholes in every stall. Inside, on the southwest corner, were built, in L shape, the kitchen and sleeping rooms.

 At the west end, on the inside of the carral, space about ten feet wide was apportioned for grain room and storeroom, and here were kept the firearms and ammunition.The Butterfield Stage terminated operations along the southern route at the outbreak of the Civil War. When Texas seceded from the Union early in 1861, the Overland Mail abandoned the Southwest. Officials in Washington rewrote the mail contract so that stages would travel through Nebraska and Utah. This was a devastating blow to the settlers in the New Mexico Territory, which included all of present-day Arizona. The change was immediately obvious to the Apaches who must have watched from the mountains as the wagons, horses and mules were gathered up in an ever-growing caravan heading for California. The ominous parade included more than 200 horses, wagons, supplies, and twenty-one stagecoaches, empty except for the driver. The Overland Mail was moving out "lock, stock, and barrel

britains

plastic one from britains

Over 150 years ago, Henry Wells and William Fargo founded a company that has become a legendary part of America. This heritage is still very much a part of Wells Fargo’s identity today.In 1852 Henry Wells and William Fargo founded Wells, Fargo & Co. to serve the West.

 The new company offered banking – buying gold, selling paper bank drafts as good as gold – and express – rapid delivery of the gold and anything else valuable. Wells Fargo opened for business in the gold rush port of San Francisco, and soon Wells Fargo’s agents opened offices in the other new cities and mining camps of the West. In the boom and bust economy of the 1850s, Wells Fargo earned a reputation of trust dealing rapidly and responsibly with people’s money. In the 1860s it earned everlasting fame–and its corporate symbol–with the grand adventure of the overland stagecoach line.Wells Fargo sent its business by the fastest means possible: stagecoach, steamship, railroad, pony rider or telegraph. In 1858 Wells Fargo helped start the Overland Mail Company stageline, known as the “Butterfield” after O.M.C. president John Butterfield. In 1860, the O.M.C., now under Wells Fargo’s control, moved north to the central overland route–the route of the famed Pony ExpressIn 1861 the Wells Fargo-run O.M.C. took over operations of the western leg of the Pony. Wells Fargo continued printing stamps for and sending business by the Pony Express. But then the Overland Telegraph was completed, linking east and west with instant messages, and the Pony Express rode into historyIn 1866, Wells Fargo combined all the major western stage lines. Wells Fargo stages rolled over 3,000 miles of territory, from California to Nebraska, and from Colorado into the mining regions of Montana and Idaho. After the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869, Wells Fargo increasingly rode the rails. Expanding along the new steel network, Wells Fargo became the country’s first nationwide express company in 1888 and its “Ocean-to- Ocean” service connected over 2,500 communities in 25 states.Wells Fargo rushes customers’ business from the urban centers of New York and New Jersey, through the rail hub of Chicago and farming regions of the Midwest, to ranching and mining centers in Texas and Arizona, and to lumber mill towns in the Pacific Northwest.By 1910 the Company’s network linked 6,000 locations, including new offices in the Upper Midwest and Great Lakes regions. Wells Fargo agents in towns large and small offered basic financial services like money orders, travelers checks, and transfer of funds by telegraphIt was in these towns that the famed Wells Fargo Wagon delivered goods of all sorts, from a grey macinaw to some grapefruit from TampaBy 1918 Wells Fargo was part of 10,000 communities across the country. That year, however, the federal government took over the nation’s express network as part of its effort in the First World War. Wells Fargo was left with a bank in San Francisco....henry wells