A collection of historical tidbits about the Pony Express taken mostly from books, except as otherwise noted. This slider cycles through all of the Quick Facts in random order. I will be adding to these as I read through more sources. You can pause a slide by hovering your mouse over the Fact. To find Quick Facts on a particular topic, click on the appropriate tag in the sidebar. All Facts connected with places on the trail also appear under the appropriate state in the Route Reports section.
Description of Slade and Maria Virginia
Alternately a man of courteous manner and a merciless killer, he seemingly escaped the notice of Majors’ principled eye when he was taken on by the company as a carry-over from the stumbling Hockaday line. From Fort Kearny to Horseshoe Station, where he lived in unexplained luxury with a sour-countenanced, heavy-haunched wife, Slade ran a tight, fear-struck division, exercising ruthless control with a quickly-riled temper and a ready gun. But his chameleon character was disarming. Mark Twain, quite aware of his awful history, found him “a pleasant person, friendly and gentle-spoken.”
Roy S. Bloss, Pony Express—The Great Gamble, 86
Jules Beni
“On the South Side of the South Platte, perhaps about a mile east of the mouth of ‘Lodgepole Creek,’ a Frenchman by the name of Jules had started a trading-post. The place was a great Cheyenne crossing-ground going north and south, and a frequent place of Cheyenne rendezvous. It was also much used by the Sioux. The Cheyennes had a great liking for the country on the South Platte at the mouth of Lodgepole, and had had camps there for many years. Jules was said to be a half-breed French-and-Indian trader, and to have established this post for the purpose of trading with the Cheyenne Indians. It was said his name was Jules Beni, but everybody called him ‘Jules.” He was a man of keen native shrewdness, an exceedingly dangerous man, with a peppery, fierce disposition. He had killed several persons, and had become a great deal of a character in the country. A man who had known him several years told me that Jules once killed two persons of local celebrity, cut off their ears, dried them, and carried these four ears in his pockets. That every once in a while he would take them out and show them to somebody. They were great trophies, as he thought. He kept supplies for the pilgrims, and at one time had a large stock. . . . He got to be so bad and dangerous that Slade, the superintendent of the stage company, had to kill him.”
Eugene Ware, Indian Wars of 1864, p. 247-48
Move to Nebraska City
Since the volume of goods to be delivered in Utah in 1858 was too great for Leavenworth facilities, Nebraska City was chosen as another loading and starting point. Alexander Majors moved his family and retinue of slaves there from Westport, and Russell closed his home in Lexington to build a bigger one in Leavenworth.
Settle and Settle, "Napoleon of the West," Annals of Wyoming Vol. 32, No.1, April 1960, p. 23
Buffalo Bill and the Pony Express Legend
In the meantime, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show became the primary keeper of the pony legend. By the 1890s, when William Lightfoot Visscher began gathering material for his history of the Pony Express, the business records of Russell, Majors, and Waddell had long since vanished, and Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show had been promoting William Cody’s version of the pony’s history for the better part of two decades. Cody was the world’s most renowned showman and westerner, and had made himself far and away the most famous rider of the legendary pony line. He was also a personal friend of Visscher’s. When the journalist’s Thrilling and Truthful History of the Pony Express appeared in 1908, it was less history than hagiography, a devotional recounting of the heroic lives of saints. The author repeated Cody’s stories without any criticism.
(p. 552, n. 11)
Visscher, Thrilling and Truthful History; Corbett, Orphans Preferred, 173-99. For an example of the passage of Cody’s pony tales from show to history, see Bradley, Story of the Pony Express, 127. Bradley lifted his discussion of Cody’s exploits almost verbatim from Root and Connelley, Overland Stage to California, 129-30. Root and Connelley, in turn, lifted their account almost entirely from Cody himself. Cody, Life of Buffalo Bill 97, 103-7.
Louis S. Warren, Buffalo Bill's America, p. 6, and 552, n. 11
Pilgrims
“We divided some of the meat with a party of ‘pilgrims’ as they were called, who overtook us going west. Everybody traveling west in those days was called a ‘pilgrim.'”
Eugene Ware, Indian Wars of 1864>/em>, p. 42
Brigham Young and Zion
Brigham Young was a realist. Texas was out of the question; it was square in the path of empire, and if the Saints could not survive among Illini and Missourians, they had still less chance to survive among Texans. California was no better. The notion of settling at or near the mouth of the Colorado (we shall see Cooke suggesting it to the Mormon Battalion) was considered and rejected. Israel would not be a buffer state between the Americans and the Mexicans, though the idea of maintaining an outpost there seems to have developed very early. By 1846 it was clear that northern California was also a Gentile terminus; a large emigration was preparing for it and anti-Christ in person, ex-Governor Boggs, was going to go there. The golden shore, as either an independent republic or a territory of the United States, was certain to fill up with Israel’s enemies, and this fact was quite clear to Young before the migration started. The two hundred and thirty-eight Mormons who sailed with Sam Brannan in the Brooklyn on February 4, the day when the first ferries crossed to Iowa, expected that the main body of the Church would join them west of the Sierra, and many of the Battalion, who started west six months later, shared that belief. But even before the Brooklyn sailed, Young was thinking of its company as only an outpost – which, in the San Joaquin Valley, is what it became.
It may have been Stephen A. Douglas who initiated the idea of Vancouver Island. That was a politician’s happy solution but Young appears not to have taken it seriously, except that another outpost there would be a good thing and it could be colonized with convert, Pillar of Cloud 9I from the British Isles. (As late as November, ’46, the Church was memorializing the British government for help in establishing such a colony. Nothing came of it.) Douglas shifted and recommended Oregon, which the Saints had considered much more seriously. But Oregon also was impossible – whether as the United States or as the Republic of the West which Daniel Webster and so many others envisioned. Young had rejected it before 1846. Oregon also was square in the path of empire, it had ten times as many Americans as California, five times as large an emigration was preparing to go there in ’46, and it would certainly come under the flag.
Mormon legend has it that when, on July 24, 1847, Brigham Young, weak with mountain fever, came jolting in a white-top over the last summit in the road down Emigration Canyon and gazed over the sagebrush flat toward the Dead Sea, he spoke with the power of revelation and said “This is the place.” Brigham, however, held it irreligious to call upon the Lord until you had first exhausted your own resources. Long before that day he had determined on Great Salt Lake Valley. He had, in fact, decided on that general vicinity sometime in 1845.
Throughout 1845 the destination of the Saints was constantly discussed by the leaders who would have to manage the emigration, and they made the most minute study of the available literature. It is not clear that Fremont’s second report was decisive. They used it with exceeding care to rough out an itinerary, but they could get little more from his account of the Great Salt Lake country than that the lake did not have the mysterious whirlpool which legend attributed to it, that its islands were barren, and that the canyons which ran down to it from the east were well timbered. It seems likely that Young knew more details about Zion by the end of 1845 than Fremont had observed there. Certainly he knew much more by the end of 1846.
It is clear that Young had decided on the Great Basin, rather than Oregon or coastal California, by midsummer of 1845. It was an inevitable decision: there was, in fact, nowhere else to go. Israel could survive only if left to itself long enough for Young to organize and develop its institutions. That meant that it must find a place where the migrating Americans would not be tempted to settle. That, in turn, meant the Great Basin. But also, as Young seems to have understood quite clearly, Israel must be near enough the course of empire to sustain itself by trading with the migration. And that meant the northern portion of the Great Basin. It meant, in fact, one of no more than three places, Bear River Valley, Cache 92 The Year of Decision: 18 46 Valley, and Great Salt Lake Valley. All three places seem to have been in his mind in ’45, and there are still references to Bear River Valley late in the autumn of ’46, but the actual choice proved to be between the other two. Later we shall see the choice being made.
In March of 1846, then, Young and the Apostles knew that Zion was to rise somewhere in the Great Basin. They knew that certainly; they were less clear about the site of Zion and still less certain when they could get there. As late as January 1, 1847, at Winter Quarters, Hosea Stout, who was in the confidence of the Twelve, heard that a pioneer company was to push out from the Niobrara River to the headwaters of the Yellowstone to put in a crop. (Faulty information: crops could not be raised there.) Such a pioneer party, to go , ahead of the Church proper and select Zion and put in crops, was discussed throughout 1845 at Nauvoo, and actual preparations for it were made, in the expectation that it could start late that summer. After the Saints began leaving Sugar Creek in March of ’46, another call for such a party was made. ( Actually the company under the unruly individualist Bishop George Miller did pull ahead of the main body with an intention of going all the way, as we shall see.) But neither Brigham nor his counselors could determine, at the beginning, whether any could cross to the mountains this year, or if any could, how many could be spared. It was the principal question to be answered while Israel toiled through the mud.”
Bernard De Voto, The Year of Decision, 1846, p. 90-92
Cholera Along the Platte
“The swampy drainage of the Platte extended several hundred yards from the main river channels. The expanse of standing pools of brackish water and salty, alkaline mudflats often began just a few steps from the wagon ruts. This created a natural petri dish for the microorganism responsible for causing cholera, and the pioneers were adding fresh host material for bacteria-human waste, animal manure, the carcasses and offal of slaughtered animals-every day. Biologists now know that the alkaline deposits that occurred naturally along the Platte River flats mimicked the salty delta conditions of the bacteria’s native India, encouraging the growth of Vibrio cholerae in the squalid waste piles of the camps. The anarchy of latrines in the camps festered overnight, becoming killers for the next arriving train. When the river rose after storms, cholera traveled downstream several miles in a single night.
“Viewed in this way, the largest land migration in history created a fascinating intersection between human need and biological self-destruction. For 450 miles the Platte offered the pioneers everything they required in an otherwise arid, hostile environment—clear navigation points west, water, fresh game, and timber for cooking fires. But the Platte also provided ideal conditions for disease: warm temperatures, alkali soil, and mud holes that acted as stewpots for organic waste.”
Rinker Buck, The Oregon Trail, p. 177-78
Aid from the Ogallala
“For a time the prospect looked very gloomy, from the fact that our provisions were nearly gone, and there was no possible chance apparently for getting more supplies. About two days after going to our new camp, however, a party of Ogallala Sioux Indians came by with their ponies loaded down with fresh buffalo meat, which they were taking to their camp to dry. The Indians were quite friendly, gave us some fresh meat, and also the information that their camp was but a few miles off, over the bluffs by a spring, at the mouth of another canon opening into the valley of the North Platte River. They invited us to come over and stay at their village, telling us also that the French traders, Dripps and Madret were there; and could possibly let us have some provisions.”
Moses H. Sydenham, "Freighting Across the Plains in 1856—A Personal Experience," in Proceedings and Collections of the Nebraska State Historical Society, Vol 1, No. 1, p. 175-176
Little Blue Telegraph
“The Little Blue had a telegraph style of its own. Wrote G.A. Smith, ‘Thousands of names are written on trees by emigrants.’ Benjamin Gatton found not only trees ‘skinned and written upon, giving names of individuals and companies,’ but ‘all trees near the road covered with cards, some of paper and some of boards.’ B.R. Biddle was constantly passing by notices written on paper, elk horn, and boards, ‘so that we are appraised of all going on ahead of us.’ Gatton said that these informal ‘postoffices, as they are called, we found at all the crossings.'”
Merrill J. Mattes, The Great Platte River Road, p. 154-155
Mile 946: Willow Springs
“In time [the emigrants] passed. out of the poison-spring region, went over a snappy ridge, and came to Willow Springs at a distance of twenty-six miles from the ferry. In years of little travelit was the perfect oasis, pure water in a tiny willow grove surrounded by untainted grass. During heavy migrations the grass soon disappeared, and the cattle of the poor or improvident man went unfed at the end of a grueling day’s work. The water never failed.”
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 205-206
Freighter Sleeping Accommodations
“The sleeping accommodations for t he crew varied with different outfits; in fact, the arrangements were left usually for the men to work out for themselves. Some ccarried tents which added considerable comfort, but the surest and driest bed was in a big freight wagon. If it was loaded with coffee, rice or the like , so much the better , for the bed was more even. But the most common practice was to sleep on the ground under the wagons the weather permitting. The ‘bed was mother earth, a rubber blanket and buffalo robe the mattress, two pairs of blankets the covering. Heaven’s canopy the roof; the stars our silent sentinels.'”
Floyd Bresee, Overland Freighting in the Platte Valley 1850–1870, p. 57
Preemption
What a farm family wanted most was a government policy that would permit a farmer to “squat” on a piece of land. that is, to build a house and clear the trees, and then after the region had been surveyed, to purchase his land at the minimum auction price without being outbid by the speculator. In 1842 the first “Preemption Bill” was passed. It protected the farmer who had made improvements. It also whetted his appetite for free land. If a farmer improved new land. “homesteaded,” was he not performing a national service and benefiting the national economy by bringing the wilderness under cultivation?
Lillian Schlissel, Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey, p. 20
Government Road Building
“In places, the Lander Cutoff was a steep up-and-down ride, but the route offered cooler, high terrain and plentiful water, an advantage over the scorching desert of the main ruts to the south. Eventually an estimated 100,000 pioneers took this route, and the 230-mile Lander Cutoff was considered an engineering marvel of its time.
“This model of government support for a major development project became popular and was accepted as the new norm for western growth. Each new phase of frontier growth-the railroads, ranching, mining-was also supported by either outright government subsidies, land giveaways, or federally supported irrigation and bridge-building projects. That was the tradition established by the Oregon Trail and it has always amused me that the myth of ‘rugged individualism’ still plays such a large role in western folklore and American values. In fact, our vaunted rugged individualism was financed by huge government largesse.”
Rinker Buck, The Oregon Trail, p. 314
Bond Scandal Fallout
“There is little doubt that this affair, aggravated by the financial difficulties of the time and the accumulated irregularities of the past, virtually destroyed the credit of Russell, Majors & Waddell and made their financial failure a certainty, precisely as Russell had feared. Can there be any wonder that the government declined to give a new contract for the overland mail to a firm which had condoned such practices?”
George Root, "Pike's Peak Express Companies," Part IV, Kansas Historical Quarterly, Vol. 14, No. 1 (1944) p. 87
Type of Mail Carried
“It is assumed by many that the mail carried by the Pony Express was comprised of letters from ordinary people to their friends and loved ones. That is not accurate. That’s not to say that it never happened, it is just that it was generally too expensive for most people. When it began, rates were $10.00 per ounce or $5.00 for a half ounce or less. For that reason, even business communications were generally short. Later, rates were lowered to $2.00 per ounce and $1.00 for a half ounce or less, but they were still expensive for ordinary people . . . The charge for letters sent by sea or by stage cost much less, only ten cents per half ounce, the cost of the stamp.”
William E. Hill, The Pony Express: Yesterday and Today, p. 19
Sublette and the Oregon Trail
“To Milton Sublette belongs the honor of first having used commercial wagons on what has been later entitled the ‘Oregon Trail.’ He began the journey near the mouth of the Kansas River, followed up the Little Blue to the Platte, and thence up the south side of the Platte and North Platte to the Wind River Mountains in Wyoming. This was in 1830. He returned the same year t o St. Louis with ten wagon loads of furs.”
