The Oregon Trail opened the way west for intrepid settlers and
enterprising miners. Once it was well established and the roads
were cleared and expanded, once towns had grown up along the
route and locations in the Rockies and further west were
settled, it was only natural that a new method of transportation
would take over: stagecoaches. The technology behind
stagecoaches wasn’t new. Carriages were the primary form of mass
transportation in the pre-locomotive age. What made stagecoaches
different from regular carriages were their size and the way
they were supported on the wheel frame. Rather than relying on
springs, which jostled a rider up and down, stagecoaches made
use of thoroughbraces, leather straps that supported the body of
the stagecoach and gave it more of a rocking motion.Stagecoaches
could generally fit nine passengers inside and six outside.
Inside, as you can probably guess, meant that passengers
traveled inside the body of the coach. They would ride on three
benches, two facing forward and th