This Six-in-Hand stagecoach operated by the City Stables in Santa Cruz in 1896 appears far more comfortable than the early 1860s four horse stage described by the Daily Alta's "occasional correspondent" in 1864 - Santa Cruz County Historic Photograph Collection, University of California, Santa Cruz
The following
description of an arduous stage ride through the Santa Cruz Mountains on June
7, 1864 was made by "an Occasional Correspondent" for the Daily Alta
California newspaper.
"By an extra effort I managed to rise early enough to take the eight o’clock train, on Saturday morning, and in no time was lugged down to the thriving village of Santa Clara, which has improved vastly in extent and appearance since my last visit there, ten years ago. Here we leave the train and make our appearance on the stage, before a gaping audience, who probably have never witnessed the extraordinary spectacle of a stage coach (coach, indeed, mud wagon, I should say) leaving a depot; at least I should judge so from their looks. Seventeen, more or less, insides and out, of various sexes, colors and nationalities, we rolled away across the plain, and in an hour or so, struck the mountain and commenced the ascent. For a few miles the road winds around the hill, with a scarcely perceptible grade. On the one side the thick chaparral, and on the other a beautiful stream coursing through the ravine far, far below the road. It made me shudder to look up and then down to the depths below, and think that only a narrow road lay between annihilation from above and destruction from below; a loosened rock, a single misstep of a horse, and where would we be? Winding around the sharp turns at a brisk gait, we came upon a drove of oxen and when, in passing, we shoved one yoke of them to the very edge of the precipice, throwing them down on their knees: as they started down it, I had to shut my eyes and hold my breath for a moment, when to my inexpressible relief, I found they had recovered their footing, and were safe! Suppose they had got the inside track of our leader, and darted them down! Very soon we commence the real ascent. Up, up; around, around, we go, passing through the grandest and most beautiful scenery that the eye ever rested on. Immense redwood trees, growing from the depths below, apparently hundreds of feet, their tops on a level withy the road; fir-trees, arbor vistas, the like of which were never seen, for grace and symmetry; while the sides of the road were lined with wild honeysuckle, columbines, scarlet berries, wild raspberries, blackberries, and strawberry (one we saw.) The prospect was grand and beautiful, but the fat man we left at the dining station, and who had to walk two miles up the hill after the stage, I think "didn’t see it." The view from the summit, which we were some’ at of a time reaching, is grand and sublime beyond all description. The broad blue ocean, the sparkling waters of Monterey Bay, the vast plain of Salinas, with the intervening wilds of mountain and forest, require a more powerful pen than I can ever wield to give one a distant idea, even, of the grandeur, the beauty, the sublimity of the scene! Descending the long hills, after two narrow escapes from upset, occasioned, not by careless driving, but by some defect in the brake, we neared Santa Cruz, and after a toilsome drive over the foothills, we arrived about 5 o’clock."
"One word to the proprietor of the stage line, before we take a final leave of him. Now, sir, if you were four horses, how would you like to be driven thirty-eight miles over a mountain road, with a full load of passengers, with luggage, and a heavy stage, without a single change? Don’t say it was an extra stage; extra or not, you would not like it would you?"
"Saturday night and Sunday morning were passed with a severe headache. A stroll on the beach did not mend maters, and I had to give up and return to bed. The afternoon brought relief [with] …. A vigorous assault on a good dinner … After dinner, a walk and some calls."
Source: “Three Days in Santa Cruz,” Daily Alta California, June 12, 1864.
