The Hardin tribune-herald. [volume] (Hardin, Mont.) 1925-1973, 1934-02-02
gave up the fight against these modern

gave up the 1lgnt against these modern
machines.
That is why the stage coach is rest
ing on a PEDESTAL of honor today ano
actually seems to be grateful that, from
now on, life is just a long rest, with
hosts of admiring city dudes looking
the old hack over and thrilling
to its romantic and violent history as
told by some old citizen of the sage
brush flats and hills.
At Miles City, n of that famous
Deadwood fleet of stage coaches nov
rests under a protective canopy anC
does its part before interested visitors
to link the West that is gone with the
West of today. Thousands of tourists
have looked at this old coach, but few
there are who know the bloody history
of this line of pioneer carriers.
The Deadwood stage coaches MAIN
tanned the only contact that Dakota
had with the rest of the country until
the railroad came that way in the sos,
The Deadwood coaches carried pas
sengers and rich consignments of
freight and money to and from the
Union Pacific at Cheyenne, Wyo, across
three hundred miles of mountain, des-
ert and prairie country in all kinds of
weather-winter and summer-and at
all kinds of risks.
It was a Deadwood coach which was
trapped into one Of the most desperate
battles during the history OF the early
West. Jim Woods, now an alderman
of Butte, is the man who tells the story
of this atrociously cruel butchery by
heartless bandits.
And Jim Woods, NJ Of the last of
the old-time freighters and stage driv-
ers, knows his West. He was born in
Utah back in the days before the Un-
ion Pacific was completed, "whacked"
bullteams as a boy and as a man learn
ed the devious routes of the desert areas
of Wyoming and the Dakotas better
than a city man knows his own street
corners.
THE Deadwood stage coach, which
was held up at Canyon Springs, a
stage station on the Dakota Wyoming
line, in 1878, was the center of a bat
tie which has no parallel in the his
tory of western stagecoach robberies,'
Jim Woods said.
AT Iced, Dakota-there was only one
Dakota in those days-was located the
famous and rich silver mine known as
the Homestake. Iced is about three
and a half miles from Deadwood.
THE Homestake mine milled its ores
cast its own bullion and sent it by stage
express to the Union Pacific at Chey-
enne. The Deadwood coaches did the
hauling. The treasure coach was COW
cred with sheet iron-al Of it except
the doors. Five armed guards went
with the coach, which hauled countless
thousands of dollars in silver bullion
from the mines to the trains for ship
ment to the government mints.
THE distance from Deadwood tt
Cheyenne is about 300 miles. The
coaches drove night and day. Change
of horses was provided at stage stations
about twenty miles apart along the
route. It was at one Of these stations
that this battle between robbers and
guards occurred. The battle was mark
ed by a terrible ruthlessness on the part
Of the robbers and on the part Of the
guards, by a matchless devotion to duty
and stark courage that became an in
SEPARATION to express messenger
throughout the West.
1T was on a summer day that the
treasure coach, its express box loaded
with silver bullion, came up the hill tc
the Canyon Springs stage station. Three
messengers, armed with shotguns, sal
within the coach. Gail Hill, advance