A vintage stagecoach will come to Clarendon next week to start the final run of its 136-year history.
The Journey stagecoach was originally built in New Hampshire in 1880 and spent its early years working on the Overland Stage Lines before retiring the first time in 1905.
Now its owner, Rick Hamby, says the Journey will carry letters from West Texas students back to its home in Missouri after it makes one last stage run from Clarendon to Matador.
The stage will arrive at the Saints’ Roost Museum next Wednesday, May 11, where Hamby and his crew will camp out for two nights.
Next Thursday, letters will be exchanged from local fourth and fifth graders for fifth graders from West Plains Elementary back in Missouri, and the public will get to visit the stagecoach at the Museum.
The Journey will then leave Clarendon on Friday on a seven-day trip through the Rolling Plains with Matador as its destination before it is loaded up and returned to Missouri on Saturday, May 21.
The stagecoach’s first retirement ended in 1955 when it was put into service at the Adventure Town Frontier Park in New York. Five years later, it became part of the Silver Dollar Line at Silver Dollar City in Branson before being relegated to décor at that venue in the 1970s and eventually sold.
Hamby bought the Journey in 1999, and the stagecoach made the first Missouri to Arizona overland mail run in 120 years in 2001. Since that time, it has completed seven long-distance runs.
Several people are expected to be with Journey crew next week to document its final run, and a special newspaper will be distributed to celebrate the stagecoach and the Clarendon-Matador run.
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