Stagecoaches to Shakopee

The first stagecoach arrived at Shakopee on October 6, 1853, and between the creation of Minnesota Territory in 1849 and the arrival of railroads in 1860, people depended on stagecoaches for transportation there. In 1936, ninety-year-old E. Judson Pond remembered a four-horse stagecoach stopping at the stagecoach barn next to the St. Paul Hotel on Fuller and Third Street. Travel to Shakopee was difficult because the road was often in poor condition; in 1853, traveler Roy Johnson called it "a succession of swamps, corduroy bridges, holes, and stumps!" Drivers greased their horses' eyes, ears, and noses to keep swarming insects from causing stampedes, and in winter blizzards horses sometimes guided the coach from memory while drivers stopped to clear icicles from their nostrils and eyes. The route crossed Indian trails and the Bloomington Ferry before reaching the Gellenbeck Stage Stop, now Stagecoach Road, where horses were changed and the coach continued into downtown Shakopee. Stagecoaches opened the Minnesota Valley to new immigrants, but at the expense of the Dakota Indians, as increased traffic frightened fish and game and disturbed the spirits of Dakota ancestors. The last stagecoach trip to Shakopee was in 1865. Though stagecoaches served Shakopee for only twelve years, they spread awareness of the town in the fledgling state until railroads made the routes obsolete. The term "shotgun" came from the front passenger seat in a stagecoach, where a rider often carried a shotgun to protect the cargo; today, the word refers to claiming the front passenger seat of a car.

Shakopee, Minnesota · United States