Hollywood rarely depicts reality, especially in Westerns. The glamourous life of the cowboy as portrayed on the big screen differs markedly from the monotony, long hours, long pay, and hard work that was the life of the cowhand.
One icon of almost every western is the stagecoach rolling majestically across the prairie. Aside from holdups by outlaws which seem to be taking place at every bend in the road in Hollywood’s telling of the coaches of the Old West, everything else was routine.
If there was adventure in the 19th and early 20th century West, it came in simply surviving a ride on a stagecoach.
An example of what early travelers faced came in a story in the Wyoming Daily Boomerang which later became the Laramie Boomerang.
Wyoming Daily Boomerang -April 6, 1886, “N.B. Apple, a well-known commercial traveler from Omaha, came in this morning having just made a trip to Lander, and other points in upper Wyoming. He took the stage at Rawlins, it was an open vehicle, with a severe storm prevailing part of the time. The accommodations along the route, if they could be called such, were detestable. It was impossible to get anything fit to eat at the stage stations, and the horses fared worse than the men. The men working at the stations all seemed to be drunk. ‘I’ve made a good many trips that I thought were tough,’ said Mr. Apple, ‘but this one took the cake,” and he continued by saying that if the proprietors of the line were to get up there they would be tarred and feathered by the indignant people along the line. The superintendent durst not go up himself. The press from Salt Lake east is raking the company over the coals, but whether it will do any good or not remains to be seen.”
For every stagecoach, there were at least a dozen freight wagons hauling loads on the same trails. The teamsters of their day get very little coverage on the big screen.
These men were the truck drivers of the era. Without them, the little towns that flourished then disappeared, and the big ones that took root and grew to the present would never have made it at all.
The golden age of the stagecoach and the freight wagon came from 1870 to 1906 in Wyoming, with a smaller extension into the early 1920s.
Contrary to popular opinion, you didn’t ride the stagecoach from coast to coast. In 1895 the route from Rawlins to Ft. Washakie was considered the longest stagecoach run in the world. That trip is about 120 miles today via modern asphalt highways. It was closer to 180 miles with horses, men, and wagons making the trip.
Freight and stage companies began with earnest in what would become Fremont County with the arrival of the Union Pacific Railroad in Rawlins.
The “Golden Spike” was driven at Promontory Point, Utah in 1869, but it took another full year for the tracks to be train-worthy.
When they were, freighters were waiting to deliver supplies to the gold fields at South Pass, and the sheep and cattle ranches springing up on the Sweetwater as far as Ft. Brown (Ft. Washakie.)
The same was true from Casper to Lander and north through Lost Cabin up the Nowood to the Big Horn Basin. The Chicago Northwestern made it to Lander in 1906, ending many freight and passenger routes, but until it did, the horse, coach, and wagon were the only way there from here.
The Rawlins to Casper route followed some familiar landmarks to modern-day travelers only with different names.
A supply route traveled from Bryan, and later Green River City on the Union Pacific over South Pass to Atlantic City, but it was dedicated to supplying the mines. The South Pass route was the only way to get mail into territorial Fremont County until 1879 when mail began to arrive via the Sweetwater route. The South Pass delivery ended in 1885.
The stage stations north from the Rawlins railhead were roughly every 20 miles and in order north from Rawlins were Bell Springs, Bull Springs, Lost Soldier, Crooks Gap, Rongis, Myersville, Hailey, Derby, Dallas, and finally Lander.
The first four were dependent on either springs or the Green Mountain Stream for water. Water was the most important asset a stage station could have. Once the route reached Rongis, the Sweetwater River provided water until it reached Hailey where Beaver Creek took over.
When the route found Derby, Dallas and finally Lander, it was the Popo Agie.
There weren’t canals and rivers out west as the Great Lakes region did, but water was still the driving factor in any expansion.’
Volumes have been written on this stage route, and many doctoral dissertations addressed the issue of supply in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but here we’ll concentrate on the stage stations in Fremont County, or what would become Fremont County permanently once statehood arrive in 1890.
The stations from Lost Soldier to Dallas were all in Fremont County. Amazingly many of the buildings that made up these communities still exist on private property.
The United States Postal Service began looking for contractors to deliver mail from the Union Pacific north across Wyoming Territory in October 1873.
Bids for annual contracts were offered with a wide range of prices for the South Pass route. From a low of $3,900 to a high of $16,000 there was a lot of disparity in the bids. An earlier contractor was paid $9,666 for the route.
As is the case with government bidding, the lowest offer won, and J.W. Ellis was awarded the contract at $3,900. He went bankrupt trying to fulfill the contract.
The Post Office began looking for a less expensive way of getting mail to Ft. Brown from the railroad in 1878. It didn’t make much sense to “overshoot” a route northwest by 123 miles on the Union Pacific to Green River, with a longer overland route when Rawlins cost less in railroad fees, had a lesser incline to climb, more watering spots, and had better weather.
On February 1878, The Carbon County News reported that the county commissioners were investigating a route to Ft. Brown including surveys to determine how many bridges would have to be constructed. As the newspaper reported, the process included “other work necessary to make a good practicable road.“
While the Carbon County commissioners welcomed the increased business from freighting companies and travelers, they didn’t want to pay the cost. They felt since it was a postal road, it should be funded by the federal government.