Floyd Bresee, Overland Freighting in the Platte Valley 1850–1870, p. 1
Mile 2207: Western Terminus B. F. Hastings Bank Building, Old Town Sacramento, CA
“Great Place to visit the Pony Express Trail and discover its history- Old Town Sacramento! The Pony Express Terminal, also known as the B. F. Hastings Bank Building, was one of the end points of the Pony Express. This building was completed in 1853 and today is part of Old Sacramento State Historic Park.”
[N.B. There is a Pony Express memorial across the street from the bank. This is the western terminus of the Pony Express Bikepacking Trail.]
“In ’49, when the laboring, panting, exhausted line of animals and duct-caked humans arrived within ten miles of green River, they found broken country and no definite road. They must push and tug at the heavy wagons in the in the full heat of blazing noonday. Many collapsed and were loaded in the wagons by companions almost in like case. The poor beasts fell, were hastily cut loose, died, and added their bit to the discomfort of next week’s caravans. The only solution possible was to double-team and abandon some of the wagons, and this section of the cutoff was one of the two or three places of the whole overland trail where no one had time or reason to burn them.”
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 255
Colt's Revolvers
“From 1836 to 1842 Colt had manufactured about five or six thousand of his patent revolvers, the first successful repeating firearms. Bad financial management – outside Colt’s control – had forced the closing of the factory and he had gone on to experiment with electrically controlled submarine mines and had laid the first successful submarine electric cable. But his revolvers had been tested in the Seminole War and had worked into the possession of the Texas Navy and the Texas Rangers – and of Santa Fe traders, such mountain men as Kit Carson, and other practical men who had to deal professionally with the Plains Indians. They had promptly worked a revolution in warfare comparable to and more immediately important than that heralded by the American light artillery at Palo Alto. They had proved themselves the first effective firearm for mounted men, and had given the Texans and other frontier runners the first weapon which enabled white men to fight with Plains Indians on equal or superior terms. Nearly all of the primordial five or six thousand had, by 1846, gravitated to the place where they were needed, the Western frontier. Most of the journals quoted in this book speak admiringly of their use and value in the West; nearly every writer who discusses outfits for emigrants recommends them.”
Bernard De Voto, The Year of Decision, 1846, p. 219
Aftermath of the Utah War
“Jesse Gove wrote as his summary of the war: ‘Wounded, none; killed, none; fooled, everybody.’ But is disappointment at being deprived of a chance to shoot Mormons had made him incapable of forming a realistic evaluation of this chapter in the relations between the Latter-day Saints and the United States. In reality the great expenditure of money and energy on both sides had produced some good. As one of its objectives, probably its primary one, Buchanan’s Administration had set out to vindicate the authority of the Government over a far-away territory. . . . [I]t had in the face of a defiant sect peacefully placed a Gentile in the governor’s office and posted a sizable military garrison within the Territory. . . . For their part, the Mormons had also derived a few benefits from the proceedings, especially in the winning of some respect in the States. . . .
Although the danger of an armed clash between the Territory and the nation had passed . . . [t]he Mormon War . . . had solved few of the basic problems that had created trouble in the past. Many minor annoyances remained—Indian matters, land titles, the probate courts’ jurisdiction, poor political appointees. They were, in turn, only symptomatic of the primary cause of dispute, the Mormons’ angry insistence on the right to manage their own affairs, which to them included most of the temporal as well as religious business of the Territory, and their opponents’ antithetical desire to reduce the Church’s authority.”
Norman F. Furniss, The Mormon Conflict, 1850-1859, p. 227, 231
Handcart Migration Disaster
“It is impossible to accurately estimate the handcart system’s total casualties, since Mormon authorities ‘tried to keep the full horror of the disaster from becoming public, especially in England. But it would be safe to estimate the total at well over two hundred, or at least one in five of the last two companies, with many others maimed for life . . . One thing is certain—the handcart disaster of 1856 was the greatest single tragedy in the history of the nation’s move west in the nineteenth century.'”
Will Bagley, South Pass: Gateway to a Continent, Location 3207-3212 [Kindle Edition]
Sweetwater River
“The Canadian voyageurs have translated the name Sweetwater from the Indian Pina Pa; but the term is here more applicable in a metaphorical than in a literal point of view. . . . There is a something in the Sweetwater which appeals to the feelings of rugged men: even the drivers and the station-keepers speak of ” her” with a bearish affection.”
Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 150-151
Virginia Slade Waiting
“We can imagine Virginia Slade waiting for jack. As the twilight closed in on Meadow Valley, she lit the candles. She knew that complete, velvety black darkness was not far-off and she hoped desperately that Jack was not far-off either, but galloping home on his faithful horse, ‘Old Copper-bottom.’ Jemmy, their thirteen-year old adopted boy, brought in wood for the cook stove, then he sat quietly reading, asking his ‘mother’ words now and then. Virginia peeled potatoes, put them on to boil; made a venison stew; cut the still warm bread she’d baked that day; filled a white jug with milk.
Outwardly calm, inwardly deeply upset, she went on waiting. Finally, she fed Jemmy and pushed the remainder of the food to the back of the stove to keep warm. She seated herself in a chair with some sewing, listening for the hoof beats of ‘Old Copper-bottom.’ Many an anxious evening wore on for the dark beauty in her still, lonely stone house.”
Virginia Rowe Towle, Vigilante Woman," p. 129-130
Midwestern Folk Wisdom
“In Adams County, Illinois, the mass of advice directed toward the common problems of women reflected the sympathy women felt for one another. A girl entering her first period will have an easy time provided her “grandy rags” are handled with three fingers when washed. The more you change your cloths, the greater the flow. If you burn your rags instead of washing them you will get thin and weak because you are just burning up your life. Washing your head during the “monthlies” will bring on sickness; taking any sour food or drink during a period will cause tuberculosis. To cure cramps, drink the broth of a chicken, beaten to death. To prevent conception, eat the dried lining of a chicken’s gizzard; sleep with your menstrual clothes under the pillow for the first three days of your period; take gunpowder in small doses for three mornings, all the while thinking hard about the desired result. A woman who wants to put an end to her childbearing must throw the afterbirth of her last baby down an old well or walk directly over the spot where the afterbirth was buried. Keep nursing your child, wean it early. If none of the contraception remedies work, rub gunpowder on your breasts each night, drink a tea made from rusty nail water, or rub your navel with quinine and turpentine morning and night for several days; each of these remedied can induce abortion. The lists of helpful suggestions are as endless as they were ineffectual, but at the very least this feminine lore suggests that women were active in their search fro a reliable means of limiting their fertility, and that nineteenth century rural women shared a casual attitude about abortion.”
John Mack Faragher, Women & Men on the Overland Trail, p. 123
Important Centers for News
The four important centers of news for the Pacific Coast press before the establishment of the overland mail in 1858 were Washington, New York, New Orleans, and Panama.
John Denton Carter, "Before the Telegraph: The News Service of the San Francisco Bulletin, 1855-1861," Pacific Historical Review 11, No. 3 (Sep., 1942): 303
Breaking Oxen
“Most of [the oxen] were broken to work, but some were not. Over by the corrals sweating bullwhackers were busy making up their teams, yoking them together, and allowing them to become accustomed to each other. If a young one was to be broken and trained he was yoked with an old one, and, their tails tied together, they were turned loose so that the youngster might learn how to conduct himself in that situation. When he had learned to walk quietly beside his companion, they were hitched to a wagon and driven about for a while.”
Settle and Settle, Empire on Wheels, p. 27
Mile 2126-2148: Pacific House to Placerville
Fifteen miles above Hangtown [Placerville] the teams reached Pacific House, at fourteen, Bullion Bend, where a stage was held up and loot is supposed to be buried; at twelve, Sportsman’s Hall (named from the multitude of card sharks that frequented its tables) where the relay waited for the Pony Express rider on his mad dash. It was the chosen stopping place for teamsters freighting to the Nevada mines and had stable room for several hundred horses. Then they came to Five Mile House and on down to Hangtown Creek with all its water drained out into ditches to feed the big toms.'”
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 453
Mormon Stations Along the Trail
But Brigham did not, as he had intended, send Jones back to manage the Y.X. Express station now established at Devil’s Gate. He said he guessed Dan had had about enough of Devil’s Gate for any one man. And anyway, by that time it was midsummer, and by midsummer all of the stations ambitiously projected to give the Saints substantial control of the trail from the Missouri to the mountains would have seemed precarious. A few, particularly those at Fort Bridger, at Deer Creek, and at Genoa, a Mormon colony deliberately planted on the Loup Fork as a permanent way station on the model of Garden Grove and Mt. Pisgah, were already well established, along with others of a more tentative kind.
Wallace Stegner, The Gathering of Zion, p 273
Battle of Resaca de la Palma
“The action that followed was a good deal more of a battle. It is known as Resaca de la Palma. It was a fierce, bloody, and obstinate confusion in the underbrush, with the Mexicans fleeing here and charging there, the Americans doing likewise, and no one to do staff work or make order of the attack. Since no one above the platoon leaders could see far enough to exercise command, some pretty local duels developed. For a long time it was a near thing. The Mexicans rushed into the thorn bushes with an admirable fierceness and, less admirably, their cavalry charged artillery – and nearly took it. That seemed a good idea to Taylor and, to the horror of his staff, he ordered Captain May’s Dragoons to charge a Mexican battery. It was his principal contribution to the battle and, alas for the textbooks, it worked. Pretty soon the Mexicans, who had bent at one flank already, broke and ran. Fort Brown was saved and Taylor had won two battles.
Or his army had. Colonel Hitchcock, who was right about their commander, was proved wrong about the troops and they were entitled to the admiration which Lieutenant Grant accorded them. The American soldier had won his first battle against civilized troops since January 8, 1815, by the merits which tradition had emphasized, marksmanship, steadiness under fire, and individual initiative and courage. A good many subalterns who would be general officers in the Civil War had had their first taste of battle. And before the guns were swabbed the newspapermen were sending the news to the folks back home. The two engagements, Grant wrote, “seemed to us engaged as pretty important affairs but we had only a faint conception of their magnitude until they were fought over in the North by the press and the reports came back to us.”
Bernard De Voto, The Year of Decision, 1846, p. 195-196
The Great Venture of Leavenworth
“Horace Greeley wrote while on his way to Denver in 1859:
‘Russell, Majors and Waddell’s transportation establishment is the great feature of Leavenworth. Such acres of wagons! such pyramids of extra axletrees! such herds of oxen! such regiments of drivers and other employees!No one who does not see can realize how vast a business this is, nor how immense are its outlays as well as its income. I presume this great firm has at this hour two millions of dollars invested in stock, mainly oxen, mules and wagons. (They last year employed six thousand teamsters, and worked 45,000 oxen).'”
LeRoy Hafen, The Overland Mail: 1849–1869, p. 147
The Hundredth Meridian
“The hundredth meridian of west longitude, a geographer’s symbol of the true beginning of the West (meaning the point beyond which the annual rainfall is less than twenty inches), strikes the Platte near the present town of Cozad, Nebraska, well east of the Forks. The trail up the North Platte moved mainly west or a little north of west to a point opposite the present town of Ogaliala, Nebraska, where it took the due northwest bearing it would maintain for hundreds of miles. And between the sites of the present towns of Broadwater and Bridgeport, Nebraska, it struck the Wildcat Range. Here the scattered buttes and bluffs which had been growing common for a considerable distance became a true badlands. The scenery was spectacular but spectacle was only a momentary solace to the emigrants, who had now reached truly tough going – with cumulative fatigue, anxiety, and mental conflict piling up. In early June the desert still had the miraculous brief carpeting of flowers that delights travelers to this day, but it was late June when the emigrants got there, a wholly different season, and ’46 was now a drouth year. The slow-pitch of the continent which they had been climbing toward the ridgepole so slowly that they seldom felt the grade here lost its monotony. The gentle hills that bordered the valley of the Platte, known as the Coast of the Nebraska, suddenly became eroded monstrosities. Jail Rock, Courthouse Rock, Chimney Rock, Scott’s Bluff, were individual items in creation’s slag heap that had got named, but the whole formation was fantastic. The learned Thornton called it Tadmor of the Desert and sketched a gift-book description of ruined cities, defeated armies, and ancient peoples put to the sword. (But exactly opposite Chimney Rock one of his hubs locked for want of grease and he had to interrupt his poetry.) Even such prosy diarists as Joel Palmer and Overton Johnson were startled into rhetoric, the realistic Bryant saw Scott’s Bluff against the green and purple murk of an oncoming storm and committed phrases like “ruins of some vast city erected by a race of giants, contemporaries of the Megatherii and the Icthyosaurii,” and Fremont composed a resounding tutti passage about “The City of the Desert.”
Bernard De Voto, The Year of Decision, 1846, p. 164-165
Semi-Arid and Sub-Humid Climate
“There has been a tendency on the part of writers to mix a good deal of sentiment with their history of the West. Because of the peculiar difficulties to be overcome there, the West has been a land of adventure, of hardship, ar.d of novel experience. There is a glamour about it that is hard to dispel, that eludes analysis and simple statement. It does not make a writer popular to speak of the shortcomings and deficiencies of a country, and to do so is to bring down upon one a local storm of adverse criticism. Even the scientist has to apologize for designating certain regions as arid or semi-arid, and some of them have used the term u sub-humid” in order to shield themselves from the local critics.
Major J. W. Powell says he adopted the term “sub-humid” to keep from offending those who object to the terms “semi-arid” and “arid.”
Walter Prescott Webb, The Great Plains, p. 321 and n. 1
Blackfeet Indians
The true continuity is not offenses of the Americans but the character of the Blackfeet, who were an extreme specialization of savage life. Of the Plains tribes only the Comanches had a comparable ferocity and only these two tribes practiced prolonged torture. The Blackfeet refused to observe even the mild conventions of formal, temporary truce that most tribes felt bound by. Their allies and their enemies alike called them treacherous. As tough Indians, who knew and told everyone that they were tough, they not only found murder the cheapest form of trade relations but enjoyed it beyond most Indians. They were no more hostile to Americans than they were to the Flatheads, the Snakes, the Crows, and nearly everyone else.
Bernard De Voto, Across the Wide Missouri, p. 421, n. 2
Simpson's Route to California
“In midwinter [1858-59] Simpson requested the Secretary of War, through the Bureau in Washington, to authorize a program of exploration for the spring which included a wagon-road survey from Camp Floyd to California by way of Carson Lake, to be followed by a an eastern trip to seek a shorter, better route from Camp Floyd to Fort Leavenworth . . . Secretary Floyd approved the project, and through General Johnson gave Simpson a carte blanche to organize the expedition. . . .
At Camp Floyd [after the exploration], Captain Simpson dispatched Lieutenant Kirby Smith with a small detachment to return over the last 100 miles of the route to straighten sections and mark them with stakes and guide posts. Wooden troughs were to be built at the springs in the desert to collect and save the water. . . .
Several days after Simpson’s return, California emigrants started west over the new route. One party with seven wagons and another with thirty were supplied with an itinerary. The same information was given to Russell, Majors & Waddell who planned to drive a thousand head of cattle over the road to California. . . .
