The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-03-26
ONLY THREE STAGE LINES LETT.
Fabulous Profits Made by the Old

 Fabulous Profits Made by the Old
 Stage Coach Companies in the West.
 "The stage coach days are about over in Montana and Idaho," said s. F. shannon at the Tacoma last night. Pacific branch into Lewiston, Idaho, the little stage line into that town will have to give away. There are but three stage lines left in Montana, and it is only matter of time before they will be gone. But those were great days when the great Gilman -Saulisbury lin- es were operating in Montana" and Mr. Shannon lapsed into silence a mo- nent as he thought of the old days when he was auditor of that line, sta tioneG at Helena.
 With the stage coach lines from their infancy to their days of power, and then with the railroad when it was finally completed through to the Pacific and now in other business to look back on those earlier and at least equally happy days, has been MT Shannon's experience. He is intimately acquaint- ed With the heads of the Northern Pa CHIC, and was With that road long be- fore the present management came to the helm He is personal friend of ti'e old time frontiersman, and withal a good business man of the later day.
 Staging now is not what 1t was in the early days" he continued. The trouble now is that whenever a stage line begins to pay, railroad is built and the stages have to move further off into the newer sections of the country. I tcok a ride up through Okanogan County to the British Columbia. line a ! short time ago on the stages in opera ti1n there, and it was one of the worst experiences ever had. The stages are little more than mere wagons-not the easy going six to twelve horse teamed luxurious coaches with accommoda- | tions for any number up to thirty-six | that we had in Montana. The roads are | bad, and one jolts along over the trails expecting every minute that the next will be his last. He arrived at his des- ] tination thoroughly exhausted.
 But in the old days we had stages. 1 Equipment is the word for their furn- ! ishings They were as luxurious as it was possible to make them They rode 1 like rocking chairs. On our lines run ming from Mandan to Missoula, and | from Corinne over in Idaho t. Helena by way of Deer Lodge, the coaches had accommodations for eighteen, twenty | four and thirty-six, and were drawn by | teams of six to twelve horses It was a | matter of get-there with them. They had the mail contracts, and were re- | ceiving S364 for every mile they carried | six hundred pounds of baggage and $50 for each extra hundred pounds. They had a monopoly of that traffic, and that is what caused the star route investigation in 1884. The coaches 1 could carry four thousand pounds of express and the same amount of mail and baggage, besides their passenger lists. They averaged eight and a third miles actual running time. This was over mountains and plains and in all kinds of weather. Our stages used to leave Bozeman in the morning and ar rive in Helena, eighty-eight miles away, in the evening.
 Montana was in it's stage lines sec ond only to California There will never be another country such as those two for stage lines. The roads were all good and hard through all kinds of weather, and the horses could fairly fly. There was money in staging then. The GilmanS Saulsbury Company is said to have made $16O00,00O out of their stage lines, and I guess that is true The mail contracts and the heavy passeng- | CT lists, to say nothing of the express, made the profits count up, even after they had divided with those in charge of the mail contracts, and after the government had forced them to give up a part of their stealings.
 There were several hold-ups by road agents in those days, but as far as | I can remember, and I was connected with the lines during the seventies and early eighties, we never lost any bull lion.
 Montana has only three stage lines left now and those run through rich agricultural districts. Cattle and sheer ranches are abundant, and the lines are doing a good business. In a few years the railroads will become jealous of them. if they are not now, and build through their districts. Then the stage | lines will be only matter of history All lines run out of Livingston, Mont From Billings, Great Falls and Big Sandy on the Great Northern they run into Livington. The first two virtually meet at Utica
 "In Oregon and Washington there are few stage lines but the day fol staging has gone" concluded MT shannon, regretfully.-F the Taco ma Ledger