Stage Coaches
In the spring when the snows began to thaw, or after a sudden rain storm, the mud was such that no passenger ever got where he or she was going and remained clean. The mud splattered, and it was not unusual for the passengers to either have to push the coach through or get out and walk so the horses could pull it through.
Yet, this was the most convenient and fastest mode of travel of the day, so there was never a lack of passengers on any stage.
Ed Spangler told the writer he remembers seeing P.B. Clark come in with a six-horse team pulling the coach and, with the horses on a dead run, turn the team and coach around on Main Street and pull up in front of the stage stop. The drivers of these stages were crack teamsters, just at the sports-car racers of today are exceptional drivers.
From Thomas Moore:
The poor people were crowded in the stages along with mail, freight, supplies or anything else there was room for and a profit in hauling. And at that, only well-to-do people could afford to ride the stage, for the cost per person was very high. Any luggage they brought with them was also at a very high rate per pound. For instance, in July of 1869 Bishop Daniel S. Tuttle came to Radersburg and found the stage for Helena had gone. No coach would go the next day (at the time the coach was triweekly) so there was nothing to do but stay over and go in the next day, Saturday, with a livery team. Bishop Tuttle said "there was a Ball at the hotel. I could only get space to lie down in the recess of the office "bed". The livery team for the trip to Helena cost me $38.00 [about a month's wages]".
The competition between the stage companies was keen, so imagine riding as fast as the teams could be coaxed into running in a swaying, bouncing little box, over mountain roads, around sharp curves, through deep water in the bottom of gulches where the road had been dry the day before and now may be deep enough the horses should have to swim and the coach float. In the dry months the dust chocked one terribly.
In cold weather, and Montana winters were cold then, sometimes as much as 40 or 50 degrees below zero, passengers bundled themselves in as many warm clothes as they could possibly get on, then wrapped themselves in blankets and buffalo robes. The drivers usually wore buckskin suites over their wool underwear then heavy clothes and coats on top of that. The teams sometimes floundered in snow drifts so deep it took hours to free them.