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Overland Mail Route to California. Through in Six Days to Sacramento! Connecting With the Daily Stages to All the Interior Mining Towns in Northern California and Southern Oregon…
Portland, Oregon: Oregon Stage Line, W. D. Carter, Printer, Front St., 19 July 1866. Illustrated broadside, 13” x 9.75” plus margins, printed within an ornamental border. Engraver Harrison Eastman’s name is only partially legible in the lower-left corner of the image, and W. Keith’s name, ordinarily at least partially visible in the lower-right corner, is not visible here, probably as a result of wear to the block. Recently backed with Japanese tissue. CONDITION: Good, small losses to the printed border reinstated in expert facsimile, light soiling and minor stains. A scarce broadside advertising travel via the Oregon Stage Line’s overland mail route from Oregon City to Sacramento, illustrated with a wood engraving by California artist William Keith (probably after his own drawing or painting) and his partner Harrison Eastman. The Oregon Stage Line’s mail route connected with daily stages traveling to “all the interior mining towns in Southern Oregon and Northern California.” The wood engraving pictures a California Stage Company stagecoach full of passengers and drawn by six horses racing through the countryside. The stage route also connected with the railroad, which ran from Oroville, Oregon to Sacramento. Among the Oregon locales the mail route passed through were Oregon City, Salem, Albany, Corvallis, Eugene City, Oakland, Winchester, Roseburg, Canyonville, and Jacksonville. Its California stops were Yreka, Trinity Centre, Shasta, Red Bluff, Tehama, Chico, Oroville, Marysville, and Sacramento. The proprietors note that travelers taking this route avoid the “risk of ocean travel” and instead pass through “the heart of Oregon”: the Valleys of Rogue River, Umpqua, and Willamette. “This portion of the Pacific Slope embraces the most beautiful and attractive, as well as some of the bold, grand and picturesque scenery on the Continent. The highest snow-capped mountains (Mt. Hood, Mt. Shasta, and others), deepest ravines and most beautiful valleys.” Stages stopped over one night at Jacksonville and Yreka, allowing passengers to rest. (They were also permitted to lay over at any point and resume their seats at any time within one month.) “Fare through” cost $50. The ticket office was located at Arrigoni’s Hotel in Portland. “By 1859, the California Stage Company had extended regular stagecoach service from Sacramento through Yreka to Jacksonville. The following year, after the company shipped a number of Concord coaches by steamship from San Francisco to the Columbia River, stage service began to Portland, with stations for overnight accommodations and fresh horses at regular intervals along the way” (LaLande). Born in Scotland, William Keith (1839–1911) was an engraver and landscape and portrait painter. After working as an engraver for Harper’s in New York City, he immigrated to California and worked there as a landscape painter. For a period, he was employed by the North Pacific Railroad to create scenes along its line. From 1869 to 1871, Keith studied in Europe and for multiple years in the 1880s he lived in New Orleans. He studied in Europe again in 1893 and was considered a “leader in California art until his death at Berkeley” in 1911 (Groce & Wallace). Born in New Hampshire, Harrison Eastman (1822–1891) was a wood engraver and lithographic designer. He immigrated to California around 1853 and was employed at various lithographic firms in San Francisco between 1854 and 1858. Around 1860, he founded the engraving company, Eastman & Loomis. OCLC records seven copies, at California Historical Society, UC Berkeley, Denver Public Library, Yale, Princeton, Principia College, and California State Library. Some examples of this broadside are printed in blue and red, others in black, as here. The Bancroft Library holds both. REFERENCES: Groce & Wallace, Dictionary of Artists in America (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1957), pp. 203, 363; LaLande, Jeff. “Oregon–to–California Trail (1820s–1860s)” at Oregon Encyclopedia online.
Item #7775
Price: $5,500.00
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