California stage drivers and mail carriers were remembered as pioneers who “held the ribbons” and then “turned the bend in this Road.” Among them was Williamson Lyncoya Smith, one of the best known and beloved men in California, born August 6, 1830, on a plantation on the James River in Bedford County, Virginia, named “Lyncoya” by President Andrew Jackson; after his family settled in Pike County, Missouri, in 1822, he left there on April 25, 1850, with the McPike and Strothers Express Line for California, arrived in Placerville on August 6, 1950, remained continuously connected with the U.S. Mail until 1892, carried the first U.S. Mail on horseback from Jacksonville to Canyonville, Oregon, in July 1884, after the railroad between Sacramento and Portland was completed on December 17, 1887, and died at his home on West 2 Tehama Streets in Redding, California, on May 31, 1902. James E. Birch was the first stage driver in California and organizer of the California Stage Company, and was lost at sea on the mail steamer Central America on September 12, 1857. J.B. Crandall was a pioneer stage driver from 1849 covering California, Oregon, and Nevada, drove the first stage over the Sierra Nevada Mountains on June 11, 1852, and died on November 24, 1872, eight miles from Los Angeles after being thrown from his stage and kicked by the wheel horse. W.F. Hall and W.H. Hall were stage drivers from 1849. Marshall McCummings drove the first stage from Sacramento to Shasta in August 1952 for proprietors Monroe and Felt. Daniel Masten Cawley, born in New Hampshire on July 14, 1828, drove the first stage over the Siskiyou Mountains for the California Stage Company on September 1, 1856, drove the last stage over Siskiyou Mountain for the California Oregon Idaho Stage Company on December 1, 1887, and died in Yreka, California, on October 15, 1901. Also named were Andrew Jackson Bacon, Joseph Henry Bacon, and many other stage drivers associated with California, Oregon, and Nevada.