In March 1878 a detachment of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers arrived in Rawlins and began surveying the route. The Army engineer in charge, Second Lieutenant Foster, of the 5th Cavalry reported the proposed road was 158 miles long. The original route followed the present-day highway through Muddy Gap and then north and northwest to Camp Brown. Before any construction began, the route was shortened substantially, cutting through Green Mountain at Crooks Gap.
With the survey complete, the Carbon County commissioners asked for bids and August Lankin won the contract at $550.
The dollar is worth substantially less today than it was in 1878, by a factor of 31 to 1. Lankin’s $550 bid would be worth only $17,050 today, you can imagine the lack of effort he put into grooming the trail.
At the end of 1878, the target changed when Camp Brown was renamed Fort Washakie in honor of the great chief.
Lankin had ample help from the Army in building the road, and it was finished enough by the summer of 1879 to allow reasonable travel.
The first wagons rolled north in July.
Cheyenne Daily Sun – July 20, 1879 – “George P. Brown, the contractor for carrying government freight from Rawlins to Fort Washakie and old Camp Brown went north on Wednesday morning to direct the first outfit over the new road. Freight carried here by the UPRR will now be arriving in Rawlins and forwarded over the new route continually…On Monday last, 40,000 pounds were started over the new Camp Brown (Ft. Washakie) road.”
A modern semi-tractor trailer can haul almost twice as much as that first set of wagons, but 20 tons, when pulled over rough dirt roads by horses was a challenge.
Times were changing for the Northern Arapaho in 1877. After the Battle of the Little Big Horn, the Arapaho were split into Southern and Northern bands, with the Southern Arapaho sent to Oklahoma and their relatives to the Wind River Reservation of the Eastern Shoshones.
The Arapaho and Shoshone were traditional enemies dating back thousands of years, but they were placed on the same reservation.
In an attempt to cut costs, and to move the Native Americans to abandon their traditional lifestyle in favor of a mainstream American approach, an unknown federal official came up with a plan to have Shoshone and Arapaho men begin working as teamsters.
The world’s greatest horsemen were the tribes of the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains. The Shoshone and Arapaho were among the best riders to ever mount a horse, but riding, and guiding a team are vastly different skills.
Stories from elders relate how challenging it was at first to adapt to guiding horses with reins as they pulled wagons, versus riding bareback.
Carbon County Journal – June 25, 1881 – “Mr. McCabe from Fort Washakie came in Monday, accompanied by about sixty Shoshone Indians, and thirty freight teams. The Indians at the Washakie agency now do their own freighting, using pony teams hitched four to a wagon. They average from eighteen hundred to two thousand pounds of freight on their wagons. The freight they are now taking out consists of provisions, clothing, hardware, and iron. The Arapahoe freight teams are expected to arrive here in about ten days, they having already made one trip this season.”
It comes as no surprise that the Native American freighters were paid less than their White counterparts, about half as much. Even as Native Americans were forced off their traditional lands and placed on reservations, there were still good men who saw the unfairness of this process and spoke out against it.
Carbon County Journal – August 11, 1884 – “To Agent Martin’s credit, that seeing the immense discrimination of pay between hauling between Indian and White freighters, the Indians getting but $1.12 ½ per 100 pounds, while the white freighters get more than double that, he wrote to Washington a strong, pointed, and argumentative appeal.”
Freight wagons brought supplies and new inventions that were springing up across the world. The coach, rugged as it was, brought speculators and government agents to the reservation.
The opening of trade always goes both ways, and the Native craftsmen and women of the Shoshone and Arapaho found new markets for deer and elk hides, buffalo robes, beaded moccasins, and jewelry in eastern markets.
The end of the frontier was a common theme at the end of the 19th century. While the US Government planned to irradicate Native traditions, the people of Europe, the eastern United States, and across the Pacific in Japan were fascinated by what they saw as a vanishing culture.
The adage, “Kill the Indian, save the man” was too true to ignore as a way of life was erased by force.
The mix of modern technology clashing with the “old ways” was never more evident than in this narrative of a wounded man returning home from Rawlins after being shot. He took the White man’s wagon as far as Rongis, before returning to a more familiar means of transportation as he headed home.
The pain of bouncing along the ground on a travois pulled behind a horse on uneven, rocky ground must have been intense.
Carbon County Journal – September 6, 1884 – “The Indian Togorah Mushnra, who was shot by Deputy Sheriff Finley, in Rawlins was met on the Sweetwater by his friend, transferred from the wagon to travail (travois) poles and arrived at the agency August -7, at night. He is now under the care of Dr. William A. Olmstead, agency physician, who hopes to pull him through, although everything looks the other way. The inflammation was intense, swollen from knee to hip joint, but he is in good health and spirits.”
By 1900, the travois was just a piece of nostalgia, replaced by the buggy, wagon, and coach, and soon by the automobile.
The Rawlins to Ft. Washakie stage and freight route met a similar fate when the Chicago Northwestern reached Lander.
The people of the Wind River Reservation had a much shorter route to buy or sell goods once the locomotives began running to Lander.
The Arapaho settled on the eastern edge of the reservation and had their choice of stations in Riverton, Arapaho, or Hudson. They sometimes drove cattle and sheep to Shoshoni.
The Shoshoni used the Lander terminal most often but took livestock to Hudson as well.
The railroad hailed the end of an era for Native Americans, but it ended a brief transportation empire in the Wind River Country as well.
Stagecoaches remained active until the mid-1920s to Dubois and beyond to Yellowstone National Park, but they too were eventually replaced, this time by multi-seat touring buses.