All aboard! Stagecoach now departing Central City
Wells Fargo Coach #44 part of Russell’s historic collection
Used to be folks boarded a stagecoach to travel to Central City, but last Tuesday it was the stagecoach that did the boarding – onto an 18-wheeler bound for South Dakota. The old Wells Fargo stagecoach had been in storage for years, part of the late William C. Russell, Jr’s collection of all things historic. After Russell’s death last year, the stagecoach became part of the estate. Tom Robb and Scott Albertson who are now handling that estate, contacted the Wells Fargo company to see if they were interested in acquiring the old coach. They were. Doug Murphey works for Wells Fargo in Historic Services. He flew in from Los Angeles to oversee the coach transfer. He was joined by Mark Griffin, Wells Fargo Private Client Services who came up from Greenwood Village. They were accompanied by a crew and a Wells Fargo semi-tractor trailer.
It took several gallons of bleach, anti-freeze and hot water; numerous boards, pry bars and a long steel beam; half a dozen men; and about an hour, to free the Hawley Warehouse doors from their ice filled tracks. The cargo box was removed, as was the double-tree; the compartment door, though securely latched, was tied shut. Then, taking less than ten minutes, the men rolled the stagecoach down the drive to Spring Street and, with Central City police officers stopping traffic, lined it up with the ramp and loaded it into the trailer. Murphey said the stagecoach would be refurbished by specialists at Hansen Wagon and Wheel Shop in Letcher, South Dakota. From there it joins the Wells Fargo fleet of twenty various coaches, a dozen of them original and operable.
Russell’s coach was impressive in its condition; joints were still tight and the suspension’s bounce was good enough for a comfortable ride today. The coach, bearing the number 44, was built in 1848 by the Abbott Downing Company of New York. They manufactured 40 different kinds of wagons and coaches. The size of Wells Fargo’s latest acquisition indicates it was originally built to traverse city streets, not the high plains of Colorado. Murphey estimated its weight at 1,800 pounds, compared to the larger 2,700 pound over-the-road coaches. Robb said Russell bought the coach in 1956 from a museum in El Reno, Oklahoma, paying $2,400 for it. None of the representatives of the estate or Wells Fargo would confess the 2010 selling price, but it’s safe to say it has appreciated “considerably” in value. Whatever the price, the Wells Fargo team was happy to be adding Russell’s coach to their trademark stock. “This is the most exciting thing to happen in a long time, said Griffin. Once it’s restored, the coach will likely be put on display, Murphey revealed, probably somewhere on the east coast.