England had its Royal Mail coach lines, which developed from the late 1780s on, while Europe had a similar system of "diligences." When railways began to be built in Europe, the staging companies were reorganized to provide local and regional transport from train stations, or connections between the two ends of an incomplete railway line. In Europe, way-stations were usually "coaching inns," located along the main roads, which often served multiple lines from crossroads. The route was constantly being shifted and improved to shorten the mileage or maximize business. In 1867, between Virginia City, Nevada, and North Platte, Nebraska, there were some 120 stations serving the Overland expresses, but as soon as a printed list was published, old stations were burned or moved, and new ones built. It took 3-4 minutes to switch teams, but the telegraph was used, in this case, to let hostlers at the next station know a coach was on its way. Each station maintained at least 2-3 replacement teams, usually of 6 horses each, handling 1-2 stagecoaches traveling in each direction daily, including Sundays. Express operated the Central Overland staging route across the United States in the 1860s, they had way-stations, called "swing-stations," all along the route at roughly 10-16 mile intervals. When John "Doc" Holliday's Overland Mail and later Wells Fargo & Co. The horn blown by the "messenger," or "guard," who sat with the driver, was used to give the crew at the way-station a "heads-up," so that they could have the new team ready. Horses, after all, are living beings with feelings: if they are driven hard, all day, harnessed to a heavy vehicle, their performance collapses, and they can even die from the stress and strain, which breaks their health.Ī stage line required numerous teams of horses that would be stationed at intervals along a particular route, with paddocks, barns, fodder, and hostlers ready to switch teams whenever a coach came in. Furthermore, to travel a long distance by coach, you really needed to change teams frequently. Private coaches were for sedate, in-town and local travel, and were simply not rugged enough to stand up to the rigors of long, tightly-scheduled journeys that required maintaining maximum speeds over roads that often left much to be desired. This era began with the development of Europe's first good road systems, and ended with the intensification of railway lines in the late 19th century.Įven if you owned your own private coach, chances are you probably would not take it across an entire continent any more than you would go off-roading in Baja with a Porsche. The heyday of travel by coach, however, was the period 1780-1880, when "express" companies developed stage lines to win lucrative government mail contracts. They had existed, in a limited way, in the 17th century, and they did not completely vanish until the early 20th century. Stagecoaches, drawn by horses or mules (primarily), were the most important means of long-distance, commercial, cross-country transportation in the 18th and 19th centuries - at least before the arrival of the railways. This article deals with stagecoaches from an American and European perspective, and a later article will consider other parts of the world, for the stagecoach was not a purely European or American development. The general information, however, applies to other stagecoach networks elsewhere in the world. So I conducted some research regarding stagecoaches and stage lines, especially in the American West.
I needed to know how quickly they could make the overland journey, since traveling by sea and arriving on time was not possible. My characters leave San Francisco on March 22, and must reach New York by April 17. The year is 1867, and the first Transcontinental Railroad spanning the United States is under construction, but not yet finished. I am currently writing a novel in which two of my characters must travel by stagecoach between the advancing railheads of the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads.