So there
I was in Carson City in my motel room watching a movie I’ve seen umpteen times
and still enjoy. It’s one of my
top ten, and it’s none other than Stagecoach. While the movie played on, I couldn’t
help but think about what it must have been like to travel in one of those
awkward looking contraptions. It
must have been pretty uncomfortable at any normal time and especially bad when racing
across a playa with hostile Indians in hot pursuit.
Stagecoach
drivers were revered and in a class all their own. They were the road warriors of their day. I did a little research and found that
they were called Jehus.* The title
was bestowed on them because of a quote from the Old Testiment, Kings 9:20,..” and
the driving is like the driving of Jehu the son of Nimshi; for he driveth
furiously.” And some of them did
indeed drive like Jehus.
I
ran across a piece on Henry James “Hank” Monk who was a real Jehus. Monk drove the stage from Carson City,
Nevada to Placerville on the other side of the Sierra and was famous for
driving the route at breakneck speeds.
It was reported that he could make the 109 miles in less than 9 hours,
which was amazingly fast then.**
Hank Monk was born in Waddington, New York in 1826 and grew up with a
great admiration for horses. He
first drove stage for Clark County in New York State. His age at the time...12! In 1852 he migrated to California and it’s believed he
started driving stage between Sacramento and Auburn for the California Stage
Company. By 1857 he was driving
for a different outfit that eventually was owned by Wells Fargo and
Company. He drove Nevada stages
for them for more than twenty years.
The
trip that would eventually immortalized Monk was when Horace Greely, the famous
New York Tribune editor, hired Monk
to drive him from Carson City to Placerville. As the story goes, Greely was running behind schedule. He asked Monk if it was possible to
cross the Sierra in time to make an appointment he had in Placerville that
evening. Monk assured Greely that
he’d get him there on time. What
followed was the ride of Greely’s life.
Monk would later tell a newsman, “I looked into the coach and there was
Greely, his bare head bobbing, ... holding on to whatever he could grab.” Greely arrived in Placerville on time
but completely disheveled and somewhat shaken. He mailed the Tribune
his version of the harrowing ride along with other accounts of Monk’s skills as
a stagecoach driver.
The story eventually reached mining towns in Nevada and California where
it was told and retold. It then
caught the attention of none other than Mark Twain. If you go to chapter XX
of Roughing It, you’ll find Twain’s
heavily embellished version of the ride.
The following is from that chapter:
“Hank
Monk cracked his whip and started off at an awful pace. The coach bounced up
and down in such a terrific way that it jolted the buttons all off of Horace’s
coat, and finally shot his head clean through the roof of the stage, and then
he yelled at Hank
Monk and begged him to go easier—said he warn’t in as much of a hurry as he
was a while ago. But Hank Monk said, ‘Keep your seat, Horace, and I’ll get you there
on time!’—and you bet you he did, too, what was left of him!”
Humorist
Artemus Ward, a pseudonym of Charles Farrar Browne, wrote a comical account of
what he called the stagecoach ride from hell. Apparently his version was less than flattering toward
Greely. It was read by Congressman
Calvin Hulburd into the Congressional Record as a jab at Horace Greely,
Hulburd’s political nemesis.
 |
| That's not Monk, but that's a typical stagecoach. |
Apparently Greely wasn’t pleased with what he considered less then
flattering accounts of the trip.
He tried in vain to distant himself from Monk. During this time Greely was a presidential candidate and he
felt these stories could cost him the election, but actually it was his stand
on major issues that led to a resounding defeat.
There’s
even a song dedicated to the memory of Hank Monk. It was published in 1885 with poet Joaquin Miller writing
the words and none other than John Philip Sousa writing the music. It was entitled Tally-Ho, which was the name Hank gave to his stagecoach.
Hank
Monk died of pneumonia in Carson City in 1883. I’m sure that Mark Twain and the others had a lot to do with
the fact that Monk is considered by many to be the greatest stagecoach drivers
in American history. And those
same people called him one of our folk heroes. On his tombstone these words are inscribed, “Sacred to the
memory of Hank Monk, the whitest, biggest-hearted and best-known driver in the
West.”
*Apparently Jehu can be pronounced several ways, JEE-hew,
YAY-hoo, Gee-hu, or JAY-hugh.
**Stagecoaches averaged speeds of 4 to 7 mph for trips of 70
to 120 miles. Monk made the 109-mile
trip averaging 12 mph!
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