“Reno” Train used in Clint Eastwood’s Movie.

Description

“Reno” Train used in Clint Eastwood’s Movie

36″x48″

oil on canvas.

The Inspiration

The 1880’s and the Southern Pacific Railway

In 1849 it took 166 days to travel coast-to-coast in a covered wagon!

The same trip in a stagecoach took 60 days in 1860.

Ten years later one could make the trip by railway in 11 days.

By 1923, the trip was shortened to 26 hours by the airplane.

By 1975 a passenger jet took five hours and the space shuttle took 8 minutes!

In 1857, the first mail and passenger service crossed Arizona. One passenger stated “It ran from nowhere to nothing to nowhere.” Unlike the HollyWood movie version the early stagecoaches were pulled by mules and the service was called the jackass mail!

From Missouri to California, the trip took 26 days and cost $200. Stations were 20 to 40 miles apart depending on the terrain.

In Arizona, stations were made of adobe and had protective walls against Apache attacks. It’s amazing that 168 men died violently running the stagecoaches prior to the Civil War.

The stagecoach ran 24 hours a day so sleep was impossible. Most passengers drank their way across Arizona. It is said that modern pilots can trace the old roads by the glitter of broken glass from whiskey bottles!

Many of the old wagon roads are visible in the landscape. Because of the dry desert climate many of the way stations have become tourist attractions such as the Wells Fargo at Goldfields at Apache Junction.

The original stagecoaches were built to last and can be seen on the main street of Tombstone or Old Tucson. These are major tourist attractions in the modern world. Again, the extreme dry
climate of the desert preserves these relics of the past.