The Pony Express, which began running between San Francisco and Salt Lake City in April 1860, used [Simpson’s] northern [outbound] route over the 300-mile course between Genoa and Hastings’ Pass, and after continuing along the 175 miles of Chorpenning’s extension of Simpson’s route as far as Short Cut Pass, it traveled along [Simpson’s] road to Camp Floyd on the way to the Mormon capital. . . .
According to General Johnson, emigrants passed daily over the new route to California, many driving large herds of stock, so that in a single season the road was well marked.
W. Turrentine Jackson, Wagon Roads West, p. 150-156
Pawnee
“[D]efinitely undependable were the Pawnee, whose territory extended from the Big Blue Crossing to the forks of the Platte. The Kanzas, the Potawatomi, and the Sac and Fox were semi-civilized, at least to the point that there was some semblance of legality to their extraction of funds from the emigrants. The Pawnee were warriors and buffalo hunters who roamed their vast domain looking for trouble. They found plenty of it in the form of Sioux and Cheyenne to the west; and emigrants who had found themselves in the thick of tribal warfare on the Kansas River might have the experience repeated along the Little Blue and the Platte. . . . For the most part, however, the rumors of battles and massacres [between Pawnee and emigrants] were untrue, and the Pawnee merely threatened and blustered, demanding tribute of some kind for crossing their lands, although they would not be above robbing and sometimes murdering stragglers.”
Merrill J. Mattes, The Great Platte River Road, p. 156
Mile 1285: Henefer, UT
“From the confluence of the Echo Creek, the Weber flows six miles through velvety meadows starred with wild flowers and then slips into the mouth of a rock-bound canyon where, in trail days, the wagons could not go. . . .
Somewhere in the six-mile stretch preceding the canyon mouth the emigrants had to get across the Weber, and the sooner the better, for it picked up small tributaries along the way. It is definitely a mountain stream, and the early parties—those, for instance, who arrived before the end of June—found it dangerous. . . .
The emigrants left Weber River near the mouth of the unfriendly canyon, and stayed with timid little Henefer Creek its few feeble miles up through the rough hillside.”
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 294-295
Establishing Camp Floyd
“Upon their arrival in Cedar Valley on July 8 [1858] the officers and men of the expedition established a military post which they appropriately called Camp Floyd, in honor of the War Department’s foremost Mormon-hater. The little valley was strategically located, for it was of approximately equal distance from the Territory’s largest towns, Salt Lake City and Provo. It had the further advantage, in this semidesert climate, of a modest creek. . . .
[T]he monotonous routine of the cantonment, seven hours away from the nearest towns, soon began to erode the morale of the troops. The camp itself offered few opportunities for relaxation . . . When they had the opportunity, the enlisted men crept out of Camp Floyd by night to nearby ‘Frogtown,’ [present-day Fairfield, UT] where a few shanty saloons dispensed an alcoholic drink that tasted vile but at least did not blind.
None of these official or extracurricular diversions dulled the misery for long. . . .According to Captain Tracy, ‘life in this camp gives one the feeling of convicts in prison for life clamoring to be let out and hung by way of relief.'”
Norman F. Furniss, The Mormon Conflict, 1850-1859, p. 205-206
First Overland Mail to California
“In 1850 the government contracted with Samuel Woodson, a lawyer in Independence, Missouri, to serve the route between his frontier outpost and Salt Lake City once a month for $19,500 per year. The following year Absalom Woodward and George Chorpenning contracted with the post office to provide mail service along the remaining segment, between Salt Lake City and California, monthly for a mere $14,000 per annum. The contracts specified thirty-day service each way on each segment, so theoretically a letter could be delivered from Independence to San Francisco in sixty days. But harsh weather conditions and periodic Indian raids meant that the 750-mile trip on the Western segment took not the contracted thirty days but fifty-four; and on one trip Woodward himself was killed by Shoshone Indians. Some carriers along this primitive route were known to turn back and send the mail by sea, having concluded that mail from California could reach Salt Lake faster by steamship through New Orleans and up the Mississippi River and then by Woodson’s Missouri to Salt Lake mule service.”
Dan Rottenberg, Death of a Gunfighter, p. 91
Yclepted
“On August 22 [1849] the Missouri Republican correspondent ‘Nebraska’ told of a fiasco ‘of our last Indian war, in which the chivalry of Missouri, yclepted the Oregon Battalion [out of Fort Kearny], was arrayed on one side, and the squaws, pappooses, and decrepit warriors of the Pawnee nation, on the other.'”
Merrill J. Mattes, The Great Platte River Road, p. 170
Oxen and the Prairie Schooner
“In behalf of these hardy, versatile men who risked fortune and endured hardship along the Santa Fe trail [starting in 1821], it should be noted that they were the ones who developed the technique of prairie travel. They learned how to organize wagon trains and handle them to the best advantage upon the road. These men also adopted oxen in place of mules and horses, after oxen had been introduced by Major Bennett Riley in 1829, and they developed the prairie schooner.”
Settle and Settle, Empire on Wheels, p. 3
Mile 1075: South Pass
“Ten miles beyond Ford No. 9, hilly miles, ending in a long champaign having some of the characteristics of a rolling prairie . . . led us to the South Pass, the great Wasserscheide between the Atlantic and the Pacific, and the frontier points between the territory of Nebraska and the State of Oregon. . . .
“The last part of the ascent is so gentle that it is difficult to distinguish the exact point where the versant lies : a stony band crossing the road on the ridge of the table-land is pointed out as the place, and the position has been fixed at N. lat. 48 19′, and W. long. 108 40′. The northern limit is the noble chain of Les Montagnes Eocheuses, which goes by the name of the Wind River; the southern is called Table Mountain, an insignificant mass of low hills.
A pass it is not : it has some of the features of Thermopylge or the Gorge of Killiecrankie ; of the European St. Bernard or Simplon; of the Alleghany Passes or of the Mexican Barrancas. It is not, as it sounds, a ghaut between lofty mountains, or, as the traveler may expect, a giant gateway, opening through Cyclopean walls of beetling rocks that rise in forbidding grandeur as he passes onward to the Western continent. And yet the word ‘Pass’ has its significancy. In that New World where Nature has worked upon the largest scale, where every feature of scenery, river and lake, swamp and forest, prairie and mountain, dwarf their congeners in the old hemisphere, this majestic level-topped bluff, the highest steppe of the continent, upon whose iron surface there is space enough for the armies of the globe to march over, is the grandest and the most appropriate of avenues.
A water-shed is always exciting to the traveler. What shall I say of this, where, on the topmost point of American travel, you drink within a hundred yards of the waters of the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans—that divides the ‘doorways of the west wind from the ‘portals of the sunrise? . . .
It is a suggestive spot, this ‘divortia aquarum:’ it compels Memory to revive past scenes before plunging into the mysterious ‘Lands of the Hereafter,’ which lie before and beneath the feet. The Great Ferry, which steam has now bridged, the palisaded banks of the Hudson, the soft and sunny scenery of the Ohio, and the kingly course of the Upper Mississippi, the terrible beauty of Niagara, and the marvels of that chain of inland seas which winds its watery way from Ontario to Superior; the rich pasture-lands of the North, the plantations of the semi-tropical South, and the broad cornfields of the West; finally, the vast meadow-land and the gloomy desert-waste of sage and saleratus, of clay and mauvaise terre, of red butte and tawny rock, all pass before the mind in rapid array ere they are ihrust into oblivion by the excitement of a new departure.”
Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 161-163
Breaking Wild Mules
“The average freighter could not afford the time to gentle his animals slowly before introducing them to harness; as a result, the breaking of wild mules was a rough process that sometimes ended in the loss of expensive animals. The unbroken mules were roped, snubbed up close to the wagon wheels, and starved for twenty-four hours. Then a team was hitched to a heavy wagon and whipped when they would not pull and whipped even harder when they ran. After an hour or so of bewilderment, plunging, and kicking they became tractable and were ready for work.”
Henry Pickering Walker, The Wagonmasters (1966), p. 103
Delivering Mail Over the Sierra Nevada
“Also in late 1858, Chorpenning attempted to dispel the prevalent attitude among congressmen and the postmaster general that scheduled service was impossible over the Sierra Nevada in winter. Accordingly, he negotiated a $2,000 contract with John A. ‘Snowshoe’ Thompson to maintain the road through the Genoa-Placerville passes. A longtime associate of Chorpenning, Thompson had carried mail to Carson Valley between 1854 and 1858. In 1858-59, he used snowplows and sleighs to conduct regular weekly crossings of the Sierra Nevada. When storms closed the passes to sleighs, ski couriers carried the mail across the mountains. To the surprise and disappointment of Chorpenning’s rivals, the Sierra Nevada posed no insurmountable obstacle during a particularly miserable winter.”
John M. Townley, "Stalking Horse for the Pony Express: The Chorpenning Mail Contracts between California and Utah, 1851-1860", Arizona and the West, Vol. 24, No. 3 (Autumn, 1982), p. 246
Mile 753: Fort Laramie Ferry
“Robert Campbell [who built the original fort that became Fort Laramie] had cannily built his picketed stockade in the angle of the two rivers [Laramie and North Platte], so that all who approached from the east must either ford the Laramie or ferry the North Platte. Both projects provided plenty of exercise and some risk. Thos companies who had attained the west bank of the Missouri River at Independence, St. Joseph, Nebraska City, or nearby ferries, and who consequently traveled south of the Platte must now ford the Laramie. And the Laramie was deep, swift-flowing, and ice-cold. Those who ferried the Missouri at Kanesville or Council Bluffs, and remained north of the Platte were now faced with the thankless job of ferrying to the south side only to cross back again just west of the Black Hills, where the river swung too far south for their purpose, and the road left it definitely and forever. The did so up to and including the year 1849. . . .
There was no necessity, as it later proved, for any man to risk (and sometimes lose) his life in ferrying the Platte at Fort Laramie: there was an easy route on the north side. The officers [at Fort Laramie] were suspected of giving out misleading information to induce the emigrants to cross—at first, on account of the profit they could make from selling supplies at exhorbitant prices, and later because they ran a government ferry at five dollars per wagon and had unlimited opportunity to line their pockets.”
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 161
First Premier of All Western Gunmen
“While [Slade] was a controversial figure in the early West, nobody can discount his contribution to the development of our country—in the transportation of passengers and supplies by the Overland stage coaches and freights lines, his efforts on behalf of national communications by Pony Express and telegraph, his rigorous suppression of outlaw activity on the main traveled highway to the West. He was the first premier of all western gunmen.”
John B. McClernan, Slade's Wells Fargo Colt, p. 7
Safety of Travel Through Utah Under Brigham Young
“Most emigrants seemed blissfully unaware of Brigham Young’s pacifying influence with area Indians, another notable Mormon contribution to overland travel. Perhaps overlanders did not acknowledge Young’s important role because his overarching commitment to Mormon interests embroiled him in a great deal of controversy with Gentile Indian agents, or because a number of emigrants suspected that the Mormons occasionally directed Indian depredations against Gentile passersby. Yet Young’s maxim that ‘It is cheaper to feed the Indians than to fight them’ is well known and reflected his policies as ex officio superintendent of India affairs and governor of Utah Territory. And there is no gainsaying the fact that emigrants trailed through the Mormon domain with greater safety from Indian attack than elsewhere along the overland trail.”
John D. Unruh, Jr., The Plains Across, p. 315
Two Weeks' Hard Going Through the Snowbound Sierra
What does “two weeks” hard going mean?
“The first week of May, 1851, George Chorpenning, with a party of seven picked up 200 pounds of sacked mail at the Sacramento office and started east. The initial mail was delivered without incident. After two weeks’ hard going through the snowbound Sierra Nevada, Chorpenning arrived in Carson Valley.”
“It took [Chorpenning’s party] sixteen days to make their way to Carson Valley having had to beat down the snow with wooden mauls to open a trail for their animals over the Sierras. They left May 1 1851 from Sacramento. On the third day they encountered snow drifts in the Sierra Nevadas some fifteen miles above Placerville. It was on the 22nd day that they reached Carson Valley (about 180 miles on the then traveled route). When they reached the snow line, they dismounted put part of the mail from the mules on their own horses and walked for about two weeks. They trampled and beat the snow for the animals—traveling two, six to eight miles per day. For sixteen days they traveled and camped on deep snow.” (quoted in Ralph L. McBride, Utah Mail Service Before the Coming of the Railroad, 1869″ (M. A. thesis, Brigham Young University), p. 20)
The party again had to resort to “forcing paths through deep snowfields in the Goose Creek Mountains,” before reaching Salt Lake City on June 5, 1851.
John M. Townley, "Stalking Horse for the Pony Express: The Chorpenning Mail Contracts between California and Utah, 1851-1860", Arizona and the West, Vol. 24, No. 3 (Autumn, 1982), p. 230-231
Federal Troops in California Cities
In several towns during the Civil War, the secessionists caused trouble to such an extent that the presence of federal troops was imperative at various times. Visalia, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, San Bernardino, and Los Angeles were among such cities . . .
During the entire war it was found necessary to have soldiers in Los Angeles to keep down the hostile, bold, defiant sentiment of secessionists, which flared up with brilliance after every Confederate victory in the East . . .
San Bernardino, as was mentioned, also had difficulty in fighting secession sentiment throughout the war. The character of the population there at that time explains most of the trouble. Major Carleton tells us that two-thirds of the people were Mormons, who at heart hated the United States troops and cause; and the remainder were principally outlaws and English Jews (who controlled the business of the town)—neither of whom cherished any love for the United States. Only a few respectable Americans really feit anything like patriotism.
Imogene Spaulding, "The Attitude of California to the Civil War," Annual Publication of the Historical Society of Southern California , 1912-1913, Vol. 9, No. 1/2 (1912-1913), pp. 116-17
First Trip Along the Platte River
In order to reach the interior West, the last untouched fur country in the United States, William Ashley had revolutionized the trade when the Arikaras and Blackfeet forced him away from the Missouri. His successors — we are concerned with the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, who trapped fur, and Sublette & Campbell, who supplied them — retained the methods he had pioneered. They used land transportation, taking out goods and bringing back furs by pack train up the valley of the Platte River and through South Pass.
Bernard De Voto, Across the Wide Missouri, p. 23
Gwin's Manoevers
Gwin, in hopes of extricating himself, struck a bargain with the Administration. It was agreed that he was to obstruct the Colfax bill and to allow the session to expire without action; afterwards he was to be rewarded by an order from the Postmaster General improving the service on the South Pass route. Gwin fancied himself returning to California to boast that his personal influence had secured what the combined force of the Republicans in Congress had failed to effect. . . .
To his dismay, Postmaster General Holt, a determined enemy of overland mails, refused to spend another dollar on the route. Gwin then called upon the President. In the interview that followed, Buchanan found himself in an embarrassing position. Gwin was one of his chief supports in the Senate. Holt, who was indispensable to the Cabinet, threatened to resign if his policy in his Department were reversed at the bid of an outsider. Buchanan attempted to persuade Gwin to drop the matter. But the fate of the overland mail meant more to Gwin than the soothing words of the President.
