All Aboard California's Stagecoaches

Long before Interstate 5 and the 241 toll road, folks somehow managed to get around.

In the time of Don Jose Serrano, for example, traveling on land from point A to point B typically meant going by foot, horseback, or ox-drawn caretta.

But once California attained statehood, on Sept. 9, 1850, things were bound to change. And stagecoach travel became a big part of that change.

CARETTAS TO COACHES

Beginning in 1857, mail delivery from St. Louis to San Francisco, and numerous points along the way, was the first priority of the newly established Butterfield Overland Stage Co. All the same, adventurous types were allowed to book passage. So on they came, paying $200 for the wild ride, which—if taken all the way to San Francisco—was supposed to last a mere 25 days. This was within the realm of possibility, since the Butterfield route avoided the Rocky Mountains by opting for the lesser of two perils: a route that traversed the Texas, Arizona, and California deserts, continued north through what we now know as Chino, Corona, and Pomona, then on to Newhall, Porterville, San Jose and, finally, the City by the Bay. 

But as Clara Mason Fox notes in A History of El Toro, a Seeley-Wright stagecoach line between Los Angeles and San Diego began operations only a year or so after the Butterfield enterprise. Along the way, mail and passengers were delivered or added at the newly established settlement of Anaheim.  Next stop? A designated station at Red Hill, “where the horses were changed, then on Camino Real to San Diego. The line was rerouted through Santa Ana when that city was established, and through Tustin.” 

Each coach,  Fox adds, was drawn by two horses and accommodated up to 11 passengers, who each paid a fare of $20 for the two-day trip from Los Angeles to San Diego. Initially, these trips were scheduled once weekly, then twice a week, but by 1875 were running on a daily basis and reliably on-time unless waylaid by bandits hiding out in Laguna Canyon.

Since the development of Aliso City—eventually to be known as El Toro—was still about a decade away, horses were changed out once more at the Galivan station located halfway between our modern-day Oso and Crown Valley parkways. From there, the stage pressed on into San Diego County and the Las Flores station for yet another change of horses, then on to San Diego itself.

SILVERADO OR BUST!

A few years later, in 1877, a couple of Santa Ana residents were hunting in a deep, wooded canyon that the Spaniards had called Cañon de la Madera for its abundance of timber. What ultimately captured the attention of Hank Smith and William Curry, however, was neither trees nor wildlife but a piece of blue-white quartz, embedded with what appeared to be silver.  It was, and within the year Silverado City—later shortened to Silverado—was a thriving mining town that included two blacksmith shops, three hotels and seven saloons.

All of this industry, of course, required reliable transportation in and out of the area—and not any mere two-horse transport, but stagecoaches drawn by teams of six, capable of hauling both ore and passengers. These stagecoach runs occurred twice daily to Los Angeles and three times a day to Santa Ana and its railroad terminus.

By 1883, however, the mining boom was over. The daily stages stopped running, and Silverado City shriveled down to near-ghost town status.  

The Los Angeles to San Diego stage continued. But once speculators and developers, such as Dwight Whiting, began buying former Serrano ranch land, it was only a matter of time before and San Juan Capistrano would bring about the demise of Orange County’s stagecoach service.

STAGECOACH SHUTTLE

Except, that is, for a line serving an increasingly popular community entirely bypassed by the train.

“A stage route was opened to Laguna Beach, carrying mail and passengers,” says Fox. “When residents of valley towns desired to go to Laguna avoiding the long drive with a team, they came by train to El Toro, and by stage the rest of the way through beautiful El Toro and Laguna canyons.” 

This was, in fact, the method used by . By the early 1890s, Fox was teaching in Silverado Canyon—by that time largely homesteaded, rather than the rambunctious mining community of 20 years past—and whenever possible, she’d venture down to El Toro, then take the stage to the future art colony, where she and many other nascent artists happily sketched and painted.  

The rails-to-seaside stage service brought about another Laguna Beach tradition in the making. One of the community’s residents, a Portuguese fisherman known as “old Joe Lucas,” began taking it upon himself to meet the stage upon its arrival, then wave goodbye to its El Toro-bound passengers upon their departure. Although Danish-born Eiler Larson would later become world famous for standing along Pacific Coast Highway and waving to motorists during the 1940s through 1960s, it was Lucas and that El Toro-bound stage that began the tradition of the