Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 13.djvu/370

 362 CLARENCE B. BAGLEY breadth escapes of these wild riders have furnished themes for countless stories during the past 50 years. The "star mail routes" and expresses by stage, on horse- back and on foot across the plains and all over the Pacific Coast would require a separate paper to describe them. Horace Greeley, Albert D. Richardson, Schuyler Colfax, Bret Harte, "Mark Twain," Joaquin Miller and a host of notable writers have perpetuated the memory of notable stage drivers, and the route over which they drove. As soon as the constantly diminishing space between the ends of the Central and Union Pacific railroads made it feasible, stages were run carrying passengers and mails. This was also true between Roseburg and Yreka, over the Siskiyou and Shasta ranges ; from Monti- cello, on the Cowlitz near its mouth, over the Cowlitz Moun- tains and to Olympia, on Puget Sound; from The Dalles to Goldendale, Yakima and Ellensburg; from Wallula to Walla Walla, Waitsburg, Colfax, Spokane and Colville; from Boise City to Florence and the mining towns of Idaho and Montana and to Salt Lake City. Baker City and the whole of Eastern Oregon were for many long years served only by stage. All the little towns of the Willamette Valley nestling near the foot- hills of the Cascades and the Coast ranges got their mail by stage or on horseback, once a week sometimes ; once a month at others. All over this whole region of today the daily mail and the rural mail delivery are accepted as a matter of course, and only a gray-haired man or woman here and there remem- bers the old days and the isolation and privations of pioneer life.