The Butterfield Overland Mail company operated from eighteen fifty-eight until eighteen sixty-one. It went out of business because of the Civil War, which began that year.

BOB DOUGHTY: One hundred stagecoaches were built specially for the job. Each one was painted red or dark green. These were the most modern coaches that money could buy. They cost one thousand five hundred dollars each.

They were designed to hold as many as nine passengers and twelve thousand pieces of mail. The seats inside could be folded down to make beds. Passengers either slept on them or on the bags of mail.

The cost would be one hundred fifty dollars to travel from Saint Louis to San Francisco. If a passenger was not going all the way, the cost was about ten cents a kilometer. The passengers had to buy their own food at the stations. The stagecoach would stop for forty minutes, two times a day.

But the Butterfield Overland Mail stagecoach needed to travel as fast as possible. It had to keep moving to reach San Francisco in twenty-five days as required by the government contract.

The company warned passengers about the possible dangers. A poster said: "You will be traveling through Indian country and the safety of your person cannot by vouchsafed by anyone but God."

BARBARA KLEIN: The Butterfield stagecoaches passed through dangerous areas. Some Indians did not want anyone to get too near their settlements.