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Photographer: Barry Swackhamer
Taken: May 22, 2014
Caption: Rough Travels Plaque
Additional Description: Stagecoach travel was uncomfortable and slow. The average speed of a stage coach on a relatively smooth dirt road was 5-7 miles per hour. Speeds were much slower on roads with deep ruts, standing mud, and other road hazards. Men were advised to were clothes suited for work, because if the stagecoach got stuck in the mud or snow, they were expected to help push it out. There was little protection from the elements in the coach and, depending on the season and the weather, heat, cold, dust and insects in the cabin were to be expected. To keep warm in the winter, passengers wore buffalo coats or covered themselves with buffalo hides provided by the stage line.

In 1866, U.S. Congressman Demas Barnes spoke about his cross-country stagecoach journey: ”Coaches will be overloaded, it will rain, the dust will drive, the baggage will be left to the storm, passengers will get sick … children will cry, passengers will get angry, drivers will swear, the sensitive will shrink, rations will give out … and the dirt almost always unendurable.”

Captions, clockwise from the top-left; Buffalo coat; Green River, southwest Wyoming; Some routes required armed guards to discourage bandits; Rough roads and overcrowded coaches took its toll on travelers.
Submitted: September 1, 2014, by Barry Swackhamer of Brentwood, California.
Database Locator Identification Number: p284455
File Size: 3.265 Megabytes

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