"At the time the mail route was still run by way of the McCoy ferry, Whipple purchased two Concord stages from a mail contractor in Oklahoma. The double-decker coaches were slung on heavy leather straps instead of strings. They could carry fifteen to twenty passengers as the above picture shows. The stage route came into being from Wolcott in 1887 and continued to operate for the next twenty years or more." -- The Gates Genealogy