It made headlines in San Francisco in 1911 when the Klamath Hot Springs Hotel in Beswick, Calif., purchased a seven-passenger Locomobile to replace its horse-drawn stage on the 22-mile road connecting the hotel with the railroad station in Ager, Calif.
The San Francisco Call said the stage had carried fishermen up the Klamath River for 25 years “because of the popularity of the (hot) springs” and nearby streams filled with fat trout.
California’s Democratic Party stalwarts held their annual rendezvous at the hotel, the newspaper reported, gathering “to play in the mud and to play the big rainbow trout at the end of a silk line.” The newspaper added, “Beyond all doubt more large rainbow trout have been caught in … (the area) … than at any other point in the whole West.”
The newspaper said an improved road had allowed more than 60 cars to travel to the hotel the previous year, and added, “The practicability of automobiles … sealed the doom of the six-horse stage.”
The Call predicted correctly, “When the Locomobile goes on the job the stage will drive into the barn.”
Source: Pinkson, Leon J. "MODERN AUTO WILL REPLACE OLD STAGE." San Francisco Call 19 Mar. 1911: 72. Web. 20 Oct. 2014.
