CARRYING GOLD

The Mendocino Beacon, Mendocino, CA

Kelley House Museum Column

Mendocino City: Carrying Gold

—Dateline: May, 31, 2012
 

The moon was waning on October 11, 1884, about half-full at the end of a dusty Indian Summer day. It matters, because the Mendocino Beacon reports the Sanderson stage got ambushed at 3 in the morning. The stage had left Cloverdale some six hours earlier, and stopped to change horses in Yorkville and Boonville. Wells Fargo estimates stagecoaches managed between 5 and 12 miles an hour, depending on the terrain. The climb to Yorkville could easily have taken three hours and the descent to Boonville a couple more. Six hours seems fair. According to the Beacon, the coach was three miles out of Boonville when things got out of hand.

Why no one was riding shotgun is hard to say. Generally, when the Express box carried gold and silver, Wells Fargo hired a guard. Perhaps, because a shot-gunner signaled money, they mixed it up sometimes, in hopes of keeping the bandits off-guard. Maybe no one was available that night, or maybe JL Sanderson, who had only opened his Daily Mail & Stage Line in June, didn't know any better.

In any event, the Rev. Drum’s wife, Mary, was riding up top with the driver that night. She and the Reverend, who preached at Mendocino’s Presbyterian Church, had been at a synod in San Francisco. They’d stayed in a fancy hotel, ridden the new fangled cable car, and left San Francisco at 5 in the morning, paying $9.50 each to ferry to Petaluma then ride the train to Cloverdale. Sanderson’s stage was the last leg of a arduous journey.

The coach was filled with locals. Mrs. John Murray had taken her twenty-year old daughter, Susie, to San Francisco, perhaps to buy sundries for her trousseau. The Murrays ran one of the oldest businesses in Mendocino—the pharmacy and general merchandizing store on Main Street. Mrs. Murray had emigrated from County Clare as a child, and still spoke with the lilt of her Irish roots. Her youngest, eight-year-old, Carl, traveled with them and seems to have been high that night on the adrenaline of adventure. Mrs. Klein was aboard too, traveling unaccompanied.

Things got off to a challenging start when the bandits ordered the driver to throw down the Express box. He protested. If he threw the box, his lead horses would bolt, and endanger his passengers who were mostly women and children. Did they really want that on their conscience?

One of the bandits dutifully climbed up top and got the box. The other got Rev. James Drum out of the coach and robbed him of three dollars. Unimpressed, the Reverend mocked the poor fellow. “Should of robbed me on my way to the Synod,” he teased, “before I spent my money.”

The bandits grew increasingly flustered. They didn’t know whether to insist the women disembark. Such a transaction involved physical contact, hands had to help the ladies down. They opted to negotiate through the open stage door, pressing Mrs. Klein to hand over $5, but returning the money when she fretted she needed it to pay for breakfast. They didn’t fare any better with Susie Murray. When they asked her to turn over her riches, she directed them to speak with her mother on the matter.

“Overcome your scruples,” she told her mother. “Give them your purse.”

No fool, Mrs. Murray “bustled about” nervously, trying to find it. “Don’t you have it?” she asked Susie, her voice giving way to that sweet Irish lilt.

“Why no, Mama.” Susie probably sounded flummoxed and afraid. “But do find it and give it to them before they kill us.”

Young Carl, seated near the door, told the Beacon one of the robbers kept losing his bandana. “It kept slipping down his face,” giving Carl a good look. Young Murray would grow up to write for the Beacon. He reported that the bandits started arguing. “They didn’t want to let the women win,” the Beacon explains, “but were a little fainthearted.” Apparently, after considerable discomfort and confusion, the bandits cut their losses and ordered Rev. Drum back onto the stage. They secured all of three dollars from those sharp-witted Mendocino pioneers.

