The prospect of a holdup always added to the thrill of staging. Yosemite literature is not replete with road agent episodes, but highwaymen did occasionally appear along the routes to the valley. “Black Bart,” whose fame as a gentleman stage robber was world-wide during the early ’eighties, met his downfall in the Yosemite region on his twenty-eighth robbery.
Black Bart was a very unusual bandit. He took no human lives. In fact, he never fired a weapon in any of his exploits. He carried an unloaded shotgun and bluffed, successfully, twenty-seven times. His forays began in 1877, and his returns were such that he was enabled to reside in San Francisco as a respected and rather dapper citizen. His absence from the city on the occasions of his robberies was accounted for through his story of visiting mines in which he held interests. His desire to be well dressed and his penchant for clean linen proved his undoing. It was a laundry mark on a handkerchief which brought about his capture after his twenty-eighth robbery.
Not all the holdups along Yosemite roads took place in the distant past. D. J. Foley’s Yosemite Tourist for July 10, 1906, carries the following account of a robbery that brings the melodramatic influence of highwaymen into the very end of the period of stage coach days. It was entitled “Five Stages Held Up by the Lone Highwayman of the Chowchilla, An Event Full of Excitement and Interest,” and reads:
This is the story of a plain, ordinary “hold-up” of the Raymond-Wawona-Yosemite stages; and the time was Saturday afternoon at ten minutes of four. The place was about six miles this side of Ahwahnee, upon the side of the Chowchilla Mountain, about a mile and a half this side of where a similar, but less important, event took place last August.
The point, carefully selected by the bold robber was an ideal one. The road here is in the form of the letter S, flattened out, and he selected the upper part of the letter, about all of the other parts being visible.
The first stage was in charge of Will Palmer, one of the new drivers. Puffing and sweating, the team of four were rounding the turn in the road, when Walter Brode, who, with Mrs. F. J. House, occupied the front seat, yelled: “Hold up!” For up the road a hundred or more feet away he saw the fellow jump out from behind some brush and, with his old 44 Winchester up to his shoulder, he was advancing toward them. And in tones, musical and soft but determined, he said:
“Throw out that box!”
The driver was not aware of the presence of the express box, but it was there and Mr. Seth Hart threw it out like a gentleman.
“Get out of that stage,” came the cool, determined command, supplemented with that ugly-looking 44.
And out they got.
Then he requested one of the ladies, Miss Bowen, to “pass the hat around,” which she did under protest.
The other stage was then about due and so he moved down the road a bit to a point where he could keep them well “covered,” and yet not be seen by the approaching stage. In the meantime all their hands were up, for that big “44” was pointed their way.
Around the turn came the second stage with “Josh” Wrenn as driver. No especial importance was attributed to the unusual sight, believing it to be a joke. But the illusion was quickly dispelled when out rang that soft and musical command: “Get out of the stage,” and out they got, the vicious-looking “44” being much in evidence. He lined them up with the others and then ordered a boy of about fifteen to “pass the hat around.” The boy was badly scared, and justly, too, and was about to comply with the request, when up spoke C. E. McStay, a well-known business man of Los Angeles, who very kindly offered to take the boy’s place. To this the robber consented, not suspecting the “job” that was so quickly put up on him. For “job” it was, and one, too, that saved the passengers many dollars and valuables. “I quickly thought of and settled this proposition,” said Mr. McStay. “If that boy passes the hat and searches us, for this is what he was ordered to do, he will not use any discretion, and we will all be heavy losers; whereas, if I can do that honor I shall take but little, unless I have to.” All this and more, too, was thought out by Mr. McStay in less time than it takes to write this, and so he acted at once, and to him is due the credit of the “buncoing” that followed; for this mild-mannered, soft-voiced Lone Highwayman of the Chowchilla was most thoroughly “buncoed” in this change of “hat passers,” and he suspected it even before the first stage was ordered to “move on.” But that’s another story.
And so in the fullness of his nerve—it’s the real California-Los Angeles kind, too, Mr. McStay became the apparent Chief Assistant of the Lone Highwayman of the Chowchilla.
The third stage drove up in due time with the experience of the second stage duplicated. The fourth wagon had a load of ladies, and he did not order them to get out. Tho thus honored it was from this wagon that he secured most of his coin. The passengers of the fifth wagon “lined up” with the others. On this stage, in charge of the driver, Ed Gordon, was a sack, for the Sugar Pine Mills, with over $500 in it. From the zig-zag below they saw the crowd “lined up” and they, suspecting the cause, helped the driver to hide the sack under the cushion of the seat.
During the forty-year period which rightly may be considered as the stagecoach era, a combination of influences were at work. Politics sadly affected the management of the state grant (brought into existence in 1864), and sheep threatened the upper country not under the jurisdiction of the Yosemite commissioners. A national park came into existence which physically encompassed the state park and figuratively engulfed the state management.
Improvements grew apace. New hotels and public camp grounds were created; trails were built; the road system was improved and enlarged; electricity developed; and a climax reached with the construction of a railroad almost to the very gates of the valley. In 1907 the Yosemite Valley Railroad changed the entire aspect of stagecoach days by bringing its coaches to El Portal.
With the advent of this new transportation, the long stage ride was no longer necessary, but great fleets of horsedrawn vehicles were still employed to convey visitors from the railhead to Yosemite Valley. The various stage companies continued to operate, but except for the Big Tree routes, their traffic was greatly reduced. The Yosemite Valley Railroad menaced the business of staging, but a far more ominous threat had already appeared on the scene. Motor-driven vehicles were proving to be a success. The automobile was introduced to Yosemite more than a decade prior to the time when its official entry was permitted by park regulations. The first car to climb the Yosemite grades was a Stanley Steamer, and its driver was A. E. Holmes of San Jose. In a letter to J. V. Lloyd, Mr. Holmes testifies as follows:
This trip was made in the month of July [1900] by way of Madera and Raymond in a Stanley Steamer car that was manufactured just outside of the city of Boston. I was accompanied on this trip by my brother, F. H. Holmes.
At that time Boysen took our photographs in the Valley; one at the foot of Yosemite Falls, and another near Mirror Lake.
The body that is shown in the photograph is not the original body that came with the car, but one that was made just for the trip into the Yosemite.
To what extent noisy automobiles were regarded as a menace may be sensed upon considering the following “Instruction” posted about the park and published with Rules and Regulations during the later years of the stagecoach era:
(4) Bicycles.—The greatest care must be exercised by persons using bicycles. On meeting a team the rider must stop and stand at side of road between the bicycle and the team—the outer side of the road if on a grade or curve. In passing a team from the rear, the rider should learn from the driver if his horses are liable to frighten, in which case the driver should halt, and the rider dismount and walk past, keeping between the bicycle and the team....
(9) Miscellaneous.—Automobiles and motor cycles are not permitted in the park.