Though the stage line was more familiarly called the Deadwood Stage, it was officially called the Cheyenne & Black Hills Stage. It was established in 1876 by Red Cloud Agency trader, Captain F. D. “Frank” Yates and his father-in-law, W. H. Brown, who formed F. D. Yates and Co.

The Deadwood Stage was featured for many years by Buffalo Bill in his Wild West shows all over America and Europe, and it is still notorious throughout the globe today. The stagecoach was the primary mode of travel in areas that had little or no rail transportation.

So wrote Edward L. Wheeler in his 1877 Deadwood Dick the Prince of the Road; or the Black Rider of the Black Hills, as part of his “Deadwood Dick” series of half-dime novels that helped to popularize the Cheyenne and Black Hills Stageline, more popularly known as the Deadwood Stage.