Greetings family, friends and neighbors! Today's Ramble is inspired by a couple vintage decades old postcards, and a historic California Gold Rush artifact that I hope that you find of interest ....Bill
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Theme Park Rambles
BUTTERFIELD STAGE LINE
While on a scouting expedition in Northern California’s Sierra
Nevada foothills to obtain authentic western relics to entertain
guests while they awaited seating in the popular chicken Dinner
Restaurant, Walter Knott came across an actual stage coach once
held up by the infamous highway man Black Bart. Knott added the
historic artifact to his quickly growing Knott’s Berry Farm Ghost
Town and in 1949, with concessionaire Bill Higdon, created the
Butterfield Stage Line. Within a few years the popular attraction
boasted thirty horses, it’s own depot, and four reproduction stage
coaches that carried as many as seventy thousand passengers a
month in peak seasons.
Charles E. Boles, also known as Black Bart, was a notorious
highwayman who operated in Northern California and Southern
Oregon between 1875 and 1883 and was responsible for at least
twenty eight holdups of Wells Fargo stages. Working alone and on
foot, Boles was always polite, never used foul language, and
although he brandished a shotgun, never fired a shot during a
robbery. His signature attire was a long duster coat, bowler hat
and a flour sack with cutout eye holes. Boles crime career came to
an end when he was tracked down by Wells Fargo Detective Harry
Morse from a laundry mark on a piece of clothing left behind at a
thwarted robbery attempt near Copperopolis in the Sierra Foothills.
He was convicted of his final robbery and sentenced to six years in
San Quentin, but was released early because of good behavior
and failing health. Wells Fargo paid Boles $225 a month for the
rest of his life as long as he promised not to hold up any more of
company stages!
Knott’s Berry Farm’s Butterfield Stages continue charm guests as
they travel through park attractions and are held up by masked
characters on each trip as they have for seventy five years, while
the historic one hundred and fifty year old year old Black Bart
Wells Fargo Stage Coach patiently sits in the shade of the
rumbling roller coasters and screaming riders.
-Bill 5/24
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