Charley's Legend

Fanciful sketch of Charley Parkhurst driving stage, while conversing with world traveler, writer, and minister to China, J. Ross Browne.

So many legends surround the nineteenth-century stage driver Charley Parkhurst that it’s difficult now to separate fact from fiction. In that era stagecoach drivers—called “whips” after the long-lashed tools of their profession—were the kings of the road, glamorous figures revered for their exceptional skills and their nerves of steel. Many of them, now forgotten, became legends in their own lifetimes.

Charley’s legend still endures, because Charley lived a secret life.

Some say that Parkhurst, long acknowledged as an extraordinary stage driver in Rhode Island, came west at the behest of California staging mogul James Birch, himself a former stage driver in Rhode Island. Whatever the reason, Charles D. Parkhurst was about forty when he arrived in California in the early 1850s. As was soon apparent to every passenger, Charley was a skilled driver who loved and understood horses—though his looks were at odds with the standard image of a Knight of the Road. Stout and compact of body, Charley was about five-foot-seven-inches tall, with wide hips, small hands, and a sunbaked face some described as inherently ugly.

Over the next twenty-something years Parkhurst drove many stage routes, including Sacramento to Placerville, Stockton to Mariposa, Oakland to San Jose, and San Juan Bautista to Santa Cruz. He drove some of the most perilous routes in the state, through mountain passes and over rickety, swaying wooden bridges that spanned gorges far below. He experienced a number of near-death incidents, always saving his coach and passengers by communicating—through the reins—with each individual horse, enabling him to extract maximum performance from a six-horse team when disaster threatened.

When arthritis of the hands and spine forced him to retire, Charley settled down on a ranch property near Watsonville, where he died in late December 1879.

A furor erupted when Charley’s friends, preparing his body for burial, discovered that he was a biological woman.

Newspapers across the nation picked up the sensational story. How could this be?  Everyone knew that women lacked the skill, the strength, the stamina, and the courage to command a stagecoach—yet for decades, Parkhurst’s consummate skill at doing so had never been in question.

The fact was, that Charley Parkhurst had perpetuated a marvelous masquerade by looking and acting the part: concealing her breasts with box-pleated, blousy shirts; covering her small hands with fancy, embroidered gloves; her homely, unfeminine face serving as a plus factor in the disguise. Though always cordial and helpful to passengers, Charley gambled, swilled whiskey, and smoked cigars like many other men. If anyone harbored doubts about her gender, they weren’t voiced during her lifetime.

For obvious reasons, in life Charley Parkhurst had never divulged much about herself or her past. Upon her death, though, rumors immediately began circulating, over time developing and enlarging into sometimes bizarre accounts purported to be “the truth” about a socially reticent individual who nevertheless was a courageous, esteemed reinsman for forty or more years.

This woman had lived her adult life as a man so that she could do what she loved, which was to drive a stagecoach—one of the most dangerous, physically punishing occupations of her time.

Coming Next: March is National Women’s History Month