Note: This is the first of two connected posts. The second post can be found here: The Family Spammer vs. The Cursive Queen

“I hated Sundays when I was a kid,” said my Dad (Milt Hanson).

To say I was surprised would undersell my reaction. He was 82-years-old, a devout Lutheran, and read the Bible every day.

Always send an expert to get the mail. What year and model of vehicle is that? No not the car… the tricycle… photo by Helen Hanson

“Why Dad?”

“Because there wasn’t any mail delivery!”

Yup. Growing up as an only child on a ranch from 1928 to 1942, miles from the nearest neighbor, he lived for his letters. He had pen pals. He collected stamps. He craved contact with people outside his isolated world. The wide-open ranch landscape that I loved as a kid was lonely for him.

Like all remnants of the past, the photo of this little girl standing on her tricycle to open the mailbox poses something of a mystery. I don’t know who she is, but that’s my Mom and Dad’s 1950 Chevy Deluxe sedan in the background. It’s Wyoming (notice the vintage lawn): most likely Cody or Cheyenne. What model of tricycle?? Anyone know?

When my grandfather, Billy Hanson was born in 1881, and throughout his life, letters were the main means of communication with anyone who wasn’t an immediate neighbor. He and my grandmother, Betty, never did have a telephone until they moved to town in 1964. Loved ones in far off places, a nephew in the army, business correspondence: some, but not nearly enough of those letters have survived and will show up in the Alaska Billy Blog.

From Stagecoaches to E-mail

Typical stage of the Concord type used by express companies on the overland trails. Soldiers guard from atop, ca. 1869.

Mail delivery by horseback between “posts” (as in “post office”; and in “blog post”?) and by stagecoach had been in place in England for over a hundred years by the time Benjamin Franklin was appointed as postmaster of Philadelphia by the British Crown Post in 1737. He would become the first Postmaster General under the Continental Congress in 1775.

In the 1800’s stage routes brought mail to the cascade of settlers and communities that flooded across western North America. Mail contracts were a crucial source of income for the stage lines, much as today’s mail contracts provide an essential income stream for the small air taxi operators that move people, freight, and mail in small aircraft to the remote communities scattered across Alaska. Without the reliable mail delivery revenues, my guess is that the number of routes would have been limited, and the cost for passengers and freight would have been significantly higher.

In 1858, the Overland Mail Company established twice weekly mail service across the 2800 miles between Missouri and San Francisco. Visit the Legends of America website for more about stagecoach routes and the Pony Express. Transportation and changes in technology would figure prominently in Billy’s ranch life. For now, it’s enough to know that railroad expansion (finally transcontinental in 1869), and the coming of the automobile would eventually replace the stagecoaches.

Although not as significant as the Overland Stage, probably no stage line has attracted more attention than the Deadwood Stage, more properly, the Cheyenne and Blackhills Stage and Express Line (wyomingtalesandtrails.com). The line went through to Deadwood City, infamous for the murder of Wild Bill Hikock and his ‘dead man’s hand’, a poker hand with a pair of black jacks and and pair of black eights.

Where’s the postman? Milt Hanson and Bob Hanson (Bill’s brother) survey the possible old stage route past the OH Bar ranch next to the horse gate.

My father once pointed to the dirt road that led from gate of the ranch to the pastures, the same gate to which I led Grandpa’s horse, Dolly, each morning to turn her out to pasture. “The stage ran through here,” he said. Perhaps. I’m relating a 50-year-old comment here. It crossed Alkali Creek, but the maps I’ve seen seem to show it a mile or two closer to its confluence with the Cheyenne river. The Deadwood stage was long gone by the time that Billy Hanson homesteaded in 1903, having discontinued in 1887. If you like tales of the Wild West, it’s hard to beat the robberies, murders, and wild times of Deadwood and the stage line. For a full account, visit the Wyoming Tales and Trails website.

Note: This is the first of two connected posts. The second post can be found here: The Family Spammer vs. The Cursive Queen