Saturday, December 4, 2021

The mountains (Rockies) and stage coaches

 Stage coaches in the old west...here's a great link where I found most of the following photos.

Last week I shared this photo of a stage coach in Ouray CO in 1890, in front of the Beaumont Hotel. It's rather civilized looking isn't it?



Beaumont hotel and spa in more recent shot!


Here a toll was collected at Bear Creek Falls, on the way to Silverton from Ouray CO. Silverton was the site of silver mines and a gold rush in the late 1800s. 



The highway in 2019 still follows the creek's canyons.


The Old Circle Route Stage in Ouray CO, 1923. 



The road in the 1890s.


Driver John T. Cormack with stagecoach outside Nederland, CO in 1914


Hudley Stage line to Cripple Creek. Even when trains could move passengers about through the mountains, some places needed the stage coaches still.  Cripple Creek was a gold rush town.

I'll share more stage coach photos and more about Cripple Creek next Saturday!

19 comments:

  1. Hello,
    Love the views of the mountains! The Beaumont looks like a beautiful hotel. The last sepia photo is my favorite.
    Take care, enjoy your day and weekend!

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  2. ...it's great to see that the Beaumont hotel and spa looks much the same today!

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  3. Great old photos. The wooden bridge looks a little scary to cross.

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    1. I hope those in the stagecoach didn't see the way the bridge was built!

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  4. Wonderful old pictures--and not really so long ago.

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    1. Yes, they were pulling coaches until quite recently.

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  5. Colorado has many delightful old mountain towns. Back in California, in the Northern Sierra range, my Great great grandparents ran a stage station (Cole's Station). Diary accounts depict a very hard life, with many trips away to Sacramento to get supplies. I love these photos you show, thank you.

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    1. Thanks for sharing about your gg grandparents lives. It definitely was a hard life. But I have some grandparents times maybe 4 greats who left their families to join the gold rush to California.

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  6. Your mention of Cripple Creek stirred a memory of this song by Buffy Sainte Marie. Mind you, it took awhile. At first I thought it may have been Bobbie Gentry. Not the same Cripple Creek as yours, of course. https://youtu.be/NvyzbZttFBE

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    1. WOW, that was a great song which I'd never heard, and then the playing of a mouth harp while singing was amazing. I loved Buffy Sainte Marie.

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  7. These are terrific photos to select. For me the Colorado mountains evoke much more about the wild nature of the early west, rather than the barren California/Arizona desert settings used in Hollywood westerns. It's difficult to imagine the effort it took just to build roads like that log bridge into the mountain terrain.

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    1. And there weren't many engineers around to help these guys know how to use the proper amount of struts in the right places...so you would just hope that guy knew enough about weights and forces to keep it upright!!

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  8. I enjoyed seeing your vintage photographs of stagecoaches, though I doubt if I would ever want to sit on one of those precarious roof seats or drive over this treacherous looking mountainous routes. I hope this message gets through to you as sometimes my comments do not appear and get a message that your gmail address blocks my btinternet address. Here’s hoping!

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  9. A fun collection of pictures of old stage coaches, but oh my lord, some of those creeks and gullies and whatnot they had to cross on rather flimsy (by today's standards) setups. Yikes! :)

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  10. Wow for that wooden bridge construction in one of the middle photos... :o

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There is today, more than ever, the need for a compassionate regenerative world civilization.