Located within the
Silver Legacy Hotel & Casino is most likely a recreation of a Wells Fargo stagecoach static display. This stagecoach could be an authentic coach but it is in awfully good condition, inside and out, and there is no plaque or documentation near it that details its history.
On the side of the stagecoach reads:
WELLS FARGO & CO. OVERLAND STAGE
R. KING
After doing some online research I discovered that this stagecoach is called a 'Concord Coach' and the Wells Fargo corporate website highlights this coach and reads:
Built high and wide to handle the rough, rutted roads of a new country, the design of a classic American vehicle was perfected in Concord, New Hampshire. Carriage builder J. Stephens Abbot and master wheelwright Lewis Downing built the famed stagecoaches of Wells Fargo & Co.
The curved frame of the body gave it strength, and perhaps a little extra elbow room. Perfectly formed, fitted, and balanced wheels stood up to decades of drenching mountain storms and parching desert heat. The unique feature of these coaches was the suspension. Instead of steel springs, the coach body rested on leather “thoroughbraces,” made of strips of thick bullhide. This feature spared the horses from jarring and gave the stagecoach a (sometimes) gentle rocking motion, leading Mark Twain to call it, “An imposing cradle on wheels.” (Roughing It, 1870)
Concord Coaches weighed about 2,500 pounds, and cost $1,100 each, including leather and damask cloth interior.
Wells Fargo is fortunate to be able to display original Abbot-Downing Concord Coaches in the Wells Fargo History Museums and Exhibits across the country. Each coach was given a number by the Abbot-Downing factory and carries with it its own story.
There is another story from the same corporate website that highlights the Overland Stage route and reads:
From 1852 to 1918, Wells Fargo rushed customers’ important business by any means - steamship, railroad, and, where the railroads ended, by stagecoach. At first Wells Fargo contracted with independent stageline owners. Then in the great enterprise of building reliable transcontinental transportation, Wells Fargo came to own and operate the largest stagecoach empire in the world.
Since then, Wells Fargo has been forever linked with the six-horse Concord Coach charging across the vast plains and high mountains of the West.
On the Butterfield
In 1857 Wells Fargo joined other express companies to form the Overland Mail Company, establishing regular twice-a-week mail service between St. Louis and San Francisco. (Until the stageline, communications east and west was twice a month by steamship.)
Wells Fargo got the route surveyed and shared in the financing. Nicknamed the “Butterfield Line” after its president, John Butterfield, it ran 2,757 miles through the Southwest via El Paso and Los Angeles and then up through California’s Central Valley to San Francisco.
Night and day the stage rolled on at a pace from 5 to 12 miles an hour, across vast, treeless plains, jagged mountain passes, scorching deserts, and rivers cursed with quicksand. The coached stopped only to change horses or let passengers slug down a cup of coffee with their beef jerky and biscuits. About 25 days later, it clattered into San Francisco!
The Central Route and the Pony Express
In 1861 the Civil War forced overland staging to a central route across the Great Plains, through the Rocky Mountains, into the Great Basin, and over the Sierra. The Pony Express had proven that the nation’s mail could be carried swiftly across this rugged route.
Along this route mail, passengers and Wells Fargo’s express rode the stages of the Pioneer Stage Line from California to Virginia City, Nevada. The Overland Mail Company, by now under Wells Fargo’s control, ran coaches from Virginia City to Salt Lake City, Utah. There, mail and passengers connected with Ben Holladay’s Overland Express running through Denver, Colorado, and eastward to the Mississippi.
The Pony Express
From April 1860 to October 1861, young riders relayed mail across almost 2,000 miles from St. Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento, California in only 10 days. In its final months, the Pony Express became part of the stagelines’ U.S. Mail contracts. The Wells Fargo-run Overland Mail Company operated the Pony from California to Salt Lake City.
Wells Fargo’s Great Overland Mail
In 1866, Wells Fargo bought out Ben Holladay's expanding network and combined it with the Pioneer and the Overland Mail stagelines to create the largest stagecoach empire in the world. Stagecoaches carrying the Wells, Fargo & Co. name rolled from Nebraska to California via Denver and Salt Lake City. From Denver, coaches served the mining towns of the Rockies, and from Salt Lake City, they carried mail and passengers to Montana and Idaho.
Gold brought miners to the mountains of Montana and Idaho, and Wells Fargo's stagecoaches carried it out. W. H. "Shotgun" Taylor supervised the stage operations, and hired drivers who could handle a team of horses around mountain roads with calm grace.
Where the railroads ended
In 1869 at Promontory, Utah, dignitaries hammered in a Golden Spike, which joined the rails of the Transcontinental Railroad — and ended Wells Fargo’s overland stageline.
However, stagecoaches continued rolling wherever the railroads did not. Wells Fargo contracted with independent stageline operators to carry treasure boxes and express, even into the early 20th Century.
Whether in Sierra mountain towns, northern Minnesota villages, Pacific Northwest coastal farms, or west Texas ranches, stagecoaches carried Wells Fargo customers’ business wherever they lived and worked.