| Cheyenne-Deadwood Stage |
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The stage and transportation routes to the Black Hills in the 1870s and 1880s combined commerce, colorful characters, danger, and a wild nature into a unique facet of the area’s history.
Probably no stage line has attained more notoriety than the Deadwood Stage (more properly, the Cheyenne and Black Hills Stage and Express Line). The line was established in 1876 by F. D. Yates and Co., owned by Captain F. D. "Frank" Yates and W. H. Brown.
By the summer of 1876, several attempts had been made to reach Deadwood from Cheyenne but were turned back due to the danger of Indian attacks. These failed efforts to initiate through service to Deadwood followed the defeat of George Custer and the 7th Cavalry at the Battle of the Little Big Horn in June of that year. On September 25, 1876, Dave Dickey was the first teamster to drive the Cheyenne stage into the lawless mining camp of Deadwood.
The line’s base of operations was Cheyenne, Wyoming Territory, a wild and wide-open commercial town on the main line of the transcontinental Union Pacific Railway. The company’s stages departed Cheyenne from a prominent location directly in front of the Inter-Ocean Hotel.
The first leg of the route to Fort Laramie followed a hazardous path across the high plains and rough country of the southeastern part of the Territory. Stage stops whose names that remain today, like Horse Creek, Bear Springs, Wheatland, Chugwater, Chug Springs, and Eagle's Nest, were vital water and team-change points on the route.
With the opening of the line, a new hotel, the Rustic Hotel, was constructed on the north side of the newly opened Military Bridge at Fort Laramie, Wyoming Territory. The new business competed with Brown's Hotel, a log and sod structure operated by William H. Brown. At first, the Rustic Hotel was regarded as a first class operation with fine linens and dining room. Soon, however, complaints were received from guests about a problem – bedbugs. The problem grew to such a point that the fort's commander had to take matters into his own hands and ordered the hotel to be fumigated. Another difficulty arose; runoff from the hotel's corral polluted the Fort's water supply.
From Ft. Laramie, the stage road proceeded northward though Rawhide Buttes, Hat Creek (north of Lusk), Robbers Roost Station, and into Indian territory (Dakota Territory after the land’s cession in 1877), then on to the Cheyenne River Crossing, through Custer City, and terminated at Deadwood.
The line used both smaller, four-horse coaches and larger 18-passenger coaches pulled by six horses. When arriving in a town, the stage drivers would often put on a show by charging down the main street with their matched team of horses with a flashy red or yellow Concord coach in tow.
With stages carrying Black Hills gold, danger from road agents was always present, indeed, to such an extent that the line used an ironclad coach named the "Monitor" for transporting gold. This coach, specially constructed in Cheyenne, was lined with iron plate and had a "treasure box" bolted to the floor on the inside. Regular passengers were not permitted and extra guards known as "messengers" would be on board. Employed at various times as messengers and teamsters on the Deadwood run were Martha “Calamity Jane” Cannary, and Wyatt Earp. The line was sold to the Gilmer and Salisbury Stage Company in 1878.
The robberies and attacks upon the Deadwood Stage Line later became a centerpiece of William F. Cody's popular Wild West Show of the late 1800s. The coach used was constructed by the Abbott-Downing Company of Concord, New Hampshire, in 1863, and was shipped around Cape Horn on the clipper ship General Grant to the Pioneer Stage Company in San Francisco. Used in Europe twice where Cody billed it as the "Most Famous Vehicle Extant," it is now on display at the Buffalo Bill Museum in Cody, Wyoming.
The Cheyenne to Deadwood stage route operated a mere 11 years. The Fremont, Elkhorn and Missouri Valley Railroad reached into central Wyoming and the Black Hills in 1886, and stage service was discontinued as the last coach driven by George Lathrop (hired by the company in 1879) left Cheyenne on February 19, 1887, from the front of the Inter-Ocean Hotel.
Following Lathrop’s death in 1915, his handwritten memoirs were given to the Lusk Herald, which printed and distributed them to subscribers. A later reprint was sold for fifty cents a copy, with the proceeds used by the Herald to pay for a grave marker. Today, a state rest area, along the old Deadwood Stage Road is dedicated to Lathrop's memory. The last words of the autobiography: "So long, Boys."
Sources:
Ghost Towns of the Black Hills
The Cheyenne to Deadwood Stage
Wyoming Tales and Trails
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