A Bison book. Bibliography: p. [367]-371.

More thrilling than any Wild West film, this is the true story of the drivers and operators of the Cheyenne and Black Hills stage coach company. During one of the most important periods of the history of Wyoming, Montana, and the Dakotas, brave men and intrepid passengers faced harsh weather, bad roads, Indians, and a seemingly endless parade of desperate "road agents" (robbers).Masterfully researched and written by Wyoming's State Historian in 1949, no fan of the Old West will want to miss this classic work. It is full of humorous and painful stories, as well as a look into a world long gone.Famous western characters like Buffalo Bill, Wild Bill Hickok, Judge William L. Kuykendall, Lonesome Charley Reynolds, General George Crook, and George Armstrong Custer were all part of the time and place.Every memoir of the American West provides us with another view of the westward migration that changed the country forever.

1876 was a momentous year during the Black Hills Gold Rush. The author's research on the famous Cheyenne-Black Hills Stage and Express Route, led her to numerous maps and descriptions about the trail, with dashes and dots, and a few geographical features. To better understand these stage stations and her ancestor's role as shotgun messengers, the author began to document what can still be seen today. Using the locations in this book, you can see where many of the stations used to be situated, including old horse corrals, telegraph wire roads, relics of possible stations, and numerous trail ruts made by heavy freight across the prairie. Campbell relates, "While it's been difficult to know exactly where the wheels on the famous coach rolled all of the time, it is possible to see many aspects of the Deadwood Stage route using satellite imagery based on early maps. All the credit goes to those dedicated individuals who preserved the trail years ago before there were computers. Thankfully, we no longer need to use a surveyor's measuring wheel and give dimensions in chains to study the old trail."

In the 1870s, Deadwood was a thriving—and largely lawless—boomtown. And as any fan of western history and films knows, stagecoach robberies were a regular feature of life in this fabled region of Dakota Territory. Now, for the first time, Robert K. DeArment tells the story of the "good guys and bad guys" behind these violent crimes: the road agents who wreaked havoc on Deadwood's roadways and the shotgun messengers who battled to protect stagecoach passengers and their valuable cargo. DeArment shows in dramatic detail how for two years gangs of robbers ruled the road, perpetrating holdups and killings, until lawmen and stage-company and railroad agents finally brought an end to the mayhem. The characters populating this violent tale include such legendary figures as Wild Bill Hickok and the famous railroad detective James L. "Whispering" Smith, a formidable opponent of bandits. We also get to know the men who operated the stages, the lawmen and company men who ran and defended the coaches, and the outlaws who fought against them. DeArment tells where these men came from and what became of them after the outlawry ended. He ends his account in the 1880s with Buffalo Bill's Wild West show and its spectacular rendition of a shotgun robbery, featuring an actual Deadwood stagecoach. After nearly a century and a half, the Deadwood stage continues to command our attention.

Welcome to the Black Hills of the 1880s, where you will meet a host of rowdies ranging from madams to stagecoach robbers, from tall-tale tellers to killers.