Butterfield Stage
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The Butterfield Stage, also known as Butterfield Overland Stage and Butterfield Overland Mail, was a stagecoach route in the United States, operating from 1857 to 1861. It was a conduit for the US mail between St. Louis, Missouri and San Francisco, California. Although the Pony Express is often credited with being the first fast mail line across the North American continent from the Missouri River to the Pacific Coast, the Butterfield Stage predated the Pony Express by nearly three years.
Butterfield Stage also known as the Butterfield Overland Mail Company had the government mail contract from September 15, 1857. Originally all of the Overland Stage owners had submitted routes with relay stations and frontier forts that were north of Albuquerque, New Mexico territory; they had no knowledge of what was called the ox bow route. The Ox Bow Route was mandated by the southern Postmaster General.
John Butterfield was paid $600,000 (USD) to get the mail between St. Louis and San Francisco in 25 days. At that time it was the largest land-mail contract ever awarded in the US. It was required by contract to go through El Paso, Texas and through Fort Yuma near present day Yuma, Arizona—the so-called "Oxbow Route". The western fare one way was $200 with most stages arriving 22 days later at its final destination. This route was an extra 600 miles more than what competing companies such as the Wells Fargo Stage would travel, and would eventually be acquired by Wells Fargo itself to cover John Butterfield's business debts to Messrs. Wells and Fargo. It was profitable for a time, however.
A correspondent for the New York Herald, Waterman Ormsby, remarked after his 2,812 mile trek through the western US to San Francisco on a Butterfield Stagecoach thus: "Had I not just come out over the route, I would be perfectly willing to go back, but I now know what Hell is like. I've just had 24 days of it." Ormsby traveled the entire distance of the Butterfield Route.
Employing over 800 at its peak, it used 250 Concord Stagecoaches and 1800 head of stock, horses and mules and 139 relay stations or frontier forts in its heyday. The last Oxbow Route run was made March 21, 1861 at the time of the outbreak of the US Civil War. Under the Confederate States of America, the Butterfield route operated with limited success from 1861 until early 1862 using former Butterfield employees. Wells Fargo continued its stagecoach runs to mining camps in more northern locations until the coming of the US Transcontinental Railroad in 1869.
See also
- Edward Fitzgerald Beale Creator of Beale's Cut, at Newhall Pass.
- Stagecoach
External links
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