Up next, the Wells Fargo History Museum - Permanently closed, due to Wells Fargo brand evolution, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Wells Fargo connected Oregon communities by stagecoach* and steamboats on the Columbia and Willamette Rivers.
In 1852, Henry Wells and William Fargo founded a financial services company & an express delivery service that has become a legendary part of the American West.
All of its coaches were used to deliver "money, mail, and people" from the East Coast, especially during the gold rush.
The idea was to get here as quickly as possible, get a lot of gold, and go back east.
In the museum one could experience an early Wells Fargo office, with everything from actual nuggets of gold, a working telegraph and an original stagecoach.
*The distinctive red and gold Concord stagecoach was built in 1854 and is the oldest coach in the fleet. It was considered to be the finest passenger vehicle of its time. The rounded wood body rested on a unique suspension and led overland passenger Mark Twain to call it "a cradle on wheels."
This coach, Abbot-Downing #306, had a long career carrying mail between Halifax and Nova Scotia, Canada until eighteen ninety. It had the honor of carrying two British royals--the Prince of Wales (King Edward VII) in 1860; and Princess Elizabeth (Queen Elizabeth II) in 1951.
It also was involved in a scrap or two.
The inside job at Pendleton:
In 1880, a fellow named H.P. Page, an official with Wells Fargo, was riding to Portland on this company stage (or one like it) that was delivering a big chunk of money.
The coach en route to Portland from this little city would have followed roughly the same path that Interstate
84 takes today.
On the way, Page went into the boot of the Concord stagecoach to take a nap on the mail sacks … or so the jury chose to believe when it acquitted him. The prosecution tended to think he was doing something other than snoozing in there.
Whatever the real story was, what mattered most was that the shipment of gold was somehow abstracted from the coach on its way to Portland. Oh, and one other detail: The coach didn't stop anywhere on the way. The gold simply disappeared en route. It's hard to imagine any way that could have happened, other than Page chucking it out the window into a bush along the route.
Page, acquitted, found himself marked as untrustworthy, and left the area and was never heard from again. But some folks think he stashed the loot somewhere in Umatilla County to retrieve it later, after his notoriety had ebbed a bit, and never made it back. Maybe it’s still there. There's folks still looking for it today.
Or, maybe the whole thing is a Tooth Fairy-class fantasy. Who knows?
Today money often moves at the speed of light over fiber-optic cables, but some things never change: Wells Fargo's San Francisco museum was the scene of a gold heist in 2015, when robbers in an SUV smashed through the museum's glass doors. The stolen gold nuggets, which are considered to be of greater historical significance than monetary value, made national headlines.
NEXT IS THE PORTLAND BUILDING AND PORTLANDIA STATUE
With many more
Wells Fargo connected Oregon communities by stagecoach* and steamboats on the Columbia and Willamette Rivers.
In 1852, Henry Wells and William Fargo founded a financial services company & an express delivery service that has become a legendary part of the American West.
All of its coaches were used to deliver "money, mail, and people" from the East Coast, especially during the gold rush.
The idea was to get here as quickly as possible, get a lot of gold, and go back east.
In the museum one could experience an early Wells Fargo office, with everything from actual nuggets of gold, a working telegraph and an original stagecoach.
*The distinctive red and gold Concord stagecoach was built in 1854 and is the oldest coach in the fleet. It was considered to be the finest passenger vehicle of its time. The rounded wood body rested on a unique suspension and led overland passenger Mark Twain to call it "a cradle on wheels."
This coach, Abbot-Downing #306, had a long career carrying mail between Halifax and Nova Scotia, Canada until eighteen ninety. It had the honor of carrying two British royals--the Prince of Wales (King Edward VII) in 1860; and Princess Elizabeth (Queen Elizabeth II) in 1951.
It also was involved in a scrap or two.
The inside job at Pendleton:
In 1880, a fellow named H.P. Page, an official with Wells Fargo, was riding to Portland on this company stage (or one like it) that was delivering a big chunk of money.
The coach en route to Portland from this little city would have followed roughly the same path that Interstate
84 takes today.
On the way, Page went into the boot of the Concord stagecoach to take a nap on the mail sacks … or so the jury chose to believe when it acquitted him. The prosecution tended to think he was doing something other than snoozing in there.
Whatever the real story was, what mattered most was that the shipment of gold was somehow abstracted from the coach on its way to Portland. Oh, and one other detail: The coach didn't stop anywhere on the way. The gold simply disappeared en route. It's hard to imagine any way that could have happened, other than Page chucking it out the window into a bush along the route.
Page, acquitted, found himself marked as untrustworthy, and left the area and was never heard from again. But some folks think he stashed the loot somewhere in Umatilla County to retrieve it later, after his notoriety had ebbed a bit, and never made it back. Maybe it’s still there. There's folks still looking for it today.
Or, maybe the whole thing is a Tooth Fairy-class fantasy. Who knows?
Today money often moves at the speed of light over fiber-optic cables, but some things never change: Wells Fargo's San Francisco museum was the scene of a gold heist in 2015, when robbers in an SUV smashed through the museum's glass doors. The stolen gold nuggets, which are considered to be of greater historical significance than monetary value, made national headlines.
NEXT IS THE PORTLAND BUILDING AND PORTLANDIA STATUE
With many more