Stage station
A stage station or relay station, also known as a staging post, a posting station, or a stage stop, is a place where an exhausted horse or horses could be replaced by fresh animals. A long journey was much faster with no delay to rest horses.
Stage is the space between the places known as stations or stops — known to Europeans as posts or relays.
Organised long-distance land travel became known as staging or posting. Stagecoaches, post chaises, private vehicles, individual riders and the like followed the already long-established system for messengers, couriers and letter-carriers.
Through metonymy the name stage also came to be used for a stagecoach alone.
Posting and staging
Purpose
Until well into the 19th century an overland traveller anxious to reach a destination as fast as possible depended on animals. Systems of arranging a supply of fresh horses to expedite travel along a particular route had been in use at least as far back as the ancient Romans when they were used by messengers and couriers or bearers of letters. Individually mounted riders are subject to their personal endurance limits. Posting could continue indefinitely with brief stops for fresh horses and crew. In addition to a carriage's obvious advantages on long trips it tended to be the most rapid form of passenger travel.in 1838
in 1889
Stagecoaches
In the 18th century a stagecoach on good roads when regularly provided with fresh horses traveled at an average speed of about five miles per hour and might cover around 60 or 70 miles in a day. Post-horses would be hired from a postmaster at a post house. Sometimes, to be sure of return of the same horses, with a postilion as passenger. Unless a return hire was anticipated a postilion of a spent team was responsible for returning them to the originating post house.Stagecoaches and mail coaches were known in continental Europe as diligences and postcoaches.
Common in England and continental Europe posting declined once railways provided faster transport that was much more comfortable. Posting remained popular in France and other European countries with less developed rail networks.
Origin of the name posting
In a 1967 article in The Carriage Journal, published for the Carriage Association of America, Paul H Downing recounts that the word post is derived from the Latin postis which in turn derives from the word which means to place an upright timber as a convenient place to attach a public notice. Postal and postage follow from this. Medieval couriers were caballari postarus or riders of the posts. The riders mounted fresh horses at each post on their route and then rode on. Post came to be applied to the riders then to the mail they carried and eventually to the whole system. In England regular posts were set up in the 16th century.The riders of the posts carried the government’s letters. The local postmasters delivered the letters as well as providing horses to the royal couriers. They also provided horses to other travellers.
Early routes
United States
Beginning in the 18th century crude wagons began to be used to carry passengers between cities and towns, first within New England in 1744, then between New York and Philadelphia in 1756. Travel time was reduced on this later run from three days to two in 1766 with an improved coach called the Flying Machine. The first mail coaches appeared in the later 18th century carrying passengers and the mails, replacing the earlier post riders on the main roads. Coachmen carried letters, packages and money, often transacting business or delivering messages for their customers. By 1829 Boston was the hub of 77 stagecoach lines; by 1832 there were 106.The Pioneer Stage Company ran four stages in 1864, daily and in each direction, between Sacramento and Virginia City — now the path of US-50 W.
| Stops | distances between stops in miles |
| Sacramento | 0 |
| Folsom | 22 |
| Latrobe | 15 |
| Placerville | 16 |
| Sportsman's Hall | 11 |
| River-Side Station | 10 |
| Webster's | 9.5 |
| Strawberry Valley | 11 |
| Yank's | 11 |
| Lake Bigler | 9 |
| Glenbrook | 9 |
| Carson | 13.5 |
| Virginia City | 16 |
Home or swing station
A station master lived at a home station and travellers would be supplied with meals. A swing station only provided fresh horses.England and Scotland
The first route started in 1610 and ran from Edinburgh to Leith. By the mid 17th century, a basic infrastructure had been put in place. This was followed by a steady proliferation of other routes around the country.By the mid 17th century a coach would depart every Monday and Thursday from London to Liverpool and, during the summer months, take about ten days to make the journey.
By the end of the 17th century, stage-coach routes ran up and down the three main roads in England. The London-York route was advertised in 1698:
Economic purposes
- Stagecoaches carried small parcels like samples and patterns and bundles of bank notes.
- They took over the business of carrying mail and newspapers.
- They took businessmen about their business which could now be conducted in person without agents.
Growth and early competition
During this time improving incomes allowed people to travel, there were more people and there was much more economic activity. Speeds improved from in the 1690s to in the 1830s. Part of this was due to greatly improved roading — see Turnpike trusts — and part to improved vehicles. Better suspension allowed coaches to travel faster and remain safe. Lighter faster and better-bred horses were used as the road surfaces smoothed and heavy mud-slogging could be forgotten. By 1830 some journey times had fallen to as little as 20 per cent of the same route in 1790.
In the 18th and 19th centuries passenger transport was almost exclusively by road though there were coastal passenger vessels and, later, passenger boats on canals. Still later steam vessels and some canal boats could provide stagecoach speeds at much lower prices.