First Mail West: Stagecoach Lines on the Santa Fe Trail (SIGNED COPY)
by: Taylor, Morris F.

Hardcover. Albuquerque, University of New Mexico, 1st, 1971, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn, chipped dust jacket. 253 pages, INSCRIBED BY TAYLOR on the title page. Previous owner's inscription on half-title page, otherwise clean. First Mail West recounts the colorful history of stagecoach lines on the Santa Fe Trail during the height of overland traffic from 1850 to 1879. Desert, rain, snow, wind, outlaws, Indians, buffalo stampedes, and business competitors challenged, and sometimes scuttled, the operation of stage lines between Missouri and New Mexico. The author describes the topography, roads, rolling stock, stations, accommodations, and natural and human dangers along the trail, and analyzes the fierce competition between independent lines for passenger traffic and federal mail contracts.