Butterfield Overland Despatch
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Butterfield Overland Despatch was a mail and freight service operating across the Great Plains in the 1860s.
Due to increased travel to Colorado after the discovery of gold there, David A. Butterfield, backed by New York capital, organized a joint-stock express and passenger carrying service between the Missouri River and Denver. In July, 1865, the route via the Smoky Hill River was surveyed and soon thereafter coaches were in operation. Ben Holladay, acting for a competing organization, bought the Butterfield Overland Despatch in March, 1866, when Eastern express companies threatened to take it over and establish a service between the Missouri River and Sacramento, California.
[edit] See also
- Butterfield Overland Mail (an unaffiliated company with similar name)
[edit] References
- Root, Frank. (1901) The Overland Stage to California. Topeka, Kansas: W.Y. Morgan.[1]
