These two shots from Shorpy are some of my favorite ever. You want a glimpse back at a time when life in rural America was very different? Here you go.
June 1940.”Stage in front of the post office at Pie Town, New Mexico. This stage comes through daily except Sunday. In addition to mail, freight and passengers, it takes in cream for the Pie Town farmers to Magdalena and Socorro and then returns the empty cans.” Medium format acetate negative by Russell Lee.
And they forgot to mention baby chicks, as that’s undoubtedly what’s in those cartons to the left of the luggage, all of it just hanging on with a cord.
Here’s the shot from the front:
It appears to be a 1937 Plymouth 7-passenger sedan. Note the guy sitting on the little jump seat crammed in against the back of the front seat. And the windshield that got hit by a rock. Not a whole lot different than a horse drawn stage coach, except a bit faster.
I remember old Roy Rogers movies combining horses and autos in various dusty Western settings. Always loved scenes like this. In those films, cars seemed to have kind of a patina even though they were probably relatively new when filmed.
Chrysler Corporation was the major player in the stage/livery/taxi fleet business from the mid-1930’s into the early 1950’s when smaller coach buses took over from the lengthened sedans. In a typical practical approach, the sedan bodies share the front doors with the two door sedan models, required only a special longer rear door plus insert panels for the roof and floor for the four door sedan body. Of course a longer frame and heavy duty suspension components. The LWB sedan bodies were shared by every Mopar make from Plymouth through Imperial. The rugged flat-head sixes were the power for all these commercial cars, only private sale Chrysler and Imperials utilized the straight eights
I think those 7/8 passenger sedans were part of the lineups at least through 1952 – I can’t recall if they survived the 1953-54 restyles, but they might have in at least some of the lines.
They continued through ’54 in DeSoto and Chrysler, continuing to use the old body for the main part with the new front clip. Plymouth stopped offering the long sedan around ’41, and Dodge still offered them through ’52. Most of the postwar Dodge limos seem to have been for export. NYC loosened its taxi laws in ’54, so there wasn’t a reliable market for low-cost limos any more.
The minimum passenger capacity requirement for NYC changed to allow basic sedans to be taxis, affectively ended the market for these lower-priced lwb sedans. As Noted 1954 was the last year for Chryslers and DeSotos, the other Mopars had quite prior to then. Packard’s last were 1954 models, their lwb cars ended with the failure of Henney Body Co. that had been the builder. Packard had greater problems than worrying about the tiny lwb market for 1955-’56.
The only lwb eight passenger sedans and limousine left after 1954 were primarily Cadillac 75 and the relative handful of Imperials. Cadillac sold about 50% of the 75’s as eight passenger sedans which became the default livery/black town car chauffeured sedan until the rise of the stretched limousines in the 1970’s.
Brings this to mind from the YouTube channel Cold War Motors: “1951 Dodge Coronet Limo: First drive in 50 years!”
Notice the clearance lights and side reflectors.
Caution, or mandated by commercial registration?
I’ve been to Pie Town…hasn’t changed much. Lovely place.
Struggling mightily with the dearth of tourists in our current reality.
https://www.kob.com/new-mexico-news/pie-town-pie-shop-to-close-for-good/5765512/
I’m ashamed to say having lived in NM for 18 years that I have not been to Pie Town and I have not yet tried “Green Chili Apple” or “Peach Habanero” pies which are a specialty of several bakeries in NM.
Cool pictures! As a lifelong New Mexican, I only made it to Pie Town about 3 years ago after a visit to the Very Large Array. Can’t remember which pie shop we ate at, but their Green Chile Apple was outstanding.
My first thought was that most of those packages, except the chicks, would have been better to send by Parcel Post. Then I realized that this WAS Parcel Post!
Delivery in rural areas was still casual and contractual until the ’70s when UPS and FedEx expanded to cover everywhere.
Combination parcel post and bus service possibly? I see an Arizona plate on the front. It’s 300 miles from Phoenix to Pie Town, if that was its origin, it’s a bit of a ways away from home base.
Pie Town has an elevation of almost 7800 feet. That Plymouth better have a good radiator to combat overheating on the ups and downs along the way, and decent brakes!
Reminds me of this color slide which I found in a discarded collection. Also taken in New Mexico, possibly near Ranchitos (north of Albuquerque) , c. 1950.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/147108383@N02/39604742622/in/photostream/
Car at edge of frame, left side, 2nd picture, could pass for a VW Bug
Its a 1939 Plymouth two door sedan.
I love Americana. Thanks.
Not to get too philosophical, but I’m astounded at the progress that humankind has achieved in the span of one (long-ish) human lifetime.
+1!
Shorpy is great. when you click and zoom on the photos its like being sucked into the past by a time tunnel. I especially like the panoramas of the New York docks from around 1905.
Inside the building’s door…
The chin scratcher, is he there or part of an advertisement print?
Is that an overhead cam engine above the chinscratcher’s head?
A car person who has his own channel on youtube called Cold War Motors recently found a similar one from the late 1940s or 1950s in a field. It had sat since 1972 and they got it running again. I love Cold War Motors and Scott who runs the channel is a talented car restorer both mechanically and in auto body work.
This is the link for his videos on a 1951 Dodge Coronet Limo he found in a field. Caution has a few bad words in it.
Another video form when he found it.
It looks like a scene from John Ford`s ‘The Grapes of Wrath’.