Curtis Nettles, "The Overland Mail Issue During the 1850s," The Missouri Historical Review, XVIII, no. 4 (1924), 533
Spur to Emigration on the 1840s
In 1831, a Massachusetts schoolteacher incorporated the “American Society for Encouraging the Settlement of the Oregon Territory.” His ambition was to “repeat with appropriate variations the history of the Puritan colony of Massachusetts Bay.” But the real spur to emigration into Oregon was the prolonged depression that swept the country in 1837· By the year’s end, banks across the nation had closed, and by 1839 wages fell 30 to so percent. Twenty thousand unemployed laborers demonstrated in Philadelphia, and in New York two hundred thousand people were wondering how they would survive the winter. Horace Greeley told the unemployed to “go West,” but the Midwest was as hard-hit as New York. In the Mississippi valley, prices fell lower and lower. Wheat was ten cents a bushel, and corn could be given away. Steamboats on the Mississippi and the Missouri rivers were burning grain for fuel. As farmers surveyed the debacle, they could find fewer and fewer reasons not to escape to better lands.)
And there was another factor. In a fashion that men and women of the twentieth century will never fully understand, farmers of the Mississippi valley and the Plains states had begun to feel “crowded.·~ One farmer said that the reason he had to emigrate from western Illinois was that “people were settling right under his nose,” although his nearest neighbor was twelve miles away. He moved to Missouri, but that did not satisfy, and soon he abandoned a half-finished clearing and packed his family and household goods onto a wagon and made his way to Oregon where there was only the Pacific Ocean beside him.’
Lillian Schlissel, Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey, p. 19-20
Mile 1215: Needle Rocks and Echo Canyon
“After fording Bear River [At Evanston, Wy?] this part of the land was quite a grave-yard we passed over rough ground, and, descending into a bush, were shown on a ridge to the right a huge Stonehenge, a crown of broken and somewhat lanceolate perpendicular conglomerates or cemented pudding-stones called not inappropriately Needle Rocks. At Egan’s Creek, a tributary of the Yellow Creek, the wild geraniums and the willows flourished despite the six feet of snow which sometimes lies in these bottoms. We then crossed Yellow Creek, a water trending northeastward, and feeding, like those hitherto forded, Bear River: the bottom, a fine broad meadow, was a favorite camping-ground, as the many fire-places proved. Beyond the stream we ascended Yellow-Creek Hill, a steep chain which divides the versant of the Bear River eastward from that of Weber River to the west. The ascent might be avoided, but the view from the summit is a fine panorama. The horizon behind us is girt by a mob of hills, Bridger’s Range, silver-veined upon a dark blue ground ; nearer, mountains and rocks, cones and hog-backs, are scattered about in admirable confusion, divided by shaggy rollers and dark ravines, each with its own little water-course. In front the eye runs down the long bright red line of Echo Kanyon, and rests with astonishment upon its novel and curious features, the sublimity of its broken and jagged peaks, divided by dark abysses, and based upon huge piles of disjointed and scattered rock. On the right, about half a mile north of the road, and near the head of the kanyon, is a place that adds human interest to the scene. Cache Cave is a dark, deep, natural tunnel in the rock, which has sheltered many a hunter and trader from wild weather and wilder men: the wall is probably of marl and earthy limestone, whose whiteness is set off by the ochrish brick-red of the ravine below.”
[Note: Needle Rock Station is off the Pony Express Bikepacking Trail. It is southwest of Evanston, WY, and would require turning off the Route at about Mile 1215, or, if you want to catch an addition two stations, Mile 1237]
Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 183-184
Trail Options West of South Pass
“From South Pass, emigrants had several options for reaching California. They could go to Salt Lake City via the trail to Fort Bridger, and then take either the Salt Lake Cutoff or the Hastings Cutoff west from there. Or they could tum north from Fort Bridger onto the Fort Hall Road (part of the original Oregon Trail), which led to Fort Hall on the Snake River. Or they could bypass Fort Bridger entirely by taking the Sublette Cutoff, which connected up with the Fort Hall Road in the Bear River Valley. Whichever way they went, they had to cross the vast, bleak Green River and the rough terrain of the Overthrust Belt.”
Keith Heyer Meldahl, Hard Road West, p. 140, n 8.1
Slade and Gilman Ranch
What is certain is that the division superintendent for the Pony Express who stopped to enlist the Gilman brothers in the crosscountry mail relay was a name that Mark Twain knew well. In writing about Joseph (Jack) Slade in Roughing It, Twain recalled a famous and notorious published description of the bad man: “From Fort Kearny, west, he was feared a great deal more than the Almighty.”
Joseph Slade was not a figment of Mark Twain’s imagination. Nor was he a tall tale. Slade is perhaps the most solid example that everyone in the employ of Russell, Majors & Waddell was not enjoying a glass of sarsaparilla and the Psalms in the evening. The Central Overland California & Pike’s Peak Express Company hired men who could get the job done, and some of those men were plainly outlaws. Joseph Slade was the most stunning example.
Christopher Corbett, Orphans Preferred, p. 135
Mile 1358: Trader's Rest
“Constructed of adobe, the station apparently was only used for a short time. In later years, the structure was covered with wood siding and a false front and re-converted into a business. More recently it served as a garage. . . .
“Trader’s Rest was located on State Street about two miles north-northwest of Union Fort. The area was called Lovendahl’s Corner after Swen Lovendahl, an early settler.”
Now as the children died and their parents wailed among the huts, the Skidis knew that they had sinned; they were no better than apostates. So they decreed a tribal penance and a restoration of the apostolic church. They had a Sioux virgin and, in April, 1838, after their desperate winter, it was getting along toward planting time when the Morning Star must be worshipped. The victim must be kept in ignorance of her fate but she must be treated with unvarying kindness, venerated as an instrument of the supernaturals, and fattened by constant feasting — always eating alone since if anyone were her host another taboo would require him to protect and defend her. An extended ritual began at the time appointed, fasting, dancing, prophesying, singing, with all the riot and ecstasy these must eventually develop. On the morning of the last day the virgin was sent about the village to ask for wood and sticks. The priests took such of them as were ritualistically proper and consecrated them. Two posts were erected on a platform; two crosspieces joined them and a slow fire was built between them. At dusk after purifying her and themselves for the last time, the priests stripped their offering naked, painted half her body black and the other half red, and suspended her by wrists and ankles between the posts, over the smoky fire. Many boys who had also been ceremonially purified then shot the stiff stalks of joint-grass into her breast and body, scores of them. The reeds penetrated only a little way; some of them caught fire and burned. All this was done with an intricate accompaniment of sacred chants and dances, all supervised by the medicine men since to err in the sacrifice would be to make the god angrier, and all bringing on the frenzy. The holy incense billowed with the smoke, the firelight rose and fell, fat dripped into it from the pierced body of the shrieking girl — till at last the ordinance was fulfilled and a priest shot an arrow into her heart. He and his assistants then cut out the heart and burned it, and cut the flesh from her bones and buried it in the cornfields or gave it to the tribal dogs. They left the skeleton hanging there on its frame and the Morning Star was appeased …. Thus the Skidi Pawnees, trying to eradicate evil from the world.
Bernard De Voto, Across the Wide Missouri, p. 293-94
Women's Recording of Gravesites
There is a kind of murderous precision in the women’s recounting of mishap. Surely, the accounts must be viewed as a reflection of the continuing anxieties they felt. But the more one reads these diaries, the more one comes to feel the passionate indictment, the bitter appraisal by the women of the men’s determination to make the journey. However bravely the women started, however they mustered their strength to meet the demands of each day, however they rallied to appreciate the splendors of the scenery, the women were intimately affected by the journey’s dreadful toll. Their responses depended upon whether their own lives were placed within the processes of childbearing and childrearing, or whether they were still in their girlhood years. Buoyant spirits are almost always in the diaries of unmarried girls and young wives. Accounts shade and darken in the pages of women whose energies were spent nursing and caring for infants and small children.
Lillian Schlissel, Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey, p. 115
Two Can Keep a Secret
“In a great many tales of the same type the “curse” on the treasure is human greed. An old proverb, common among prospectors as well as others, reminds us that “two can keep a secret if one of them is dead.” The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is a dramatic enactment of that proverb, as is Chaucer’s Pardoner’s Tale.
Bruce Rosenberg, The Code of the West, p. 43
Pony Express and Chorpenning's Assets
“Numerous efforts were now began to be made to secure Mr. Chorpenning’s interest and position in the work, but failing in this by direct purchase, influences were brought upon the Post Office Department, and under the most shameful and positively false pretexts his contract, still having over two years to run, and his pay just on the eve of being increased from $190,000 per annum to $400,000, was annulled, and all his life’s earnings, with ten years of most arduous and severe labor, confiscated to him, and absolutely given to persons, who had never been in the country a day, and had never contributed one dollar’s worth of means or labor in its opening and development.”
Henry H. Clifford (comp.), Mail Service, Settlement of the Country, and the Indian Depredations, p. 9
Steers Make the Best Oxen
Bulls can be trained to pull a wagon, but steers (that is, castrated males) are preferred, largely because they grow larger and stronger. . . .
“Because he has longer legs and he’s taller, an ox can travel much faster than a bull. Also,” Ford continues, “even though the bull may have a big burst of energy, like for fighting—because of its testosterone—, a steer would have more total muscle. So although a bull could easily kill any steer [in a fight], in working, the steer will have enduring power that lasts all day long, whereas the bull’s energy quickly burns up, and then he’s completely depleted.”
Dixon Ford and Lee Kreutzer, "Oxen: Engines of the Emigration," Overland Journal, V. 33. No. 1 (2015), p. 6
Woodson's Mail Contract to Salt Lake City
“Samuel H. Woodson won the first federal postal contract to provide monthly mail service over South Pass to Great Salt Lake City for $19,500 per annum on July 1, 1850. . . .
Woodson contracted with Mormon mail carriers Ephraim Hanks and Feramorz Little, Brigham Young’s nephew, to handle the service between Fort Laramie and Salt Lake . . . Bad weather trapped Little and an Indian assistant with the November mail in 1852. ‘They were lost for several days about South Pass, and struggled though the snow for almost a month. The two men eventually abandoned their horses, cached the bulk mail, and dragged some of the letters over the mountains. The route proved unprofitable, and Woodson abandoned the business early in 1854.”
Will Bagley, South Pass: Gateway to a Continent, Location 3820-3825 [Kindle Edition]
Competing Routes to the West
William Lander, chief engineer on the Lander Cutoff from South Pass to Fort Hall, stationed “an old mountaineer, Charles H. Miller, at the South Pass [for the winter] to make weather observations and direct the earliest immigration to the new road in the spring of 1859. Miller was faithful in the performance of his assignment untilled killed in a gun fight in early March . . .
Lander reached South Pass at the close of June to discover that traders along the old routes to Soda Springs and Salt lake Valley were meeting emigrants and trying to divert them from his new road. Miller’s murder of the previous winter was indirectly attributed to these men, so Lander stationed a former soldier of his party at Gilbert’s Trading Post to inform travelers of the advantages of the federal wagon road and present them with a published guide. Fist fights became weekly occurrences in the bid for the emigrant’s favor, so Lander decided it would be necessary to leave a blacksmith at the pass during the winter to ply his trade and explain the merits of the road.”
[N.B. See also Unruh: “In his reports Landers complained about the ‘designing parties’ (in particular, Mormons and mountaineers) who energetically directed emigrants to travel on the established trail while casting aspersions on the new government route—which bypassed their trading posts and green River ferries.” John D. Unruh, Jr., The Plains Across, p. 300]
W. Turrentine Jackson, Wagon Roads West, p. 209-213
Sharing Blankets
“Mat, the other Irishman, I consider in special my comrade; we slept for three months in the same waggon and under the same blankets. I made his acquaintance here by curing him of ague with a dose of quinine, a good deed never forgotten.”
William Chandless, Chandless, W. (1857). A Visit to Salt Lake, p. 20-21
Lodgepole Creek
“Our Camp at Pole Creek the night’ of November 4, 1864, was very bleak and dreary. Pole Creek was a vast trough in the plateau. It had a bed wide enough for the Mississippi River at St. Louis. Through this bed the arroyo of the stream ran, a bed of beautiful tawny sand about a hundred yards wide, and cut down from ten to fifteen feet. Sometimes the arroyo was wider, and sometimes narrower, but from Julesburg to the crossing, thirty-five miles, there was nothing, as before stated, in the shape of a tree or bush. It was absolutely devoid of any vegetation except the grass. And above the arroyo the ‘flood plain’ of the stream, if it could be so called, was as level as a floor for distances out of sight. Occasionally in the arroyo there were little clumps of drift roots and brush, sometimes a small, dead, drifted pine. Lodgepole Creek was said to have a well-defined bed for two hundred miles, and to head at the Cheyenne Pass, in the Rocky Mountains.”
Eugene Ware, Indian Wars of 1864, p. 364
Camels in the West
“On March 3, 1855, Congress appropriated $30,000, which was placed at the disposal of the Secretary of War for the purpose of introducing camels into the United States for the use of the army in transportation. Jefferson Davis took the keenest interest in the experiment, directing it personally. He ordered Major Henry C. Wayne of the army to proceed to the Levant and purchase a shipload of camels. On February 11, 1856, Major Wayne wrote from Smyrna that he had purchased the camels, which were then on board the Supply, in command of Lieutenant D. D. Porter of the navy. The camels were landed at Indianola, Texas, and sent inland by way of Victoria and San Antonio to a camp known as Camp Verde, near the Bandera Pass. On February 10, 1857, another shipload arrived, bringing the number of camels to about seventy-five.
When Jefferson Davis left the War Department in 1857 the experiment passed into the hands of men who were less interested in it than he. The camels were used in short expeditions in western Texas, and they made at least one trip to California, where some of them remained. Though they were praised for their ability to travel over the dry, rough country of the Southwest, to go without water, and to carry heavy burdens, the experiment ended in failure and the final disappearance of the animals. Jefferson Davis justified the experiment at national expense by stating that he had introduced the camels for use in the army anywhere and everywhere; but the fact remains that they were used only in the Great Plains region. Had the experiment succeeded, it would have been of most benefit to the South: it would have tied the Far West to the South until the railroads were completed. The bringing of the camels to the United States appears to later generations as a bit of national humor. But when we bear in mind the opinion then held by practically every informed person regarding the conditions in the Great Plains, the experiment becomes intelligible and reasonable, an effort to solve temporarily the problem of transportation across the Great American Desert.”
Walter Prescott Webb, The Great Plains, p. 199-200
Mail as Instrument of Empire
As soon as the idea of the overland stage was suggested, the postal feature of it became subsidiary to other interests. The Senate Committee in 1849 recognized then that here was a scheme for stimulating the movement of population into the West. The overland stage would promote emigration by establishing a safe line of travel; it would lead to the development of the resources of the West; it would bind California to the Union, socially and politically, by affording quick communication between coast and coast; its stations would become the nuclei of settlements; and, above all, it would prepare the way for the much-talked-of Pacific railroad.