I write fiction, historical fiction, and there’s an advantage to that. As author, I can bend the facts to fit my fancy. I say this, because piecing together Mendocino’s stagecoach history invites speculation. The “facts” are like dots on a big blank page. My job is to draw the lines between them as best I can—without changing history. It’s a delicate balance, a challenge to be sure; but the archives at the Kelley House Museum are rich with resources that make the venture both possible and fascinating. Stop by sometime if you want to research a history mystery, or just browse through fascinating artifacts and photos.

STAGECOACHES IN MENDOCINO CITY

The Mendocino Beacon, Mendocino, CA

Kelley House Museum Column

Mendocino City: The Best Stagecoach Town in California

—Dateline: published April, 26, 2012 by Molly Dwyer

On a damp February day in 1886, an Allman stagecoach made its way from Ukiah to Mendocino. It followed the High Gap route that wound past Orr Springs and the headwaters of Big River. When George Allman drew his team to a halt, he wasn’t that far from the infamous Robber’s Roost, where the likes of Black Bart often hid. But the brake-beam had been giving him trouble and he wanted to inspect it before heading down the steep, narrow grade in front of him.

Allman owned the stage, and made his living hauling passengers, mail, and money from Cloverdale and Ukiah to the bustling metropolis of Mendocino City (as they called it in those days). Mendocino City had a reputation for being the “best stage town” in California. It was home to seven hotels, two general stores, a butcher shop, a livery, a pharmacy, several saloons, two banks, and a number of Chinese washhouses. It was a commercial center, fed by a booming lumber industry. Coaches arrived daily.

Silver passed as legal tender in Mendocino, but the locals preferred gold. Twenty-dollar gold pieces were known as Big River Bits, and paper money, which almost no one would accept, they called shinplaster.

Coyotes wreaked havoc among the sheep herds in the area, and mountain lions and 500-pound brown bears were not uncommon. On occasion, valuable cows even made news in the Mendocino Beacon by falling off ocean-side cliffs.    

The sparsely worded Beacon story about Allman doesn't say if he felt misgivings as he passed the reins to the fellow who sat up top the stage with him that day—one of the five passengers aboard. What it does report, is that the horses “became frightened” and threw Allman to the ground as they bolted down a “steep hill.” The runaway team stopped only after the stage overturned against a bank. Allman was “considerably bruised” in the incident, and two of his passengers “seriously hurt.” 

George Allman was a businessman, heavily invested in his stage company. A risky undertaking: he’d paid somewhere between $1000 and $1500 (about $30,000 in today’s currency) for each of his coaches. Harnesses cost another $100 or more, and it took about 55 horses to run his 12-trip per week operation. He had to keep his animals in hay and corn. He had to pay drivers and a stable crew. The leftovers he spent on advertising.

Like his competitors, Allman depended on his contract with Wells Fargo to say afloat. A good mail contract could buy him four stagecoaches.

Allman’s stagecoach could carry 12 passengers when two rode up top, and the journey was hardly a pleasant one. They faced ceaseless rocking (it was reportedly a bit like being at sea), and sat in close, crowded quarters, subject to bad weather, mud slides, downed trees and other delays. They had to ford rivers and streams, and stop to open dozens of gates.

Profits depended on weather, road conditions, animal health, driver health, accidents, and hold-ups. Drivers needed to be experienced. When they weren’t fighting the weather, the road, or runaway horses, they had to be on the lookout for bandits.

Allman, like any good driver, knew all the latest gossip and the news from San Francisco. He dropped off packages and delivered messages to the homesteads along the way. He had hoped to make it as far as Comptche the day his coach overturned, because there was a blacksmith there who had the tools to fix the brake beam.

The Beacon doesn’t report how long it took—in a day without cell phones, Triple A, or ambulances—for George Allman to get back on the road. In one story, recounting a similar accident a few years later, the mail from Ukiah didn’t arrive until well after 2 am the following day when an “accident befell the stage” only a mile from its destination.

Piecing together Mendocino history is a bit like sewing a patchwork quilt, but for anyone who wants to learn more about the olden days on the coast, the archives at the Kelley House Museum are brimming with fascinating blocks of colorful and quirky detail.