Alfred L. Seeley

Alfred Seeley was born in Illinois in 1822 and married Emily Walker from Manchester England, eventually moving to San Diego. From Old Town, Seeley operated the 130-mile San Diego to Los Angeles Stage Line, using the remodeled Franklin Hotel as a depot.

In 1868 Seeley received a contract to run a weekly mail line between San Diego and Los Angeles. He soon expanded the service to Monday, Wednesday and Friday. His Concord stage left San Diego at 5 am, stopped overnight at San Juan Capistrano, and arrived in Los Angeles at 4 pm the following day. On January 3, 1871, Seeley and his partner, Charles Wright, began running the first daily stage and mail between San Diego and Los Angeles from their stage office at the Cosmopolitan Hotel.

On May 1, 1869, Seeley had purchased the crumbling adobe of the late Don Juan Bandini in Old Town, added a second story and created the Cosmopolitan Hotel, now the Casa de Bandini restaurant. The reconstructed Seeley Stables next door now house an Old Town museum with horse-drawn vehicles and Western memorabilia. Seeley and Wright ran their Concord stages to Los Angeles until 1877, when competition from the railroad put them out of business.

See also:

Mills, James. “Journalistic Remarks on the Los Angeles and Tucson Mails.” The Journal of San Diego History 3.3 (July 1957): 33-34.

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