Curtis Nettles, "The Overland Mail Issue During the 1850s," The Missouri Historical Review, XVIII, no. 4 (1924), 522
Abandonded Gear by the 49ers
More significant than anything that happened to the Mormon companies on the road in 1849 was the news that came back from the valley with Almon Babbitt early in September. The Gentile trains boiling toward the gold fields had not only suffered sever from cholera and measles, especially during the first half of their journey, but they had been reckless of their animals and equipment all the way, and they suffered the consequences after they left the easy Platte valley and came into the mountains. Babbitt reported that the gold seekers, convinced that warnings against salerarus water beyond Last Crossing were a “Mormon humbug” had suffered crippling losses of animals, and that the stretch between Last Crossing and Independence Rock was all but impossible to travel through because of the stench from the 2,000 dead oxen along it. And there was more than ox carcasses along the road. Furniture, clothing, food, tools, wagons, had to be thrown away or abandoned as the animals gave out and men converted in desperation to packhorse or shank’s mare. The profitable pastime of scavenging the trail, sometimes as far east as Fort Laramie, got its start among the Saints during this year. But they hardly had to scavenge the trail, for hundreds of California pilgrims limped into the Salt Lake Valley in a state of collapse, and most of them either sold off belongings to lighten their loads across the desert, or converted wagon outfits into packtrains for the last leg, or bought food and livestock to replace what they had lost. The Saints so enjoyed the experience of skinning the Gentiles that they were in danger of trading away too much of their hard-won grain crop and bringing another lean winter on themselves. Apart from that danger, the whole summer was a great profitable picnic. A man might get three or four good heavy wagons for one light one, six or eight worn oxen or mules for a single team of fresh ones, and after three or four weeks in the valley pastures the worn-out ones would be freshened up for another profitable trade. Cloth, clothing, tools, everything that great expectation had loaded up for California fell into Mormon hands at half its wholesale cost in the States, and in a single season corrected the condition of painful shortage in which the Saints had been living.
Wallace Stegner, The Gathering of Zion, p 206-207
Arrow Poison
“Mose Wright described the Indian arrow-poison. The rattlesnake the copperhead and the moccasin he ignored is caught with a forked stick planted over its neck, and is allowed to fix its fangs in an antelope’s liver. The meat, which turns green, is carried upon a skewer when wanted for use: the flint-head of an arrow, made purposely to break in the wound, is thrust into the poison, and when withdrawn is covered with a thin coat of glue. Ammonia is considered a cure for it, and the Indians treat snakebites with the actual cautery. “
Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 482
Emigrant Impressions of Salt Lake City
“To the Argonauts of ’49, the Mormons were a fascinating enigma. They had declared themselves an independent state and were functioning in that status; but actually the group was a more or less benevolent dictatorship with Brigham Young at the head, and he, partly from the exigencies of the situation and partly from temperament, would not tolerate adverse comments.
To the men of the migration who kept journals (rather a superior group on the whole) this gag rule was the most offensive item encountered. For the kindly and helpful people as a whole they had very little but praise. The Mormons were quite destitute of comforts, but industrious and thrifty. Furthermore they were destined to succeed. What little they had, they shared with those in need of help, and many an invalid remained in Salt Lake City to be nurtured back to health. The chief elders were masters of budget balancing. They carefully trained their people to turn the needs of the migration to good account, and blacksmith shops and vegetable gardens brought marvelous returns. At first they refused coin, which had no value to them, and would only accept articles that were ‘hard to come by.’ Coffee and sugar are most often mentioned, but by 1852 they had sent to France for the sugar beet and had it under cultivation.
To the women of the migration this large settlement of adobe houses was a welcome sight, and the reassuring glimpses of ordinary women like themselves at home in neat kitchens gave them confidence. Of course they had a perfectly human and rather excited curiosity about a community where the men might have all the wives they could support, and where spinsterhood was unknown. Some women of the wagon trains, both young and old, went fo farther west. . . .
Irrefutably, the Mormon doctrines attracted undesirables as naturally and unavoidably as adventurers followed the lure of gold to California, and often it was these low-minded marqueraders who brought contumely upon the whole colony. But, in the main, the people themselves were kindly and well ordered.
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 299, 301
Territories Reserved for the White Race
Westering Americans believed that overspreading the continent with their yearly multiplying millions was a God-given right, perhaps even pre-ordained. They envisioned a nation of white people extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Renowned newspaperman Horace Greeley, who made famous the exhortation, “Go West, young man!” “hoped the territories [would] be reserved for the benefit of the white race.” Abraham Lincoln and many other influential people also had concerns about black migration and competition with whites for land and jobs. Some of those potentially affected took steps to try and ensure whites-only development. In 1843, emigrants in the first large Oregonbound wagon train established a pattern others would follow. Their charter stated that, “No Black or Mulatto person shall, in any case or any circumstance whatever, be admitted into this Society [wagon train], or be permitted to emigrate with it.”
In spite of such prohibitions, a few thousand free and enslaved African Americans traveled the Oregon- California-Mormon Trail.
Todd Guenther, “‘Could These Bones Be From a Negro?’” Overland Journal 19, no. 2 (Summer 2001), 45-46
Miller, Russell & Company
Being bankrupt and going in deeper every day did not dampen Russell’s sanguine spirit or put a crimp in his tendency to speculate. In the spring of 1858, when every dollar was needed to keep things going, he, with Waddell who knew better but was unable to resist Russell’s enthusiasm, formed a partnership with A. B. Miller of Leavenworth, known as Miller, Russell & Company. They sent a train load of goods to Utah where stores were opened at Salt Lake City, Millersburg, and Camp Floyd. By the fall of 1858 the concern owed Russell, Majors & Waddell $200,000.00.47
Settle and Settle, "Napoleon of the West," Annals of Wyoming Vol. 32, No.1, April 1960, p. 23
War Department's Sale of Arms at Cost
“Considering the heavy armament favored by overlanders—fostered in part by the War Department’s enticing 1849 offer to sell pistols, rifles, and ammunition at cost to California and Oregon emigrants—it was not surprising that a great many gunshot victims made their way to the fort hospitals. . . .
According to Texas senator Thomas S. Rusk, the rationale for the 1849 congressional authorization of $50,000 for the sale of weapons at cost was that westbound emigrants should not go forth without adequate ‘means of defence.’ . . . The cut-rate prices for rifles, muskets, carbines, pistols, and ammunition remained in effect during 1850.”
John D. Unruh, Jr., The Plains Across, p. 229 and 412
Marcus Whitman
“The next year, 1835, when the traders’ great caravan under Fontenelle came west to the rendezvous, they brought two other famous men, Samuel Parker and the young Marcus Whitman, bot missionaries. Men of the cloth were unwelcome among the rough packers, and at first their resentment took the form of petty annoyances; but cholera struck the party, and Whitman, beside being a man of God, was a doctor. He worked tirelessly, saved several lives, including that of Fontenelle himself, and cemented a lifelong friendship with many of the traders and mountain men. A the rendezvous he made an incision in Jim Bridger’s back and removed an Indian arrowhead which had been embedded in the flesh for some years.”
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 326-327
Night Herd
“Some operators, seeking to reduce the size of their payroll, eliminated the extra hands and extra oxen and required the regular drivers to perform the night guard duties. Night herd was the most heartily detested duty a teamster could be called on to perform. One of them said, “It is impossible for anyone who has never had the experience, to realize the overpowering sense of sleepiness that comes over one after midnight, particularly after a strenuous day of yoking and unyoking the animals of his team, driving them to water, and walking beside them on the road when the train was moving.’ . . .
An experienced man on night herd would pick out a reliable old ox and lie down against him; thus, anything that disturbed the animal would rouse the man. On a cold night the body heat of the ox kept the man comfortable.”
Henry Pickering Walker, The Wagonmasters (1966), p. 118-119
Suckers and Pukes
“Through the magic of the Internet, we managed to find an 1854 volume called History of Illinois From Its Commencement as a State in 1818 to 1857, penned by “the late Gov. Thomas Ford” which promised a “full account of the Black Hawk War, the rise, progress and fall of Mormonism, the Alton and Lovejoy riots and other important and interesting events.”
It also explains the origin of the nicknames “pukes” and “suckers.”
First the suckers. Back in the late 1820s, migrant workers from southern Illinois began traveling up the Mississippi River in the spring to work in the Galena lead mines and then back down the river to their homes in the fall. This, the late Gov. Ford noted, mirrored the migratory patterns of “the fishy tribe called ‘Suckers.'”
But there’s another, less charitable though more interesting explanation. A “sucker” is a sprout off the main stem of a tobacco plant that sucks off nutrients and has to be plucked off so that the plant will thrive. The southern part of Illinois, the late Gov. Ford explained, was originally settled by poor Southerners who “were asserted to be a burthen upon the people of wealth; and when they removed to Illinois, they were supposed to have stripped themselves off from the stem of the tobacco plant, and gone away to perish like the stem of the tobacco plant.”
As it happened, the Galena mines were full of workers from Missouri, too, and they didn’t get along very well with the miners from southern Illinois. “Analogies always abound with those who wish to be sarcastic,” the late Gov. helpfully notes, and so the Missourians started calling the southern Illinoisans “suckers.” Think of it as a precursor to “hoosier.”
In retaliation, the suckers started calling the hated Missourians “pukes” because…well, let’s let the late Gov. explain because he does a far better job than we can.
It had been observed that the lower lead mines in Missouri had sent up to the Galena country whole hoards of uncouth ruffians, from which it was inferred that Missouri had taken a “Puke,” and had vomited forth to the upper lead mines, all her worse population. From thenceforth, the Missourians were called “Pukes;” and by these names of “Suckers” and “Pukes,” the Illinoians and Missourians are likely to be called, amongst the vulgar, forever.
Sadly, when the time came to copyright their slogans, Illinois and Missouri went with the less-colorful Land of Lincoln and Show-Me State (though some of the legends around the Show-Me State nickname still aren’t especially complimentary toward Missourians), and apparently “Suckers” and “Pukes” were too vulgar for college football. The illustration of the puking Missouri pig is still charming, though.
“Today nothing remains but a few old stones from which the old well has long since caved in with rock and dirt. It was not only was a change station for the Pony Express until its demise as well as the Overland Stage Line until 1869, but it later served the Hill Beachy Road to Hamilton and the White Pine Mines.”
Before service on this line began, a storm of protest over its length was raised in California and the East. In spite of complaints, however, Butterfield laid out his route, built stations, bought equipment, and stocked it with good horses. Service began on September 16, 1858. The criticisms continued in spite of the fact that the coaches ran with amazing regularity and on schedule time.
Raymond W. Settle, "The Pony Express, Heroic Effort—Tragic End," Utah Historical Quarterly, Vol. 27 n.2, p. 105
Bloodthirsty Slade Story
“The bullwhackers in camp, when there were no wheels to fix, tires to tighten, boxes to wedge, oxen to shoe, or clothes to wash or mend, could sleep, play cards, write letters or tell stories. The stories of one old bullwhacker who had seen much of frontier life were quite interesting. He would tell about the noted stage company boss, Jack Slade, who caught one of his stage tenders listening at a door and who whipped out his bowie knife and cut the listener’s ear off, telling him if he ever caught him doing it again, he would cut his heart out—and hundreds of other such bloodthirsty stories.”
John Bratt, Tales of Yesterday, p. 55
Signs for Tribes
” . . . and spoke of the loss of the Sioux [at Ash Hollow], making the sign of that nation—rather an unpleasant one, the hand drawn edgewise across the throat. The sign of the Crows is the fore-finger jerked about in the air peculiarly; of the Snakes making an undulating line with the finger pointing to the ground; and so of other nations or tribes.”
William Chandless, Chandless, W. (1857). A Visit to Salt Lake, p. 75-76
Removal of Winter Quarters
“When Brigham Young returned from Utah in October after successfully establishing Salt Lake City, he realized that most of the emigrants would be able to move on in 1848. A half-way station would still be needed for those yet to come, but perhaps it would lessen difficulties if they placed it on a legal basis by removing it to the Potawatomi lands [east of the Mississippi]. Thus, the High Council decided in January, 1848, to order the abandonment of Winter Quarters. Citing the heavy losses from Indian depredations as well as other reasons, their leaders told Saints remaining west of the Missouri either to go ahead to Utah in 1848 or to move back across the river. The new forwarding station became known as Kanesville and proved to be the site of present-jay Council Bluffs, Iowa.”
Robert A. Trennert, Jr., "The Conflict Over Winter Quarters, 1846-1848," p. 395-96
Mile 1870: Reese River
“Below us, ‘Reese’s River’ Valley might have served for a sketch in the African desert: a plain of saleratus, here yellow with sand or hay, there black with fire, there brown where the skin of earth showed through her garb of rags, and beyond it were chocolate-colored hills, from whose heads curled blue smokes of volcanic appearance. Bisecting the barren plain ran a bright little stream, whose banks, however, had been stripped of their ‘salt grass:’ pure and clear it flows over a bed of gravel, sheds in a northerly direction, and sinks at a distance of about twenty miles.”
Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 486
Packing for the Emigration
“Strange paraphernalia gathered in the Bowen barn and the Bowens were preparing a granary that would have seen the family through a famine year. At least two hundred pounds of flour or meal per person, the Guide said, The Emigrants’ Guide to Oregon and California by Lansford W. Hastings, whose arrival in California Jim Clyman had recorded. All the Bowens thumbed that small volume, arguing, checking, refuting. Twenty pounds of sugar, ten pounds of salt . . . everyone will require at least twice as much as he would need at home, since there will be no vegetables . . . some buffalo can be counted on – and along the icebound Sangamon Bill Bowen sees himself riding down a shaggy beast straight out of fable . . . such goods for the Indian trade as beads, tobacco, handkerchiefs, cheap pantaloons, butcher knives, fish hooks – so young Bill and Nancy and Henry Clay and Joe will truly trade fish hooks for moccasins with a feathered topknot beside streams that are also straight out of fable. That topknot looks just like Tecumseh or Pontiac, and the streams of fable, the Platte, the Snake, the Green, are just such known rivers as the Sangamon, the Connecticut, the Maumee. While the north wind howls over the rooftree, it seems impossible that, come summer, Bill and Nancy Bowen will be unyok- Build Thee More Stately Mansions 45 ing the oxen while the “caral” forms on the banks of the Sweetwater, but they will be, for on page 147 Mr. Hastings says so.”
Bernard De Voto, The Year of Decision, 1846, p. 44-45
Midpoint Between the Missouri River and Fort Laramie
“Fort Kearny was the true beginning of the Great Platte River Road, for it was here that various trail strands joined to become one grand highway for the western migrations. . . . Fort Kearny was recognized as the port of call of the Nebraska Coast, the end of the shakedown cruise across the prairie and the beginning of the voyage across the perilous ocean of the Great Plains, a place to pause and reflect, to recuperate, to reorganize, to get your bearings. For the fainthearted it was a good opportunity to change their minds, make a 180-degree turn, and go back where they came from before they became committed to California and later, somewhere out in the Great American Desert, reached the point of no return. . . .
Fort Kearny and the head of Grand Island were nearly synonymous in terms of general location. They were both reckoned at midpoint between St. Joe (the number one jumping-off point on the Missouri River) and Fort Laramie, at a distance of some 600 miles plus. As to the merits of the fort’s location, many elements were considered other than the equidistance from the Missouri River to Fort Laramie, the relative proximity of the 100th meridian (the theoretical dividing line between prairie and plains), or the quantity of timber on Grand Island.
