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Butterfield Overland Mail Butterfield Overland Mail (officially the Overland Mail Company)Waterman L. Ormsby, edited by Lyle H. Wright and Josephine M. Bynum, "The Butterfield Overland Mail", The Huntington Library, San Marino, California, 1991. was a stagecoach service i ...

, an unaffiliated company with a similar name

Butterfield Overland Despatch route - colorized - Roy D

The Butterfield Overland Despatch was a mail and freight service operating across the

Great Plains The Great Plains (french: Grandes Plaines), sometimes simply "the Plains", is a broad expanse of flatland in North America. It is located west of the Mississippi River and east of the Rocky Mountains, much of it covered in prairie, steppe, an ...

of America in the 1860s. Due to increased travel to

Colorado Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of t ...

after the discovery of

gold Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au (from la, aurum) and atomic number 79. This makes it one of the higher atomic number elements that occur naturally. It is a bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile met ...

in 1858. David A. Butterfield, backed by New York capital, organized a joint-stock express and passenger carrying service between the Missouri River and

Denver Denver () is a consolidated city and county, the capital, and most populous city of the U.S. state of Colorado. Its population was 715,522 at the 2020 census, a 19.22% increase since 2010. It is the 19th-most populous city in the Unit ...

. In July 1865, the route via the

Smoky Hill River The Smoky Hill River is a river in the central Great Plains of North America, running through Colorado and Kansas.Smoky Hill River. (2009). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved July 22, 2009, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online: http://www.br ...

was surveyed and soon thereafter coaches were in operation.

Ben Holladay Benjamin Holladay (October 14, 1819 – July 8, 1887) was an American transportation businessman responsible for creating the Overland Stage to California during the height of the 1849 California Gold Rush. Ben Holladay created a stagecoach ...

, acting for a competing organization, bought the Butterfield Overland Despatch in March 1866, when Eastern express companies threatened to take it over and establish a service between the Missouri River and

Sacramento, California ) , image_map = Sacramento County California Incorporated and Unincorporated areas Sacramento Highlighted.svg , mapsize = 250x200px , map_caption = Location within Sacramento C ...

References

*Root, Frank. (1901) ''The Overland Stage to California''. Topeka, Kansas: W.Y. Morga

American frontier Trails and roads in the American Old West History of Kansas

See also

References