On this #TBT, we continue exploring the historic stage roads of Sheridan County through a series of signs created by the Sheridan County Historic Preservation Commission. This sign, “Bingham Post Office and Stage Station,” was placed on the north side of US Highway 14 about halfway between Ranchester and Dayton. It no longer stands.
Bingham Post Office and stage station on the Rock Creek stage line was located from 1879 to 1885 at Benjamin F. Smith’s ranch on the north side of the Tongue River, where the stage road crossed. The site is in a field west of the ranch buildings, about a half mile southeast of this sign. The ranch was one of twenty-three stage stations, eighteen to twenty miles apart, on the Rock Creek to Montana stage road. The stations consisted of stables and houses for the employees on the route, and nine of them, including Bingham, also served as post offices.
Bingham Post Office was named for John T. Bingham, superintendent from 1879 to 1882 of the northern half of the stage line (from Powder River, Wyoming to Junction, Montana). A bridge was built here in the early 1880s that washed out in 1884. B.F. Smith died about the same time, and Frank Mock took over the stage station and post office. In 1885 the post office was moved two and a half miles southeast to Frank McGrath’s Keystone Ranch on Wolf Creek, retaining the name of Bingham until 1894. After the post office was moved, the Rock Creek line adopted a new route on the south side of the Tongue River to Dayton, where a bridge had been built.