Merrill J. Mattes, The Great Platte River Road, p. 193-194
Mile 1530: Egan's/Deep Creek Station
“Originally named Deep Creek for a creek of the same name in the area, the name was later changed to Ibapah, an anglicized form of the Goshute word Ai-bim-pa or Ai’bĭm-pa which means “White Clay Water.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibapah,_Utah
======================
“Fourteen miles from Round Station via the original trail.
“Deep Creek was the home of Howard Egan, the division superintendent for service between Salt Lake City, Utah, and Roberts Creek (near Eureka, Nevada). This well-equipped and service functioning facility was the most westerly station located within the present boundaries of Utah. The western boundary of the Utah Territory at this time was the California state line and Genoa the most westerly Utah Territory station.
“Harrison Sevier was the station master. Several photographs exist. Buildings included an adobe station, house, and barn. The telegraph established a repeater station at this location in 1861 with George Ferguson being the telegrapher. The station site is presently on the ranch of Sidney (DeVerl) Nichols, Jr. Incidentally, Joan and Hilda Erikson paid for the last telegraph message to be sent from this station in 1869.”
“Every family had great affection for their oxen, which were greeted with names like Rouser, Old Bailey, Brindle and Bright, and Old Smut and Snarley; and when, in the extremity of the journey, oxen died of thirst or exhaustion, the owner’s grief was as much for the loss of a valued friend as for being marooned in the wilderness. The joy of the Belle Somers family knew no bounds when ‘the late lamented Snider,’ an ox, reappeared in the desert, having survived only because he stumbled upon a waterhole.”
Merrill J. Mattes, The Great Platte River Road, p. 41
Mile 1316: Mountain Dale/Mountain Dell/Big Canyon/Hanks Station
“A vandalized monument in the NW1/4 of the NW1/4 of Section 36 presently marks the location of the assumed station site. . . .
“Upon checking the USGS quad map, it can be seen that Little Mountain Summit is west of the presently marked station site, in section 36. It should be noted that the roads do not go over Little Mountain, but do go over Little Mountain summit. The 1881 survey plat shows the currently marked location as Cook’s house and barn. West of the summit, however, in Section 33 (See Figure 12) the surveyor records a cabin at the mouth of what is now named Freeze Creek. This site, incidently, is about equidistant between the Salt Lake House and Wheaton Springs. It should be also noted the name “Mountain Dale” appears on the 1861 Mail contract. Granted, that Mountain Dale has been a long standing name in its present geographic location, but could Mountain Dale, the name given to the Hanks station site, have been unknowingly changed by later historians and writers?”
“In the beginning St. Joseph was the pet project of Joseph Robidoux, one of the six Robidoux brothers of pioneer and fur-trading fame. He commissioned two men to submit plans for the city. One of them presented a drawing which he had titled St. Joseph after the patron saint of his employer. Both plan and name appealed to Robidoux—and St. Joseph it became. It was only natural that it should be a favorite take-off for the overland trail, for it lay a full two-day steamer journey from Independence, up the Missouri toward the mouth of the Platte, every mile of which was an advantage. In addition it was considered to be seventy miles farther west—or about four day’s steady travel by ox team.”
irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 54
Waiting to Emigrate
“[Emigrants] had time to be married, to be born, or to die while they waited in camp for the grass to sprout upon the prairie. This was absolutely vital, for, until it was high enough to provide feed for the animals, only those horse and mule teams carrying grain dared to start the journey. . . .
Little as they liked the delay, it was sometimes a good thing. For, unless the emigrant was the provident type who had brought his own teams, he must get them from among the contumacious animals presented for his inspection at the markets of Independence; and in nine cases out of ten, both he and the newly acquired livestock were in for trouble.
Half-broken or, in many instances, totally wild steers and mules were calmly sold to men who might never in their lives have driven anything more dangerous than a buggy mare. . . .
John E. Brown wrote that, after he had found pairs that would not start a fight on sight, it was next to impossible to get four that would tolerate each other. In which case the leaders (having the advantage of position) kicked the wheelers clear out of the harness.”
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 5-6
Willamette Valley
Listening to the inner voice, Jason Lee entered on his mission, a long way from Flathead Lake, and consecrated the Lord’s house. It was built in the Willamette Valley, one of the great valleys of the world. When the missionaries reached French Prairie, so named because superannuated voyageurs of the Hudson’s Bay Company had settled there and made farms, they recognized a leading. They began to fell trees, hew puncheons, and split clapboards. Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin – beside hundreds of creeks thousands of movers were doing just the same, a brotherhood of axe and adze and frow who supply an American symbol. The little cabin they built beside the Willamette sixty-odd miles up from its mouth was just any cabin in any clearing – except that it was raised in Oregon and the American empire would form round it like a pool. McLoughlin approved the decision from a tangle of conflicting values, desires, company policies, and blunders. He had them out of the mountains, he had them south of the Columbia, and if the end was foreseeable, why, he had new friends to talk to. He sold them seed and cattle and all the material and supplies they needed. They drove an American furrow in Oregon soil and began to think of starting a school and preaching to the Indians. Some Indian boys and girls came in and asked to stay – dirty, lousy, and so nearly naked that clothes had to be made for them at once. A special providence of God had given some of this handful of rice-Christians pointed heads, like those which William Walker had not seen. They were Chinooks: providence had furnished the mission some broken-spirited novices who would be docile. That attended to, Lee opened the solicitation of his Mission Board that was to last for years. Send us families, send us females, send us laymen – send us farmers, mechanics, workmen – send us machinery and plows and fruit trees and seed. Send us ‘temporals’ – we have enough divines. Send us colonizers, empire-builders, a population. This is the richest land in the world.
Bernard De Voto, Across the Wide Missouri, p. 212
Five-Hundred Dollars Per Round Trip
“Whether from patriotism or in hope that it would lead to the coveted mail subsidy, William Russell stepped forward with an astounding offer: By using swift saddle horses in short relays, his firm would supply semiweekly ten-day mail service between St. Joseph and San Francisco for five hundred dollars a round trip.”
Ralph Moody, The Old Trails West, p. 294
Black Hills
“The name (no relation to South Dakota’s Black Hills) comes from the dark stands of pine, spruce, and cedar that dot the slopes. Travelers on both the north and south sides of the North Platte had to swing away from the river to bypass the impassable canyons. South-side travelers had to pass through the Black Hills. North-side travelers after 1850 could stay on the north side of the river along a route called Child’s Cutoff. Either way was rough.”
Keith Heyer Meldahl, Hard Road West, p. 78, n. 2
Mile 437: Cottonwood Station
“Eighty miles west of Fort Kearney the emigrants found a spring surrounded by cottonwoods. Near it the ravines were filled with scrub cedar. It was always a favorite camp and later became an important stage stop with the unimaginative name Cottonwood Spring. The cedar wood was freighted by ox train for a hundred miles in each direction to supply the stations, and the cottonwood logs were cut and hauled for building purposes. When the Indians became troublesome Fort McPherson was established close by; and we saw its flag, high and tiny but unmistakable, long before we arrived in sight of the buildings. The stage station disappeared long ago, but the fort remains, surrounded by the beautifully kept grounds of a national cemetery.”
[N.B. The Fort McPherson marker is just before Mile 435 on the Pony Express Bikepacking Route.]
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 100-102
Mile 1311-1322: Mountain Dell to Journey's End
“[From Little Mountain] Seven miles yet intervened between these recklessly intermingled people and the City of the Great Salt Lake, most of them in narrow, rock-bound brushy Emigration Canyon.
Between Emigrant Canyon and the city the wagons slowly filed past the spot, now called Journey’ End, where Brigham Young spoke the well remembered words, ‘This is the place.’ Just ahead the ‘City of the Saints’ spread before them, three miles in each direction.”
[N.B. This area is now called “This is the Place Heritage Park.”]
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 297
Bradford & Company, Denver
By midsummer 1859, Majors and Waddell were convinced that there was something substantial about the Pike’s Peak business after all. Together with Russell they formed a partnership with Robert B. Bradford, a relative of Waddell, known as R. B. Bradford & Company, to open a store in Denver. Bradford was to operate it and receive one third of the profits. The goods were furnished by Russell, Majors and Waddell.
Settle and Settle, "Napoleon of the West," Annals of Wyoming Vol. 32, No.1, April 1960, p. 27
Mile 939: Clayton's Slough
West of Rock Avenue on the Oregon Trail in what’s now central Wyoming, emigrants came to an odorous, swampy place where their livestock often got stuck in the mud and risked poisoning if they drank the alkaline water.
William Clayton, diarist for the first Mormon pioneer company in 1847 and author of a guidebook to the trail published a year later, called it Alkali Swamp; other travelers called it Alkali Spring. A more recent historian in Casper, Wyo., the late Lee Underbrink, amused by the disgust Clayton’s journal expressed for the site, dubbed it Clayton’s Slough.
Clayton’s Slough in emigrant trail days often trapped livestock and sometimes poisoned them. In wet times, above, and drier, below, it is still noticeable today on Natrona County 319 between Rock Avenue and Willow Spring. The posts are pilings from an earlier bridge. Wyoming SHPO.“It is strong of salt or rather saleratus and smells extremely filthy,” Clayton wrote June 19, 1847, of one of the two small streams that join at the place. “Its banks are so perfectly soft that a horse or ox cannot go down to drink without sinking immediately nearly overhead, in thick, filthy mud, and is one of the most horrid, swampy, stinking places I ever saw.”
So miry was the place that men, mules and oxen often got badly stuck.
August 13, 1843, was very hot, diarist Theodore Talbot wrote, and one man, leading a horse and mule and spying the little stream, turned off to give them a drink.
“We had hardly reached it,” wrote Talbot, “when he suddenly found the ground giving way under him, alarmed at so unusual an occurrence which appeared nothing less than a special and pressing invite to the company of his very Satanic Majesty, he retraced his steps pretty nimbly, once more reaching Terra Firma safe and sound.”
Not so the horse, Old John, nor Jane the big-headed mule, Talbot wrote. “On looking round he could see but the nose of the one, and the head of the other floating round in a sort of white, semi-fluid lake.” The man called for help, other men brought ropes and after much pulling and hauling, with some of the men partly sinking in as well, “forth came the two animals, looking exceedingly miserable and covered with a white coat, which grew hard very rapidly in the air. This little incident, together with [Thomas] Fitzpatrick’s heartfelt regrets that the trio, mule, horse and man, alike worthless, hadn’t gone to _____ in a family party, afforded much amusement to the rest of the men, at Sam Neal’s expense.”
On current maps the little creek of alkali water coming from the northwest is named Poison Spring Creek. Ironically, this is the creek that Clayton says was of “not very bad water,” while the much smaller stream, now unnamed, coming from the southwest, was much more alkali, so much so that according to Clayton, “the cattle wouldn’t drink it.”
Any parties unlucky enough to camp at the spot had to post guard at night to keep the animals away from the muck.
“The grass was tolerable but we had to keep a guard with the mules all the time to keep them from swamping in the spouty places,” James Pritchard wrote on June 13, 1849. “A man would sink to his neck instantly. Several of the men fell in during the night. I saw 5 head of Oxen sunk down to their hornes, and their owners had to extricate them by attaching ropes to their heads & pulling them out.
Some men and livestock did drink the water, as they had just come more than 20 miles from the last good water at the North Platte, and were very thirsty.
During the peak years of the California gold rush, 1849-1852, the water seems to have become entirely unfit for use. Emigrant accounts testify to the dozens of dead and dying animals around the slough and all along the road the next four miles to good water at Willow Spring—and beyond.
“All along the road lay ox after oxen dead,” wrote Patrick McLeod June 26, 1849. “Within a few miles of the spring lay dead 4 yoke of oxen killed by lightning. They lay as they stood in the yokes– two by two– twas a sorrowful sight.”
Eleven days later, emigrant Charles Darwin—no known relation to the famous naturalist—reported he “saw in one place where a whole team of eight had fallen in the yoke & died in their tracks,” apparently the same ones McLeod had seen earlier. But they were by no means the only ones. “Dead oxen marked all the road & no mile but offended the nostril with its effluvia. At one of those springs being very thirsty I was strongly tempted to drink but [it] seemed prudent to enquire of some wagon camped there who told me it was poison,” Darwin wrote.
The swamp itself is apparently much diminished since trail days. It is now partially filled in by road construction, and it’s likely that the two streams converging to form the swamp run far less water than they did during the trail era. An earlier road crossed directly over the slough where a few bridge pilings are still visible now.
The emigrants’ fear of the Indians was equaled only by their ignorance of the Indians’ ways. They seldom knew, for example. that it was common custom among many tribes to offer strangers a token of hospitality, and Indians often expected such tokens from those who were traveling through their lands. Emigrants almost always wrote of the Indians who came up “begging” to their wagons, and they found the habit “disgusting.”
Lillian Schlissel, Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey, p. 118
Douceur
“The strongest stomachs of the party made tea, and found some milk which was not more than one quarter flies. This succulent meal was followed by the usual douceur. On this road, however mean or wretched the fare, the stationkeeper, who is established by the proprietor of the line, never derogates by lowering his price.”
Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 30
1837 Mandan Cholera Epidemic
This was the second time smallpox had ravaged the Mandans, for it was an epidemic toward the end of the eighteenth century that had made them move from their old villages farther downriver and establish these near Knife River. The earlier epidemic had halved their population; this one killed much more than ninety per cent of them. The best estimate is that the tribe numbered about sixteen hundred in June, 1837. Few if any more than a hundred were alive six months later. 2 No tribal organization could be maintained; the survivors lived with the Minnetarees or the Arikaras from then on. There are no full-blooded Mandans today.
So ended a people whom most white men liked, though from the lesser Alexander Henry on there had been some who, like Chardon, abhorred them. They were the first of the Western Indians whom the white men knew as a tribe. (The elder Verendrye, who visited them in 1738-1739, had probably had predecessors.) They had always been friendly to white men. Lewis and Clark had spent a winter among them. So had many others, finding their manners agreeable, their living standard high since they had agriculture, their earth lodges comfortable, and their women ardent. They were not a predatory people; as Indians go, they were pacific and it was their stockades and fortifications rather than their valor that kept the Sioux from exterminating them. In fact, they suffered almost as much, over the years, from the Sioux and the Assiniboins as from the whites and their smallpox. But the whites did for them in the end. ‘Them,’ Chardon’s report of Four Bears’ speech runs, ‘them that I always considered as Brothers has turned Out to be My Worst enemies.’
Bernard De Voto, Across the Wide Missouri, p. 287
The Independence Road
“That section of the Oregon-California Trail commonly known in emigrant days as the Independence Road was first used by trading expeditions out of the Kansas City area in the 1830s. . . While trees are plentiful today, they were scarce in 1849 as the result of frequent prairie fires. The lack of wood and the numerous stream crossings were the biggest problems faced by the emigrants. . . .
The prairie road itself, ever winding to take advantage of contours, led Richard Hickman to explain, “A more crooked road never marked this green footstool.”
