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The American West bellowed with opportunity in the mid-1800s, and entrepreneurial Westerners jumped onto the bandwagon and into the stagecoach business.

They scurried to secure passenger, freight and federal mail contracts. Their stage lines joined a transportation network that spanned the country. Numerous small "swing" stations — where tired stock could be swiftly traded out — and "home" stations, where passengers were offered meals and rest, studded the landscape. The stagecoach became a legendary symbol of the westward expansion.

And according to Gary Kimball, 79, their drivers became "the heroes of the West."

"Some drivers — called reinsmen, 'jehus' or whips — bugled across the coast alerting station masters minutes before their arrival, and ladies would jump up on the boot just to ride with them," said Gary, whose grandfather, Robert Taylor, and his brothers operated the Kimball Bros. Overland Stage between Park City and Salt Lake City.

"These men were tough and independent. They had to be to handle a rig with six horses, treacherous terrain, rutted roads, [inclement] weather, and still be polite [to passengers] and, if necessary, walk the team in circles to keep them warm all night long. It was a thankless job."

In "Roughing It," Mark Twain described the stagecoach as "a cradle on wheels."

The Concord Coach designed by the Abbot Downing Co. in New Hampshire probably exceeded Twain's expectations. Built in 1827, the costly, well-appointed, roomier and heavy coach "utilized leather 'through-braces' made of thick bull hide" underneath that rocked rather than jolted its body.

Concord's Celerity Wagon was more common among "work" coaches. Less expensive, smaller, narrow, lightweight and square-built with canvas curtains and a rugged set of wheels, this sturdy "mudder" took to Utah's steep mountainous trails and miserable roads. In 1862, it gave Twain pause.

"At midnight it began to rain," he wrote en route to Salt Lake City. "We fastened down the curtains and even caulked them with clothing, but the rain streamed in twenty places, notwithstanding. There was no escape. If one moved his feet out of [one] stream, he brought his body under another one…."

In the precarious stagecoach business, federal contracts were imperative.

In 1854, William H. Kimball (the oldest son of Mormon leader Heber C. Kimball) traveled east to locate the best stage routes before opening his business.

Vying for lucrative government mail contracts, he competed with The Brigham Young Express Company and was called to serve a three-year mission in England. In 1860, he continued staging and built the Kimball Hotel and Overland Stage Stop in Parley's Park near Kimball Junction.

"It was a massive two-story, 11-room native sandstone inn with a store, post office and saloon," Gary's brother, Paul Kimball, 83, said. "Used extensively by the Overland, Ben Holliday, Wells Fargo and William H. Kimball stage lines, it was considered one of the finest stops on the Overland Stage Route."

"Its bill of fare included wild duck, sage hen, beef, mutton, and fresh trout," Gary wrote in the 1991 Park City Lodestar. "The trout was usually caught by torchlight along Kimball Creek by the two younger Kimball brothers, Lawrence and Ranch."

William Kimball's second wife, Melissa — a widow who had enlisted in the Mormon Battalion (1846-1848) with her first husband, William Coray — ran the hotel with her children. William Kimball operated the station, and "wore many hats."

Known to finish whatever he set out to do, William Kimball was said to have been a colonel in the Utah militia, deputy U.S. marshal, Indian fighter, polygamist and "Danite."

"His growing-up experiences during the religious ferment and sometimes violent confrontations of early Mormonism forged a hard and cynical man," Gary wrote.

Reporting on a chance encounter in the Salt Lake City home of a Destroying Angel, as Danites were called, Twain wrote, "[Among the] loud profane, offensive, old blackguards present . . . there was one person that looked like a gentleman — Heber C. Kimball's son, tall and well made."

For years, generations of Kimballs successfully took to staging in and out of Utah until the early the 1900s, when automobiles and paved roads delivered their fate.

Eileen Hallet Stone is the author of "Hidden History of Utah" and "Historic Tales of Utah," a new compilation of her Salt Lake Tribune columns. She may be reached at ehswriter@aol.com. Note: The last existing Kimball Stagecoach — beautifully restored — is on exhibit at the Park City Museum on 528 Main Street.