The Overland Stage moved north to the route the Clemens brothers would take by January 1859, so it had been along that line for several years. Oats, the gasoline for horses, was being grown in Ruby Valley, Utah Territory. When Chorpenning, the original operator, got the mail contract he had to run 24 hours. The stations through the life of the overland stage (lower case) were notoriously spare, both in food and accommodations. 

    On Friday, October 27, 2017 10:21 AM, Scott Holmes <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
 

 I've been working on the Overland Route for my Twains Geography site
and have found no mention that he spent the night in any of the
stations along the route, save his stay in SLC.  The route was an
entirely different experience just the year before when Richard F.
Burton made the journey.  He regularly "camped" at sites along the
trail.  It seems most stations were built during that period both for
the stage lines and for the Pony Express.

Twain goes into some detail on how the teams, drivers and conductors
changed regularly - allowing them to ride through the night.  A winter
journey may have been another matter, however.

On Fri, 2017-10-27 at 12:52 -0400, Dave Davis wrote:
> I am at work, and my MY books are at home. ;-(
> 
> When SLC and Orion took the coach to Nevada, how long had regular
> service been running on that line? Was it considered reliably safe?
> Did they have indoor accommodations some nights? Most nights?
> 
> (I know that some of these questions are covered in Roughing It --
> accurately or embellished -- and possibly in good annotated versions
> thereof. But I bet some listmembers know, too.)
> 
> DDD
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