In the early 1900s, Gladys Miller Payne of Jackson County, Ore., often traveled to the Northern California Coast. The trip took three days and seven fresh teams of horses from her Evans Creek home. First, she went to Grants Pass, where she boarded the Concord stage pulled by four horses following roughly the course of today’s U.S. Hwy 199.
The Concord stage headed southwest from Grants Pass through the Applegate and Illinois valleys and up Hays Hill to Love Station near Selma for a fresh team of horses. At Kerby the horses were changed again, and the stage stopped overnight at the Waldo Hotel.
The next morning the stage continued to Stony Corral at the base of Oregon Mountain and acquired a fourth set of horses. Patrick Creek offered a meal stop and new horses that got the stage to Crescent City, Calif., for an overnight stay and another fresh horse team.
The coach reached Smith River for dinner, and the final horse team got them to Harbor, their destination on the Chetco River.
Miller Payne faced more “furrowed gullies, rutted and rough potholed surfaces, steep mountain passes, and narrow gorges” on the return trip.
Sources: Adams, Mike. Chetco. Brookings, Ore.: Chetco Valley Historical Society, 2011.
