"Off with the Crack of a Whip!"

Stagecoaching through Yellowstone, and the Origins of Tourism in the Interior of the American West

Lee H. Whittlesey

• Publisher: Riverbend
• Year: 2024
• eBook ISBN: 9781493081639
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: North American History

Stagecoaches carried visitors to and through Yellowstone National Park for thirty-eight years, from 1878 to 1916, and helped establish Yellowstone as a world-famous travel destination. This Volume One of a two-volume set by preeminent Yellowstone historian Lee Whittlesey is an engaging account of stagecoaching’s first years in the park.

In lively, often humorous prose, Whittlesey describes the evolution of stagecoach travel in Yellowstone, the colorful men—and women—who ran the stagecoach companies, and the types of stagecoaches that carried tourists in the park, including the famed “Tally-ho” design.

Along the way, Whittlesey profiles the stagecoach drivers who were “rough and profane but men of undoubted nerve,” and he shares stories from passengers who were appalled by their drivers, the “mind-shattering and bone-rattling” roads, the armed hold-ups, and the relentless dust, yet who were entranced by the wonders of this new Wonderland.

"A new book by Yellowstone’s premier historian is always cause for celebration. Lee Whittlesey’s “Off with the Crack of a Whip!” is both a lively, colorful paean to the park’s legendary stagecoach days and an astonishing achievement of research on an encyclopedic scale. An amazing book.” — Paul Schullery, author of Searching for Yellowstone and The Bear Doesn’t Know

“This book is an excellent source for anyone doing research on Yellowstone history, because stagecoach tourism, as Lee Whittlesey shows, was intertwined with almost every aspect of Yellowstone’s development. Thoroughly well-documented, “Off with the Crack of a Whip!” is a fascinating ride into Yellowstone’s stagecoaching past.” — Dr. Judith Meyer, Professor Emeritus, Missouri State University-Springfield (retired), and author of The Spirit of Yellowstone

Table of contents

• Acknowledgements
• Chapter One “Rough and Profane but Men of Undoubted Nerve:” General History of Stagecoaching in the U.S. and the American West
• Chapter Two Crossing the “Desert of Black Basalt:” The First Railroad into Idaho and Montana
• Chapter Three “Mind-Shattering and Bone-Rattling” Excursions: The Gilmer & Salisbury Stage Line Serves Utah, Idaho, and Montana
• Chapter Four Yellowstone: The First Real Incentive of Tourism to the Interior of the American West
• Chapter Five “He Is Prepared to Carry Tourists….∶” George Marshall, Yellowstone’s Pioneering Stage Line and Hotel Operator
• Chapter Six Enroute to the “Eden of America” with the Bassett Brothers: Trailblazing Fleet-Stagecoaching to Yellowstone National Park
• Chapter Seven The Wylie Camping Company: Coaches and Camps
• Chapter Eight One of the Earliest Independent Stagecoach Operators to Yellowstone: George Rea—Hunter, Settler, Guide, and Stager in Shotgun Valley, Idaho
• Chapter Nine The Wings of Wonderland: Wakefield and Hoffman’s Yellow Stagecoaches from the North
• Chapter Ten “All Calls Over Hill and Vale:” James A. Clark and G.L. Henderson—Independents Vie in Yellowstone’s Transportation Rivalry
• Chapter Eleven “It was the Rendezvous for All Sorts of Bad Characters:” Charles Gibson and the Yellowstone Park Association, 1886–1890
• Chapter Twelve Wakefield: An Unfortunate Victim, 1891–1892
• Endnotes
• About the Author