For twenty years Stephen Tingley drove the BC Express stagecoaches between Yale and Cache Creek, over what was then one of the most hazardous roads in North America.

[4] In 1894 Tingley bought the Hat Creek Ranch where he built the BX Barn and a large stables for the draft horses that were used to pull the stagecoaches along the Cariboo Road.

[5] In 1896, Tingley partnered with Captain John Irving of Victoria and Senator James Reid of Quesnel and formed the North British Columbia Navigation Company.

The partners hired Alexander Watson to build a sternwheeler to work on the upper Fraser River, the Charlotte.

His first wife Elizabeth Harper had two sons and died in 1873 when the rig he was driving fell into the Fraser Canyon near Yale.