I’ve been spending quite a few of my leisure hours lately riding the old stagecoach between Oysterville and Ilwaco.  Not literally, of course.  The stage made its last run along the weather beach in 1889 when the little iron horse took over.  That was well before my time.

Nevertheless, through the magic of theater, I’ve ridden that stage numerous times as a member of Shoalwater Storytellers.  Nyel, the stalwart driver, has seen us safely on many a trip, though I doubt if we can match the 50,000-mile record of real-life driver John Morehead whose words we use in our “Stagecoach to Oysterville” story.

Now that we are passing the torch – or, in this specific instance, turning over the reins – to Dave Immel, we have been renewing our acquaintance with the horses, stagecoach, weather beach and its hazardous conditions.  We’ve had a couple of rehearsals and are scheduled to have a few more.  Like all good actors, Dave gets into his role by learning as much about his character as possible and, for this transition period, we are happily along for the ride.

Yesterday we spent some time looking at old stagecoach pictures.  I have two – one an actual photograph taken circa 1885 and the other a line drawing by Charles Fitzpatrick, done in the 1950s and showing the stage in 1887.  The photograph shows the stage much as Morehead described it:  …a primitive affair, resembling a prairie schooner with both ends closed and an entrance on either side.  At the back was a strongly built ‘boot’ used for the purpose of carrying freight and baggage.

There are five men pictured with the stage and I wondered if they might have been the various drivers, gathered together for this photograph.  They all look slim and fit, dressed in suits and wearing hats – which could well be how the driver dressed while on the job.  Even my grandfather, a generation later, wore a suit while working in the garden.  Granted, the ‘suit’ had long ago been relegated to fourth or fifth best and was likely a mismatch of trousers and coat, but still…

Besides John Morehead, Jack Winchell, Bill Denver, Bill Taylor, Lew Slack, and Charlie Burch drove the stage over the years.  Bill Taylor left the stagecoach business to build the Taylor Hotel in the area that would become Ocean Park.  Charlie Burch went to work for the railroad.  I don’t know about the others, but they could have been available for this picture… Or maybe they were just a group of passengers…

I wondered about the horses, too.  Only two are shown in the photo but Fitzpatrick pictures four in his more fanciful and “cleaned up” version of the stagecoach.  Morehead said that eight horses were used daily.  These were of a bronco type, tough and wiry of about 1,000 pounds weight.  I’m not quite certain how to come up with all eight horses.

I’ve read that four horses were used to get the stage over Davis Hill and out of Oysterville but that two were then taken back to the barn (By whom? Did the driver have an assistant?  Or maybe they headed back by themselves like the Espy horses all did?) and the other two proceeded down the beach.  At Loomis’s house, about at Midway,  a switch was made and two fresh horses went on to Ilwaco.  That only accounts for six.  Perhaps a switch was again made at Ilwaco for the return trip, by which time the two left at the Loomis place would have been rested?

As usual, I wish I could go back in time for a day or so…