Ben Holladay: The Stagecoach King

The red and black Concord stagecoaches that crossed the West in the 1860s, known to the Indians as "fire boxes," have been celebrated in Mark Twain's fiction and John Ford's films. Predating the transcontinental railroads, they provided vital lines of communication to the East during the Civil War and opened to development the newly settled regions beyond the Missouri River. From 1862 to 1866 Ben Holladay owned and operated a network of stagecoach lines from Kansas to California, the main o...