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Tomah Stage Lines

Passenger and freight agency[1] based out of Tomah, Wisconsin in 1875.[2]

Tomah Stage Lines began operation during the Civil War to serve the U. S. Army protecting U. S. interests in the West. Tomah's Wisconsin location provided an origin point removed from many of the War's dangers and was able to operate safely when other more southerly agencies had their supply lines hampered or cut off.[2]

After the war, the agency continued to serve military and government installations between the midwest and the Rocky Mountains, but began also to offer alternate routes and means of civilian transportation to areas not yet accessible by rail, although often through circuitous routes.[2]

By the early 1874,[2] the Tomah Stage Lines operated a north-south route from the burgeoning cattle town of Dodge City to its main east-west road between Tomah to Fort Laramie.[1]

Stage West: In July of 1875,[2] a west-bound stage detected tracks of a band of Sioux to the east of its Packsaddle Station[1] in northern Nebraska.[2] The Sioux were searching for Bret Maverick, whom they had discovered taking gold from their land in the Black Hills. They caught and attacked the stage to the east of Twin Bluffs, killing everyone aboard and burning the remains. Not finding Bret amongst the wreckage, they turned east and attacked the Packsaddle Station, where Bret was holed up with Mart Fallon and his sons Wes and Rip, Tomah's passenger agent Simmons, and passenger Linda Harris. As the Sioux demanded the surrender of Bret or they would burn of the station, Mart and Rip Fallon dressed the dead body of Matson in Bret's clothing and threw it to the Indians. Believing the body was that of Bret Maverick, they dragged the body away and left the station intact.[1]