Ranch Country photography
by Robert McCune

                                                                                                                                      

Near the historic Oregon Trail a few miles south of the Columbia River and five miles north of the immigrant trail town of Cecil. In this area, rocks are cleared from the fields and used to give added support to fence posts every hundred yards or so.  (Don't forget, all the photos in these Backroads Episodes can be viewed in larger image by clicking on the photo).

                                                                                                                              

An old mercantile store, circa late 1800’s, now converted to a private residence. The community of Cecil is located on the Oregon Trail. A grocery and livestock feed store is still open for business, but in 1993 the town’s one gas pump was “turned off.” 

Soon after being founded, Cecil became an important stagecoach stop. The Cecil post office was established in 1902, and was closed in 1974. On the following page is some Internet information about stage stops, stagecoaches, and buses. Back in the 1950’s, when John (my brother) managed a 3500 acre sheep ranch in the high country between Willits and the coastal town of Fort Bragg, he and his wife (then) lived in an old two-story building that once was a stagecoach stop. At that time, not much had been done in the way of modernizing the building. A Bed & Breakfast now?

(The following info is from the Internet). The term "stage" originally referred to the distance between stations on a route, the coach traveling the entire route in "stages," but through constant misuse of the word, it came to apply to the coach itself. The main vehicle used by the Wells Fargo and Butterfield stage lines was the Concord, pulled by a six-horse team. Concord coaches were built so solidly, it became known that they didn't break down; just wore out.

In the West, stage coaches traveled four to seven m.p.h., with the total daily miles covered being anywhere from 70 to 120. Overland stages traveled continuously for twenty two days, day and night*, through dust or blowing sand, in intense heat or cold, with brief stops at way stations to change teams. Passengers were sometimes required to walk, to relieve the fatigued teams, or when the coach had to be lightened to make it over a stretch of sand, or to help push coaches uphill or extricate them when bogged down in mud or sand. (*With a few exceptions, like at the stage-stop hotel John lived in.  Three or four of the bedrooms upstairs were for guests).

The last American chapter in the use of stagecoaches took place between 1890 and the late 1920s, when the road to Young, Arizona was paved and the stagecoach was replaced with a Ford motorcar. In the end, it was the motor bus, not the train, that caused the final disuse of stagecoaches.  Many "automobile stage companies" were established in the early 20th century. Through the 1940’s, some bus lines still had the word "stage" in their names. END OF INTERNET INFO.