How fast could a stagecoach travel?
Mitchell McClure
Rayville, Louisiana
The speed of stagecoach travel during the Old West era depended on whether the terrain was flat or mountainous and on the condition of the roads. To give you an estimate: For the 2,812 miles from Tipton, Missouri, to San Francisco, California, that took 25 days, the Butterfield Overland Mail stagecoach traveled about 110 miles a day, averaging roughly four and a half miles per hour.
Marshall Trimble is Arizona’s offic

December 2016
In This Issue:
Features
Western Books & Movies
More In This Issue
- A Babe on the Battlefield
- A Western Dynasty: Winchester
- Let’s Hang This “Damned Nuisance”
- Deadly Enemies in Trinidad
- Happy Belated, Will Rogers
- The Doctor Doolittle of Rattlesnakes
- Old Vaquero Saying
- Thank You, November
- The Magnificent Robert Vaughn, 1932-2016
- The Life and Legend of Hugh O’Brian
- If You Can’t Lynch a Cattle Thief, There’s Always Plan B
- Dora Hand
- Why Would an Old West Saloon have White Towels on the Front of the Bar?
- So Billy Sidles Up to the Bar Next to Wyatt
- Bitter Friends
Departments
- Western Events for December 2016
- What History Has Taught Me: Ron Hansen, Author
- Emperor of the United States
- Were Cowboys Superstitious?
- Hand Over the Ice Cream
- Forewarned & Forearmed
- A Pistol For Dragoons
- Hollywood’s Texas Ranger
- How Fast Could a Stagecoach Travel?
- Portrait of a Mountain Man
- North to Montana
- Why Do Westerns Feature Guns That Didn’t Exist at the Time Period?
- What Happened to the Bodies of Those Killed at the Alamo?
- The Last Stage Robbery?