Butterfield Overland
Stage Route
By Todd Underwood
In March of 1857, realizing the need for
an overland mail route from the east that serviced the west,
congress passed a Post Office Appropriations Bill. While
nine bids were being considered for this new contract, James
E. Birch began carrying mail and passengers from San Antonio,
Texas to San Diego, California. The first trip was in August
1857 and took a route that required passengers to be transported
on mules over the Oriflamme Mountains. The route became
known as the "Jackass Mail" and lasted only a
short period until Birch drowned when his ship sank off
Cape Hatteras while enroute from Washington D.C.
Robber's
Roost at Virginia Dale, a well known stage station of the
Overland Route from 1862 to the opening of the railroad.
At one time the home of Slade, a notorious character of
the times. Larimer County, Colorado.
Then, on September 15, 1857, one of the
nine bidders, 56 year old John Butterfield of the John Butterfield
Company was awarded the mail contract by congress. The Southern
Postmaster General required the route that John’s company
was to take be similar to the Birch route. This route, which
was generally not accepted, was called the Ox Bow Route
and had to go through El Paso, Texas and Fort Yuma, California.
It added 600 miles over the more northern routes and required
extra relay stations and frontier forts to be built. The
total length of the new route was 2812 miles and had to
be run twice a week. It was also required that the trips
be completed within 25 days.
"The
overland stage road between Ogden and Helena crossing the
Beaver Head River at Point of Rocks ... by means of a plank
bridge." By Jackson, 1871
It took a year for John and his company to
secure sites for stage stations, buy equipment, obtain horses
and mules, and find men to work for him. Bridges had to
be built over rivers and streams, large rocks had to be
removed from trails, wells had to be dug, and passes through
mountains had to be cleared. Finally, on September 16, 1858,
the first trip was launched from Tipton, Missouri. Butterfield’s
son drove the first leg along with a reporter from the New
York Herald named Waterman L. Ormsby. Their trip is recorded
in a book called The Butterfield Overland Mail, ;
published 1942 by the Henry E. Huntington Library
and Art Gallery, San Marino, California.
The cost for one way fare was $200 or $.15
per mile for shorter trips and usually took 22 days as opposed
to the contracted 25. The Concord stagecoaches carrying
the passengers averaged 5-9 miles per hour and were fairly
comfortable by the days standards. Only when the trail was
very rough did the passengers have to switch to a more uncomfortable
but rugged Celerity stagecoach. There were 139 relay stations
and forts, 1800 head of stock, and 250 Concord and Celerity
Overland Stage Coaches used by the 800 men that Butterfield
employed.
Typical
stage of the Concord type used by express companies on the
overland trails. Soldiers guard from atop, ca. 1869.
Butterfields men were rough tough frontiersman
as no other men could handle the hardships that Butterfield
would put them through. He gave them instructions such as
,"drivers and conductors to be armed but to shoot only
when lives of passengers are endangered" and "no
shipments of gold or silver to be carried to cut down on
attacks by highwaymen." Each driver had a 60 mile route
and then a return for a total of 120 miles.
Typical
stage of the Concord type used by express companies on the
overland trails. Soldiers guard from atop, ca. 1869.
Despite the $600,000 per year grant Butterfield
was awarded by congress, he still ran up large debts with
the Wells Fargo company. In March of 1860, John Butterfield
was forced out and Wells Fargo took over the stage route.
When the Civil war was begun, the Ox Bow Route could no
longer be used and the Wells Fargo company had to switch
to the Central Overland Trail instead. By 1866, Wells Fargo
had gained a monopoly over long distance overland stage
coach routes and mail service and used both the original
Butterfield Overland Trail and others. In 1869, the first
transcontinental railroad was finished and the need for
transcontinental passenger and mail travel by stagecoach
was to be no more.
