The Butterfield-Overland Stagecoach Line

Formally it was known as Wells-Fargo, but the stagecoach portion got the nickname "Butterfield Line" because John Butterfield was the president of the operation.  

In 1852, Wells-Fargo began delivering mail out to the American west by steamship and/or overland by railroad to the end of the line.  Then the mail went on by stagecoach.  Until the stageline, communications east and west had been twice a month.  By 1857, there was twice a week delivery.  (And we get upset when a text or email isn't delivered in two seconds!  Spoiled brats, we are!)

In the beginning, Wells-Fargo contracted independent stagelines to carry their stuff:  the Pioneer Stage Line, the Overland Mail Company, Ben Holladay's Overland Express.  Once it was confirmed that this would be a viable method of delivery, "Butterfield" began owning their own coaches or buying up the fore-mentioned companies in order to assure timely deliveries, and built it into the largest stagecoach empire in the world.  Now, Wells Fargo is forever linked with the six-horse Concord Coach racing across the vast plains and high mountains of the West.

The Butterfield Line ran from St. Louis, Missouri to San Francisco.  In 1860, the Pony Express was established to run from St. Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento, delivering mail in just 10 days.  See our post at http://thetravelerstwo.blogspot.com/2012/07/the-pony-express-and-split-rock-wyoming.html.  Eventually Wells-Fargo would operate the Pony Express route from Salt Lake City to Sacramento.

Traveling day and night at a whizzing 5 to 12 miles an hour, the stage only stopped to change horses and let passengers have a meal of coffee and beef jerky - a delicacy of sorts today, a necessity back then.  After 25 days of this (Let's see YOU live a month on coffee and beef jerky!) passengers and mail would finally be delivered to San Francisco.  The roads traveled were not your interstate highways of today.  They were dry, dusty, rough and dangerous.  One had to have a mighty good reason for taking off through the American West!

By 1869 the Transcontinental Railroad was completed and the Wells-Fargo stagecoach endeavor lost out to the never-tiring "iron horse,"  Into the early part of the 1900's, though, they continued stagecoach service in rural parts of the West where railroad tracks didn't go. Of course, Wells-Fargo lives on today as a solid banking institution.