The Overland Stage to California

Item Details

Topeka, Ks., Published by the Authors, 1901, Hardcover

First Edition, Very Good

The book provides a detailed and vivid account of the Overland Stage Company and the Pony Express, offering firsthand anecdotes, frontier sketches, and biographical notices of key figures involved in stage and mail transport across the plains during the mid-19th century. Of particular value for its early documentation of the Butterfield Overland Despatch and Ben Holladay's stage empire, The Overland Stage to California stands as a cornerstone work in the historiography of Western transportation and the opening of the American frontier.

A.S. Hughes appears in this book as one of the pioneers in the service of the overland stage line. A handwritten inscription on the title page reads "G. Hughes from A.S. Hughes Xmas 1901"  A gift to Gerald Hughes from his brother A. S. Hughes who, interestingly has blacked out a section of the index about himself that reads "is routed out by his father and sent back East to college; later returns to the West and on the plains" 

Hardcover. Original deluxe binding. Half tan leather over marbled boards with gilt to spine. Patterned end papers. Octavo. Frontis. [xvii] 630pp with numerous illustrations and folding map titled "Map Showing Lines of the Great Overland Stage Route, The Santa Fe Trail, Butterfield Overland Despatch, Mormon Route of 1847, and the Leavenworth & Pike's Peak Express" compiled and drawn for "The Overland Stage to California," by Roy D. Marsh. Topeka, Kan. 1901.

"The original is very rare and is considered the standard history of the early stage lines. It has some information on stagecoach robberies, Wild Bill Hickock and Joseph Slade." Six Guns 1897. Howes R434, Streeter 3117.