OUR ROAD FOR THE FIRST FEW MILES was very fair, coursing through several small prairies, where for the first time I noticed those travelling hotels so commonly seen in the western country. These are large covered wagons, in which the owner and his family, sometimes numbering as high as a dozen, emigrate from place to place, travelling in the daytime, and camping near wood, water, and grass at night.
All along the wildest western roads these hotels could be met in every direction, enlivening the way by their campfires at night…luxuriating on their dried beef, coffee, and perhaps corn from the nearest cornfield. - Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, October 23, 1858
Only known photograph of the Butterfield stage in operation, c. 1859. Courtesy Wells Fargo archives
Raphael Pumpelly, American geologist and scientific explorer who traveled on Butterfield's line as far west as Tucson, reported, "The coach was fitted with three seats, and these were occupied by nine passengers. As the occupants of the front and middle seats faced each other, it was necessary for these six people to interlock their knees; and there being room inside for only ten of the twelve legs, each side of the coach was graced by a foot, now dangling near the wheel, now trying in vain to find a place of support. An unusually heavy mail in the boot, by weighing down the rear, kept those of us who were on the front seat constantly bent forward…The fatigue of uninterrupted traveling by day and night in a crowded coach, and in the most uncomfortable positions, was beginning to tell seriously upon all the passengers, and was producing in me a condition bordering on insanity…"
As for sleeping, most of the wagons are arranged so that the backs of the seats let down and form the length of the vehicle. When the stage is full, passengers must take turns sleeping. Perhaps the jolting will be found disagreeable at first, but a few nights without sleeping will obviate that difficulty, and soon the jolting will be as little of a disturbance as the rocking of a cradle to a sucking babe. For my part, I found no difficulty sleeping over the roughest roads, and I have no doubt that anyone else will learn quite as quickly. A bounce of the wagon, which makes one's head strike the top, bottom, or sides, will be equally disregarded, and 'nature's sweet restorer' found as welcome on the hard bottom of the wagon as in the downy beds of the St. Nicholas. White pants and kid gloves had better be discarded by most passengers. - Waterman L. Ormsby, special correspondent to the New York Herald assigned to ride and write about the entire trip on the first westbound Butterfield Overland Mail Company trip.
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