of
Muscatine County Iowa
1911
| History of Muscatine County Iowa 1911 | |
Source: History of Muscatine County Iowa, Volume I, 1911, pages 409-410
EARLY STAGE COACHES. "We need but to compare the ease and rapidity of a ride upon a railroad car and in the carriages of the day, with a ride in one of the stage coaches or the horseback and wagon rides of the early time. I use the word coach advisedly here, for although some who were not particular used to call the early stage coaches 'mud wagons,' it was settled in a trial before a territorial court, that any vehicle mounted on thorough braces was a coach. You will, some of you, recall the kind of thorough braces used by Frink & Walker. Beers & St. John improved upon the first public conveyances, and we all felt considerably elated over the arrival of some fine new Troy coaches, in which passengers were invited to ride. But when the railroad was built and the cars commenced running, Beers & St. John and Frink & Walker, who succeeded them, and all other stage men commenced going westward, and they have been driven back step by step, just as the Indians have ever since, and there will soon be no abiding place for them." The Enquirer of issue September 7, 1850, published the following: "We learn from the traveling public that Frink & Company are now running a daily line of express coaches from Rock Island to Dixon, seventy miles, in twenty-four hours. The coaches are said to be the best medium for indigestion now patented, and the horses have one excellent peculiarity. Their bodies offer no impediment to the sunshine and afford the traveler the study of the osseous structure of the animal. How long will the public bear the impositions of these monopolies of one means of inland travel? We further learn that a train of cars from Alton into Buffalo on the 20th ult. with one thousand passengers made the trip of three hundred and twenty-five miles in twenty-two hours. Why travelers will bear these gross impositions is a mystery. These two lines are links in the route of all our eastern travel and a remedy of the evils should be sought by those interested. A little opposition is sometimes helpful."
From the above one can readily conjecture that the country was preparing itself for better things in the way of transportation of its goods and chattels and its people. There is no doubt but what the settlers were in the proper mood for a change and it was not long before it came. Of course at that time Muscatine had a great line of packets and its long line of stage coaches that when ready to start on their various journeys would fill the avenue from Front to Third streets; and there were no stage drivers in Knoxville, one of the termini of a stage route, or anywhere else, who could do such artistic swearing as the Muscatine "whips." The great events in those days were the arrival of the packets, which drew the whole town to the river front, and the coming of the big stage coaches, which brought everybody to the old American House. In those days all Muscatine was curious to see everybody who was to make a home in her midst. The stage coach was in evidence for some time after the advent of the railroad, for in 1858 McChesney's line of coaches was still in operation, connecting daily "with the cars at Ononwa (now Lettsville) for Grand View, Wapello, Dodgeville, and at Columbus City to Washington, Brighton, Sigourney and Oskaloosa."
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