A feast for the eyes, the ears--and even flesh if you count the cooperative sunny, clear weather--best describes the parade of historic coaches at the Upperville Colt & Horse Show Saturday morning on October 8th. Two dozen coaches drawn by four, and in one case five, horses swept sprightly by the parade stands as onlookers snapped smartphone pictures and issued their approbation with audible oohs and aahs--the volume seemingly increasing in direct relation to the diminutiveness of the horses. Little and cute gets them every time.

The coaches ranged from late-nineteenth-century restored antiques to recently constructed coaches that merge reliquary style with contemporary design for a lighter weight or better fit for the horses. But the most fascinating aspect of the drive--the stars of the show, if you will--were the drivers and grooms who seamlessly put it all in motion and embodied the coachmen of yore. In addition to a warm array of livery coats, dashing hats--especially on the female drivers and passengers-- monogrammed lap blankets, and gloves, several coaches had the additional benefit of a coach horn player producing the bold, bright sounds that only the unusually long, brass coaching horn can make.

I came to watch the coaching drive as a part of my research as a graduate student at Yale working on a dissertation on the history of coaching in America during the Gilded Age. So, from my perspective, the National Sporting Library's celebratory coaching drive that celebrated the opening of its new Museum--was historic in two senses of the word: one, the historic nature of coach driving generally, and, two, the sheer number of coaches coming together in a single event in recent memory. It brought to life a topic I spend much of my time researching, usually indoors, sometimes in dank library basements, or at my desk at home with a computer in front of me, a lukewarm cup of coffee to my right, and a cat in my lap. So the chance to see an event such as the drive in scenic Upperville invigorated all my senses in a way that only live performance can.

So what is the history of coach driving that the historic coaching drive channeled? (I'm so glad you asked!) The technique and style of coaching harkens back to British royal mail coaches of the eighteenth century that carried packages, passengers, and news across the country. The coaching horn played by a guard dramatically announced its arrival in town. These coaches were more than just transportation; they facilitated cultural connectivity and the spread of information. People depended on coach drivers to bring more than the mail, but also news and culture from other parts of the country. Young women in rural areas would get coachmen to pick up hats and clothes in the latest styles that could only be found in London, and in exchange they would prepare hearty home-cooked food for the driver's journey back.

Coaching clubs that popularized country drives in luxurious coaches behind liveried recreational drivers formed in Britain in the mid-nineteenth century, then in the U.S. around the 1870's. Today's coaching channels nineteenth-century American and British coaching revivalists, which themselves channeled the royal mail coach drivers from eighteenth-century Britain. The double performance makes today's coaching even more complex and fascinating to me as a student of history and cultural studies.

In Gilded Age America, the hobby of coach driving grew in part as an avenue for exercising and displaying a modesty and humility that were the hallmarks of the ideal British country gentlemen. Drivers mastered a skill that was increasingly becoming obsolete in the technological age. According to a Baltimore Sun article from 1896, coach driving required, "the ability to look neither to the right nor to the left, but to drive ahead without swerving...and to turn corners with a dash and by a hair's breadth."

Gilded Age coaches provided a visual foil to the rise of the railroads which dominated the physical--not to mention economic--landscape of the era. Coaching celebrated the genuine horsepower that the "iron horse" drove nearly extinct. As the October 8th drive evidences, coaching at its very finest still thrives. A small, dedicated coterie of drivers and enthusiasts along with archival institutions such as the National Sporting Library and Museum keep it alive, to the gratification of passengers, spectators, and geeky history buffs alike.

Ms. Klimchock is a former John Daniels Fellow at the National Sporting Library.