Butterfield Overland Mail - Operation

Operation

The Butterfield Overland Mail Company held the U.S. Mail contract from September 15, 1857 on a six year contract. On that date stages departed from St. Louis and San Francisco for the first time. The stage from San Francisco arrived in St. Louis 23 days and 4 hours later with the mail and six passengers. The scheduled time between the two points was 25 days.

The Overland Mail made two trips a week over a period of 2-1/2 years. Each Monday and Thursday morning the stagecoach would leave Tipton and San Francisco on their cross continent, carrying passengers, freight and up to 12,000 letters. The western fare one-way was $200, with most stages arriving at their final destination 22 days later. The Butterfield Overland Stage Company had more than 800 people in its employ, had 139 relay stations, 1800 head of stock and 250 Concord Stagecoaches in service at one time.

During the 1860s there were few routes westward and the Overland Stagecoach Route was one of the primary routes and had to be kept open for settlers, miners and businessmen traveling west. Because the Overland Stagecoach route was being harassed by bandits and Indians, Lincoln's War Department responded by assigning a detachment from the 9th Kansas Cavalry, commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel William O. Collins from Fort Laramie in the Wyoming Territory. Collins' detachment guarded the route between Independence, Missouri and Sacramento, California.

With the American Civil War looming, the competing Pony Express was formed in 1860 to deliver mail faster and on a central/northern route away from the volatile southern route. The Pony Express was to succeed in delivering the mail in 10 days. But the Pony Express failed to win the mail contract.

In March 1860, the Overland Stage Company was taken over because of the debt owed to Wells Fargo and as a result John Butterfield was forced out of the business. Butterfield's assets as well as those of the Pony Express were to wind up with the Wells Fargo partners.

A correspondent for the New York Herald, Waterman Ormsby, remarked after his 2,812-mile (4,525 km) trek through the western United States 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 was the only passenger on the first East-West run of the Butterfield Stage who journeyed the entire distance of the mail route. He sent periodic dispatches to the paper describing his journey, including the pickup of passengers outside the Lawrence Livery Stables.

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 Civil War. The Civil War started on April 12, 1861.