Virginia Dale Stage House Painting by Anderson R Moore

Virginia Dale Stage House

by Anderson R Moore

Canvas Print

Framed Print

Art Print

Poster

Metal Print

Acrylic Print

Wood Print

Original - Not For Sale

Price

Not Specified

Dimensions

24.000 x 18.000 x 1.000 inches

This piece is not for sale. Please feel free to contact the artist directly regarding this or other pieces.

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Title

Virginia Dale Stage House

Artist

Anderson R Moore

Medium

Painting - Steamset Dyes On Silk

Description

The Virginia Dale stage station was established in 1862 by Jack Slade, former station manager at Julesburg, Colorado where he famously got into a dispute with Jules Beni. Beni had previously shot Slade five times but Slade survived and exacted his revenge by ambushing Beni, tying him to a fencepost and shooting off his fingers before delivering a coup de grace to the head. Slade kept Beni's ears as trophies. While station master in Julesburg, Slade met and breakfasted with Samuel Clemens, "Mark Twain" and made quite an impression upon Twain. Twain wrote about his encounter with Slade in his 1872 publication "Roughing It".

When Ben Holladay took over the Overland Stage in 1862, he changed the route, taking it south from Julesberg along the South Platte River to Greeley and then up the old Cherokee Trail through Latham, LaPorte, Virginia Dale, Colorado, and into Wyoming.

Virginia Dale was a "home station" on the Overland Trail, meaning that passengers could disembark, get a meal, and stay overnight in a hotel if the stage was delayed by weather or nightfall. Thirty to fifty horses were kept at the station which was located in a pleasant, grassy glade (or "dale") along a clear bubbling stream, later named Dale Creek. Slade probably named the post after his wife Virginia, whose maiden name might have been "Dale". Slade was an excellent stage manager as long as he stayed sober. Many stories credit him with outrageous actions from shooting up a saloon in LaPorte for serving his stage drivers whiskey, or for having "a fondness of shooting canned goods off grocery store shelves" [5] to robbing the stage of $60,000 in gold, which later disappeared. Slade was fired as stage manager in November, 1862 after a drunken shooting spree at nearby Fort Halleck and left with his wife for Virginia City, Montana where he was hanged in early 1864 by angry miners.

The Virginia Dale stage station hosted many famous travelers such as author Albert D. Richardson ("Beyond the Mississippi") and an Illinois governor, probably Richard Yates. Samuel Bowles, editor of the Massachusetts Republican wrote in 1865,

"Virginia Dale deserves its pretty name. A pearly, lively-looking stream runs through a beautiful basin of perhaps one hundred acres, among the mountains - for we are within the entrances of one of the great hills-stretching away in smooth and rising pasture to nooks and crannies of the wooded range; fronted by rock embankment, and flanked by the snowy peaks themselves; warm with the June sun, and rare with an air into which no fetid breath has poured itself-it is difficult to imagine a loveable spot in Nature's kingdom."

The station itself was built with timber cut by Hiram 'Hi" Kelly, one of the first profitable cattle ranchers in the Laramie area.

In 1865 future Vice President Schuyler Colfax (then Speaker of the US House of Representatives) was detained at the post by Native American raids. It is possible that Virginia Dale served briefly as a telegraph station.

My interest in depicting American Art has been a life long journey. With this series of paintings, the task was to create several pieces that held very bright and bold colors and that the setting of the paintings depict the vast array of colors enjoyed on the northern plains and western mountains which the seasonal changes bring to the people who lived and worked there and their lives through out the year. Hand painting on silk allows the colors to pop, a depth in the silk and transparency can be achieved that is most satisfying to me as an artist. I appreciate all the collectors and wonderful comments and discussions on all of my art.

Anderson R. Moore is a Silk artist, striving to evoke emotional responses to her paintings and other works through the paint brush. Most of her paintings are large works, and color is important in telling the story. I appreciate all the collectors and wonderful comments and discussions on all of my art. I have recently had these works re-scanned with better technology to provide my clients a more crisp true to life viewing experience of my art work. The only place that a print of this painting can be legally purchased is from me off of Fine Art America or directly from me the artist. If you have purchased this print with out my signature in the print or from anyone else please contact me the artist with that information.