30 Coaches

Charles

On April 15, 1868 (a Wednesday if you're keeping track), a crowd gathered at the Abbot-Downing factory  in Concord, New Hampshire. A special steam engine pulled in to lead fifteen flatcars and four boxcars. These cars were loaded with the largest stagecoach order ever—a proud fleet of 30 elegant coaches, bound for Wells, Fargo and Co.'s stagecoach empire, the Great Overland Mail.

Our San Diego museum features one of the 30 coaches from this order. The four box cars at the end of the train, incidentally, carried harnesses for the horses waiting at the destination to pull the stagecoaches. There is a trunk in the San Diego museum made by the same harness-maker who supplied the shipment.

When the Pembroke engine steamed into Omaha, Nebraska  a week later, Wells Fargo agents and teams of horses were there to welcome the shipment.

The stagecoaches went into service right away, carrying packages and passengers across thousands of miles: Nevada to Wyoming, south to Denver's high mountains , north into the Montana and Idaho wilderness .

Stagecoaches had to be suitable for rugged trips like these. Wells Fargo specified details like "extra roomy inside," as well as:

Iron work to be extra stout; [thorough]braces 31/4 wide &; 13/8 thick stout stitched; Bodies made roomy inside &; 3 in. more room between back &; middle seats; candle lamps extra large size.

Skilled Abbot-Downing craftsmen shaped iron, leather, and oak, ash, and elm, to construct the vehicles.

A finished coach weighed 2,223 pounds and cost $2,500 . A deluxe paint job was an extra $20, and fancy lanterns another $7. Coaches seated eighteen people: nine inside and nine more on top, including the driver and shotgun messenger. Upholstered in leather and damask cloth, painted red and yellow and finished with a landscape on each door, the Concord Coach was one of the marvels of American craftsmanship .