Merrill J. Mattes, The Great Platte River Road, p. 136-137
Pony Express War Dispatches to California
Throughout this crisis, news was received twice a week by the Pony Express, and, be it remembered, in less than half the time required by the old stage coach. Of its services then, no better words can be used than those of Hubert Howe Bancroft.
It was the pony to which every one looked for deliverance; men prayed for the safety of the little beast, and trembled lest the service should be discontinued. Telegraphic dispatches from Washington and New York were sent to St. Louis and thence to Fort Kearney, whence the pony brought them to Sacramento where they were telegraphed to San Francisco. Great was the relief of the people when Hole’s bill for a daily mail service was passed and the service changed from the Southern to the Central route, as it was early in thesummer. • • • Yet after all, it was to the flying pony that all eyes and hearts were turned.
The Pony Express was a real factor in the preservation of California to the Union.
Glenn D. Bradley, The Story of the Pony Express, p. 98-99
Bullwhackers
“Many young men were seeking a means to earn their their way to the western gold camps, and freighters took advantage of this situation by paying a bonus of ten dollars per month to any teamster who would take his discharge at the far end, thus reducing the payroll. . . . Such empty wagons as were not sold in the West could be hooked in tandem, three to five to a team, for the return trip.”
Henry Pickering Walker, The Wagonmasters (1966), p. 87
The Prairie Night Clock
“The stars of the Great Bear—the prairie night-clock—first began to pale without any seeming cause, till presently a faint streak of pale light dum i gurg, or the wolf’s tail, as it is called by the Persian began to shimmer upon the eastern verge of heaven. It grew and grew through the dark blue air . . .”
Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 131
Ferry Delay in Sacramento
From the Elwood Free Press, January 12, 1861. Fr. Kearny, Jan. 9—
The Pony Express passed about 11 last night. San Francisco, Dec. 26, 3:40 P.M.—The Pony Express, with St. Louis dates, telegraphed to Ft. Kearney on the 10th, arrived at Sacramento on Sun-day 23d, where it was detained twenty-four hours waiting for a steamer to take it to San Francisco. There being no Sunday boat. The Pony is delayed at Sacramento from one to two days, whenever it arrives there on Saturday, after two o’clock, P.M. The Express time table ought to be arranged so that the Pony will always arrive at Sacramento between Monday morning and Friday evening.
The data William Clayton] had gathered would be published in St. Louis, in time for the emigration of the next season, as THE LATTER-DAY SAINTS’ EMIGRANTS’ GUIDE, Being a Table of Distances, Showing All the Springs, Creeks, Rivers, Hills, Mountains, Camping Places, and All Other Notable Places, from Council Bluffs to the Valley of the Great Salt Lake, also, the Latitudes, Longitudes, and Altitudes of the Prominent Points on the Route, together with Remarks on the Nature of the Land, Timber, Grass, &c. The Whole Route Having Been Carefully Measured by a Roadometer, and the Distance from Point to Point, in English Miles, Accurately Shown. By W. Clayton. It was the most complete and reliable guide available for any strand of the Overland Trail, including that section between Fort Laramie and the Dry Sandy where all the strands fused. Appreciated or not by Clayton’s companions, it would be valued by thousands, both Mormon and Gentile, in the years to come—though actually more by Gentile than by Mormon, for the Saints, sheep guided by careful shepherds, had no need of a guidebook except to satisfy their curiosity about where they were. The copyright was in Clayton’s name.
Wallace Stegner, The Gathering of Zion, p 190
Emigration Route of European Mormons
So long as Nauvoo had been the place of gathering, New Orleans was the port at which they landed, and the Mississippi the route of their journey inland. Essentially the same route was re-established in 1848, with the addition that emigrants either went overland on the Mormon Road from near Keokuk to Council Bluffs or, like Piercy, took a Missouri River steamboat from St. Louis to the frontier. But in 1854 Brigham Young wrote to Franklin Richards, in charge of the English mission, instructing him to abandon the Mississippi River route because of the cholera and malaria on the river, and ship his passengers to Philadelphia, Boston, or New York, from which Church agents would send them by train to Pittsburgh, by Ohio River steamboat to St. Louis, and by Missouri River boat to some staging point. Because of this change, Kanesville fell into disuse as the jumping-off place. During 1854, Westport (essentially Kansas City) was the assembly point for the plains journey; in 1855 Mormon Grove, just outside of Atchison, Kansas, about midway between Westport and St. Joseph; from 1856 through 1858, either Iowa City, the first capital of Iowa, or Florence, Nebraska, which had grown up on the ashes of Winter Quarters. After 1858 all Mormon trains staged at Florence until the extension of the Union Pacific westward from the Missouri allowed a longer and longer train ride into the plains. In 1864, 1865, and 1866 emigrants rode the cars as far as Wyoming, Nebraska, in 1867 they could ride as far as North Platte, in 1868 to the city of Laramie and later to Benton, Wyoming, along a route that diverged from the old Mormon Trail at the forks of the Platte and crossed the mountains considerably to the south of South Pass.
Wallace Stegner, The Gathering of Zion, p 219-220
Mile 1900: Smith Creek Station
“Before 8 A.M. we were under way, bound for Smith’s Creek. Our path stretched over the remainder of Reese’s River Valley, an expanse of white sage and large rabbit-bush which affords fuel even when green. After a long and peculiarly rough divide [Smith Creek Summit], we sighted the place of our destination. It lay beyond a broad plain or valley [Smith Creek Valley], like a huge white “splotch” in the centre, set in dirty brown vegetation, backed by bare and rugged hills, which are snow-topped only on the north; presently we reached the ‘splotch,’ which changed its aspect from that of a muddy pool to a yellow floor of earth so hard that the wheels scarcely made a dent, except where a later inundation had caused the mud to cake, flake, and curl—smooth as ice without being slippery. Beyond that point, guided by streams meandering through willow thickets, we entered a kanyon—all are now wearying of the name—and presently sighted the station deep in a hollow. It had a good stone corral and the usual haystack, which fires on the hilltops seemed to menace.”
Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 486-487
Chorpenning's Pony Express
George Chorpenning, antedating the Pony Express by a little less than two years, established a one-time run along his new route south of the Humboldt River. When surveying the road in the fall of 1858, the idea of rapidly spanning the continent with President Buchanan’s second annual message appealed to his fancy. Undoubtedly, it would be considered a gracious gesture for the mail contractor who, in July, had pocketed the largest contract ever awarded over the Salt Lake City-Placerville route. Of course, there would also be favorable political attention attracted to the Central Route.
Accordingly, he approached Hockaday on the plan, and between them they pooled $8,000 to defray expenses. Supposedly, he also contacted a special agent of the President, appointed to distribute copies of the speech to competing forms of transportation prior to general release of it to the newspapers. With these tentative arrangements concluded, fresh horses were posted about 18 miles apart all along the route, and everything put in a state of readiness.
Roy S. Bloss, Pony Express—The Great Gamble, 14
The Nebraska City Road
“The most underrated and least understood approach to the Platte was that from Old Fort Kearney at Table Creek, which became Nebraska City in 1854. . . .[T]his was a major route for Russell, Majors and Waddell and other freighting outfits which served the military posts, Denver, and Salt Lake.”
Merrill J. Mattes, The Great Platte River Road, p. 164
Russell's First Business Failure
In 1838 he resigned his position at Aull’s, and in partnership with James S. Allen and William Early opened a retail store under the name of Allen, Russell & Company. Whether this was in “Old Town” or the new addition is not known, although it probably was the former. . . .
The only thing which seems to have marred this period of prosperity [1838-1845] was the failure of Allen, Russell & Company in 1845. This was his first experience in that sort of thing, but it was by no means his last.
“In the space of twenty years, 1848-1868, twelve huge territories were created, and, as the process went on, each territory was changed, divided, and subdivided ad infinitum. . . .
Oregon (1848), Utah (1850), Washington (1853), Kansas (1854), Nebraska (1854), North Dakota and South Dakota (1861), Nevada (1861), Colorado (1861), Idaho (1863), Montana (1864), and Wyoming (1868).”
John B. McClernan, Slade's Wells Fargo Colt, p. 15, and note 35
Supplements to the Emigrant Diet
“[T]he emigrants supplemented their diet by what they could get from day to day. A train, in the earlier years, could expect to be in buffalo country for more than a month, and buffalo steak would often be sizzling in the pans, though sometimes at a considerable wearing down of horseflesh [in the chase]. Antelopes were numerous, but they were individually small, and were difficult to approach. Deer, mountain sheep, and bear were bagged occasionally. If the arrival at Humboldt Sink coincided with the southward flight of waterfowl, there was a sudden abundance. The unpalatable jack-rabbit was not altogether despised, and in sufficient emergency almost anything that walked or crawled was eaten.”
George R. Stewart, The California Trail, p. 120-121
Early Leavenworth
“[Leavenworth City] was on the Delaware reserve, and was not open for settlement; indeed the U.S. Government had warned all squatters off it by proclamation, under heavy penalties. But these were ‘paper penalties’ only, i.e. never enforced, and were treated as non-existent ; especially as it was known that nearly the whole of the reserve would be thrown open in the fall.
“In 1855 the “city,” now a great centre of the rich wheat-growing district in which it stands, consisted of a few frame buildings, two or three small stores, and the ‘hotel’ I put up at. The Leavenworth Democrat represented the majesty of the ‘Fourth Estate,’ and was edited, printed, and published in a small shanty under a big cottonwood-tree by Major Euston, an out-and-out Southerner, and a typical specimen of the South-western fighting editor. He was the quickest man with his six-shooter I ever saw, even in a country where it behoved every one to be on the alert.
“The little place was full of gamblers, as all frontier settlements were in those days.”
R.H. Williams, With the Border Ruffians, p. 75
Feramorz Little's Mules
His initial trip was a farcical epic. Fort Bridger, 124 miles distant, was the nearest speck of civilization east of Salt Lake City; beyond were 400 lonely miles to Fort Laramie. Years later, Little wrote that he and Hanks reached Fort Laramie nine days out of the Mormon town. When they arrived the animals were so used up that they were unfit for the return trip. So the two men importuned the owner of a nearby ranch and obtained five wild, unbroken mules, the only stock available. These they wrestled to the ground, bound them and tied on blindfolds. Four of them they managed to work into a harness, and on the fifth one Ephriam Hanks put a saddle. All was ready, the blindfolds were yanked off and the bindings cut. A lively performance commenced. Hanks took the lead, trying to assist in keeping the wagon on the road, but his mount “was guilty of all the antics that a wild Mexican mule is considered capable of performing under the circumstances.”
Roy S. Bloss, Pony Express—The Great Gamble, 9
Drinking from Desert Wells
“the carson Route offered no advantage in crossing the Forty Mile Desert, though—in fact, it may have been worse. A few dug wells supplied some water (“intensely brackish, bitter with salt and sulphur”) a few miles beyond the Humboldt Sink . . .
You can visit some of these dug wells along the Carson Route today. I drank from the so-called Double Wells (about five miles south of the Humboldt Sink) on a hot September day much like the emigrants would have experienced. The water tasted of salt and dish soap mixed with algae. It took a whole beer to take the flavor away—and then a second to toast the hapless souls who had to drink the stuff to survive—and then a third to toast the beauty of cold beer on a hot day in the desert.”
Keith Heyer Meldahl, Hard Road West, p. 240-41, and note 3
Local Knowledge
“I have always wondered why it is that all information extant on any given historic spot is always somewhere else and the immediate neighborhood is in complete and blissful ignorance.”
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 30
Mile 1850: Simpson Park
“A second divide, more abrupt than the former, placed us in sight of Simpson’s Park and such a park! a circlet of tawny stubble, embosomed in sage-grown hills, the ‘Hiré’ or ‘Look-out,’ and others, without other tree but the deformed cedars. The bottom is notorious for cold; it freezes even in June and July; and our night was, as may be imagined, none of the pleasantest. . . .
“Simpson’s Park lies 195 miles from Carson City, where we might consider the journey at an end; yet the cold of night did not allow us to set out before 10 A.M. Our route lay across the park, which was dotted with wheat-grass and broom-like reeds rising from a ground saupoudré like salt. Presently we began to ascend Simpson’s Pass, a long kanyon whose sloping sides and benches were dotted with the green bunch-grass. At the divide we found the ‘Sage Springs,’ whose position is too elevated for the infiltration of salt: they are consequently sweet and wholesome.”
Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 485-486
Meaning of "Pah-Ute"
“The Piutes belonged to the Ute band at the time that the original Shoshone tribe broke up through its own weight and unwieldy size. They settled about the lakes—Humboldt, Pyramid, Carson, and Walker—and were therefore called Pah-Utes; that is, water Utes, “pah” being the word that sininifies water among all the Indians of the Great Basin region, Finally, the Utes and Pah-Utes, or “Piutes”—as the name is now generally, though improperly, written—became separate tribes.”
Dan DeQuille, History of the Big Bonanza, p. 260
Mile 437: Cottonwood Springs
“The next day (13th) we passed by the celebrated ‘Cotton-wood Springs’ where, in the midst of a scattered grove of majestic cotton-woods, a clear stream gushes forth, famed for its coolness and purity. We all stopped to get a drink of the delicious water, which tasted like nectar to us who had for so long quenched thirst with the yellow, tepid water of the Platte, and then moved on, encamping at sunset on the summit of O’Fallon’s Bluffs, whose steep declivities we climbed with difficulty. These bluffs are opposite the junction of the north and south forks of the Platte, and extend to the edge of the river.”
Thaddeus S. Kenderdine, A California Tramp and Later Footprints, p. 56
Yoking Oxen
When Ford demonstrates the historical method for yoking a well-trained team, he places his oxen—in this example, Thor and Zeus—side by side in the driving position. Standing beside the team, he tells the ox on the left, or nigh side, “Move your head, Thor,” and Thor responds by swinging and holding his head far to the left. With the nigh ox’s head out of the way, Ford steps in front and places the beam over the neck of Zeus, who is standing on the right, or of side. He lifts the other end of the yoke up over the nigh ox’s neck and tells him, “Move your head, Thor,” and Thor returns his head to the natural forward position. The beam now rests on the team’s necks. Ford fts the bow under the neck of the of ox, Zeus, and secures it with a pin, then repeats the process with Thor. “This process is done very quickly and is very spectacular for the novice to watch,” he says, “since it shows the degree of exact obedience the properly trained ox team has, and it is done with a surprisingly small amount of effort on the part of the drover.”
Dixon Ford and Lee Kreutzer, "Oxen: Engines of the Emigration," Overland Journal, V. 33. No. 1 (2015), p. 8-9
Day of Rest
“Captain Stansbury is not less scrupulous upon the subject of traveling proprieties. One of his entries is couched as follows: ‘Sunday, June 20 . . . The camp rested: it had been determined, from the commencement of the expedition, to devote this day, whenever practicable, to its legitimate purpose, as an interval of rest for man and beast. I here beg to record, as the result of my experience, derived not only from the present journey, but from the observations of many years spent in the performance of similar duties, that, as a mere matter of pecuniary consideration, apart from all higher obligations, it is wise to keep the Sabbath [Stansbury’s Expedition, ch. i., p. 22.].”
Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 149
Official Stations List
“The only official list of Pony Express stations and mileages is in the Postmaster General’s Record Book as of March 12, 1861, Records of the Post Office Department, Record Group 28, National Archives and Records Service. The route from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Placerville, California, was 1,788 miles, with 138 stations; 3 were mail stops with no remounts. The scheduled time (summer) was 226 hours, making the average speed 8 miles per hour. The average station interval (pony run) was 13.5 miles, taking 1 hour, 40 minutes. The average rider run was about 75 miles, taking 8-10 hours and using 5-6 horses. Probably 3 riders were available for each rider run, making 72 riders. Service was weekly until July 1860 and semiweekly thereafter: thus all of Cody, claimed riding fell in the period of semiweekly service. These orienting figures do not jibe with a great deal of folklore.”
John S. Gray, "Fact versus Fiction in the Kansas Boyhood of Buffalo Bill," Kansas History, Vol. 8, No. 1, p. 18
Climate of the Great Plains
“The distinguishing climatic characteristic of the Great Plains environment from the ninety-eighth meridian to the Pacific slope is a deficiency in the most essential climatic element – water. Within this area there are humid spots due to local causes of elevation, but there is a deficiency in the average amount of rainfall for the entire region. This deficiency accounts for many of the peculiar ways of life in the rr West. It conditions plant life, animal life, and human life and institutions. In this deficiency is found the key to what may be called the Plains civilization. It is the feature that makes the whole aspect of life west of the ninety-eighth meridian such a contrast to life east of that line.”
Walter Prescott Webb, The Great Plains, p. 17
Post Office Monopoly
The post had either broken even or generated small surpluses until its expansion in the 1820s, when it generally began to report progressively greater losses. By 1844, the department was losing so much business to competitors that a reluctant Congress, fearing the political consequences of either cutting mail service or paying to support it, was forced to act, despite southern politicians’ suspicion of costly federal schemes that called for tax increases and strengthened Washington’s hand. As it is wont to do in such situations, Congress created a special commission to assess the crisis and make recommendations for fixing it. This group of experts took the high road, concluding that the post had not been created to generate revenue but for “elevating our people in the scale of civilization and bringing them together in patriotic affection,” as well as to “render the citizen worthy, by proper knowledge and enlightenment, of his important privileges as a sovereign constituent of his government.” Accordingly, starting with the Post Office Act of 1845 and continuing through 1851, Congress passed a series of reforms that would stimulate the full flowering of what the historian Wayne Fuller called “the people’s post office.”
The government finally abandoned the hoary principle that the post must support itself, even as it was extending all the way to the Pacific. The institution was explicitly defined as a public service that, like the military, deserved financial support, and after the Post Office Act of 1851 deficits would be accepted as a matter of course. Congress shored up the post’s finances in other important ways, especially by passing legislation that reinforced its poorly defended monopoly. Known as the Private Express Statutes, these laws made it a crime for other carriers to transport mail in places served by the post, which soon put the independent competitors out of business.
Winifred Gallagher, How the Post Office Created America, p. 86
COC&PPE Services
This letter, mailed in Denver on June 19, 1960, was canceled at St. Joseph, Missouri, seven days and approximately seven hundred miles later. At the time it was carried, the Central Overland California and Pike’s Peak Express Company operated a daily stage from the Missouri River to Denver, K. T. (then Kansas Territory), a semiweekly stage to Salt Lake City, and a semimonthly stage to California, in addition to running a semiweekly Pony Express from the Missouri River to California.
Raymond W. Settle, "The Pony Express, Heroic Effort—Tragic End," Utah Historical Quarterly, Vol. 27 n.2, p. 106
Mile 969: Independence Rock
“Like the emigrants, we approached the rock from the east side—a lusty monolith, a mile in circumference, and seemingly one solid piece of gray granite. No wonder that this tremulous outpost of the hard-rock country struck sparks from the sandstone-weary migration. For that matter there is nothing frivolous about the Sweetwater Range, or, as the emigrants called it, the Rattlesnake or Granite Mountains—a substantial little item rising in full view to the right and flaunting its nakedness in the teeth of the Rockies. It is a bars ridge of solid rock, and on the occasion of this, our first visit the knuckle ends of its protruding bones were slowly mellowed by reflected light from the vast copper bowl of the gathering sunset to a pale polished coffee color. . . .
Most people know that Independence Rock is called the Great Register of the Desert. Even so, a few facts about it and the thousands of names that at one time appeared upon it, may not come amiss. From earliest days it was noted as a landmark and a camping place for the fur trader’s expeditions. Not a man among them but knew every foot of its surrounding country. Many of the early travelers thought that its name might have been evolved because of its sturdy isolation; but Asahel Munger, a missionary Oregon-bound in 1839, was told by Harris, well known mountain man, that the name Independence was bestowed upon it in 1830 by trappers of the American Fur Company who happened to spend the Fourth of July camped in its shadow.
Until after 1849, the Sweetwater ford was immediately at the rock . . .”
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 208-209
Mile 137: Marysville
“Passing by Marysville, in old maps Palmetto City, a county town which thrives by selling whisky to ruffians of all descriptions, we forded before sunset the ‘Big Blue,’ a well-known tributary of the Kansas River. It is a pretty little stream, brisk and clear as crystal, about forty or fifty yards wide by 50 feet deep at the ford. The soil is sandy and solid, but the banks are too precipitous to be pleasant when a very drunken driver hangs on by the lines of four very weary mules. We then stretched once more over the ‘divide’—the ground, generally rough or rolling, between the fork or junction of two streams, in fact, the Indian Doab—separating the Big Blue from its tributary the Little Blue.”
Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 29
The Union League
“Shortly Before Our Arrival in Omaha [in 1863] I had met and been introduced to a man who was a national organizer of the Union League. It was called the ‘National Loyal Union League.’ Only such officers were let into it as were of known loyalty. The army was so honeycombed with disloyal men and Rebel sympathizers that it was difficult to know always whom to trust. These were to be weeded out, and the obligation of the Loyal League was administered only to those of whom the organization was dead sure.
It was a strange thing to me to be approached by one whom I did not know, and be talked to upon the subject. He said there were persons in my regiment who were Rebels, and who were disloyal; that he was authorized to give me admission to the order. This was before we reached Omaha. He said it cost nothing, but it must be kept profoundly a secret. He said that it had a civil branch, and a military branch ; that the obligations were different, and the object different; but that any officer or soldier who belonged to the military order could make himself known, and could be admitted, and visit a lodge of civilians.
I expressed a thorough appreciation of the plan, and he took an hour, and put me through a verbal drill, and gave me some signs, and passwords. The day before marching into Omaha, while riding on the road with my company, a farmer with a load of hay alongside of the road gave the hailing-sign. I stopped, and talked with him a few moments, and he told me that near where we were stopping that night was a large Union League organization that had arrested and put in jail a gang of Confederate deserters, and that they would be glad to see me present. When our command went into camp, I rode that night into the village, and I had gone but a short distance before I got the ‘hailing-sign,’ in both instances given in the same way. I found out where there was to be a meeting of the lodge that night, and I went up, and attended it.
The hailing-sign was a remarkable invention. It was ‘two and two.’ In any way that two and two could be designated, the hailing-sign was made. For instance, if the hand should be held up and the four fingers divided in the middle, two on each side. With a bugle it was two short notes, then an interval, and two short notes. It could be made almost any way; two fingers to the chin. The persons who hailed me, as stated, put two of their fingers in their vest pockets, leaving their other two fingers out.
Nobody in the regiment that I know of, was initiated when I was, and I was told where to make reports in case I had something to communicate. I did not know whether there were any persons in the regiment, when I got to Omaha, who belonged to the Loyal League. But the third day while I was there, I was lying down in the tent, late in the afternoon, with my feet near the mess-chest. My Captain came in, and as he was a warm-hearted, true-blue Union officer of great gallantry, and great courage, it occurred to me that he might belong to the Loyal League, so with my foot I tapped on the mess-chest two couplets of raps. Captain O^Brien looked up at me and said, ‘What sort of a sign is that?’ and I said, ‘How do you know it is a sign?’ And he said, ‘When did you join?’ And I said, ‘What do you mean? Join what?’ Then he put out his hand and gave me the grip, to which I responded. The grip was a two-and-two grip. I had been recently promoted into the company. Thereupon he told me who belonged to the Union League in our regiment, and told me who was suspected.”
Eugene Ware, Indian Wars of 1864, p. 14-15
Digger Indians
“And here [along the Humbolt River], if you were going to, you encountered the Diggers, their half-gram brains vibrating with the remembered murders of hundreds of kinsmen and with desire for oxen and other plunder.
“The term “Digger” is an epithet, not a classification. It was properly applied to Indians who, being unskillful hunters or residing in country where game was scarce, lived on roots. But it came to mean certain degenerate bands of various tribes who can be exactly described as the technological unemployed. Unable to stand competition with hardier Indians, they had been pushed into the deserts and, living there on the subsistence level, had lost their culture. Many of them were physically decadent. The weapons of all were crude. Mostly they lived in caves or brush huts. Some had lost the use of fire. Some “Diggers” were Bannack or Shoshoni in origin; those in Great Salt Lake Valley were Paiute and Gosiute; fragments of other neighboring tribes also degenerated, and the Indians who harassed the Donners probably belonged to the Kuyuidika band of the Paviotso. But the whites who used the term meant no particular tribe; they meant only that they hated skulking, theft, and malicious mischief. From Ewing Young and Joseph Walker on, they had massacred Diggers idly, for fun, or in punishment for theft. The Diggers remembered . . . If they had not, they might have succored the Donners in the snow.”
Bernard De Voto, The Year of Decision, 1846, p. 347
Dearth of Material on Pony Express
What if you wanted to know more about those Pony Express adventures? The problem was there was not much to read on the subject other than Buffalo Bill’s autobiography and show programs. The freighting firm of Russell, Majors, and Waddell created the Pony Express to carry mail between Saint Joseph, Missouri, and Sacramento, California, in 1860. The service was wildly popular, especially in California, where it was memorialized in heroic tributes even as it began.
But it lasted only eighteen months. When it ended, in 1861, the Civil War had erupted. The epic clash of North and South at Shiloh, Gettysburg, and the Wilderness absorbed the energies of almost every American historian for the next three decades. Few attempted unpacking the West until the 1880s. Nobody wrote a book-length history of the Pony Express until after 1900.
Note 10 (p. 552):
The first history of the Pony Express was Frank A. Root and William Elsey Connelley, The Overland Stage to California (1901; rprt. Columbus, OH: Long’s College Book Co., 1950); followed soon after by William Lightfoot Visscher, A Thrilling and Truthful History of the Pony Express, or Blazing the Westward Way (1908; rprt. Chicago: Charles T. Powner, 1946), and Glenn D. Bradley, The Story of the Pony Express (Chicago: A. C. McClurg, 1913).
Louis S. Warren, Buffalo Bill's America, p. 5-6, and 552, n. 10
First Overland Mail to Oregon
“We may consider that ’48 established a ‘first.’ Some three hundred letters, addressed to people in Oregon, had piled up at Independence, but there was no mail service. The postmaster arranged with an emigrant named Bayley to transport these letters, with the understanding that he could collect forty cents apiece from each person to whom he delivered one. (This would seem to be part of the Oregon story, but it worked out differently.) . . .
[T]he mail had got through. Bayley had finally decided to come to California. He carefully kept the letters. Once arrived, he found that large numbers of men from Oregon had come to California after gold. They were so eager for letters that they gladly paid the postman two dollars apiece for their safe delivery.”
George R. Stewart, The California Trail, p. 195 and 207
Ash Hollow
“While Ash Hollow was renowned among California-bound emigrants for its springs, its spectacular entrances, and its sylvan charm, it is best remembered today as a place of tragedy and terror. The ‘perpendicular,’ bone-shattering decent of Windlass Hill, the graves of cholera-stricken emigrants, and the tales of Indian ambush contribute to this, but Ash Hollow will be forever haunted because of its link with one of the catastrophes of the Indian frontier, the Battle of Ash Hollow, September 3, 1855. It is one of the ironies of history that this bloody engagement didn’t occur in Ash Hollow at all, but six miles northwest, across the North Platte River in the valley of the Blue Water, now called Blue Creek. . . .
The event that finally put an end to the Ash Hollow miseries [for emigrants] was the discovery of gold in Colorado in 1858 and the rapid development thereafter of the Pike’s Peak Road down the South Platte to Denver. Although this did not mean the the abandonment of the North Platte road to Fort Laramie, South Pass, and Salt Lake City, it did make Julesburg a major junction point. Beginning in 1860, freighters, stagecoaches, and Pony Express riders reached the North Platte via Julesburg and Court House Rock, even though this was twenty-five miles longer than the time-honored Ash Hollow route. They were doubtless happy to go a little farther and avoid the dubious blessings of California Hill, Windlass Hill, and the sandy drag up the North Platte River from the Hollow to Court House Rock.”
Merrill J. Mattes, The Great Platte River Road, p. 311, 338
Higher Than Haman
“And if ever another man gives a whistle to a child of mine and I get my hands on him, I will hang him higher than Haman!”
[Haman (also known as Haman the Agagite or Haman the evil) is the main antagonist in the Book of Esther, who according to the Hebrew Bible was a vizier in the Persian empire under King Ahasuerus, commonly identified as Xerxes I. . . .
As described in the Book of Esther, Haman was the son of Hammedatha the Agagite. After Haman was appointed the principal minister of the king Ahasuerus, all of the king’s servants were required to bow down to Haman, but Mordechairefused to. Angered by this, and knowing of Mordechai’s Jewish nationality, Haman convinced Ahasuerus to allow him to have all of the Jews in the Persian empire killed.
The plot was foiled by Queen Esther, the king’s recent wife, who was herself a Jew. Esther invited Haman and the king to two banquets. In the second banquet, she informed the king that Haman was plotting to kill her (and the other Jews). This enraged the king, who was further angered when (after leaving the room briefly and returning) he discovered Haman had fallen on Esther’s couch, intending to beg mercy from Esther, but which the king interpreted as a sexual advance.
On the king’s orders, Haman was hanged from the 50-cubit-high gallows that had originally been built by Haman himself, on the advice of his wife Zeresh, in order to hang Mordechai. The bodies of Haman’s ten sons were also hanged, after they died in battle against the Jews. “All the enemies of the Jews” were additionally killed by the Jews, 75,000 of them.[8]
The apparent purpose of this unusually high gallows can be understood from the geography of Shushan: Haman’s house (where the pole was located) was likely in the city of Shushan (a flat area), while the royal citadel and palace were located on a mound about 15 meters higher than the city. Such a tall pole would have allowed Haman to observe Mordechai’s corpse while dining in the royal palace, had his plans worked as intended.
But there proved to be more in the doing than the saying . After Bolivar Roberts checked in at Carson City with his soldier escort, one more Pony trip came through, arriving at San Francisco, via river steamer, on July 1st. Then there was silence. For two long weeks Californians waited for the promised semiweekly express. Butterfield Overland Mail coaches pulling into San Francisco carried word that the couriers had been leaving the eastern end on the new schedule. Yet none was getting through. Charitably, the friendly Alta concluded that the route had not been restocked.
Actually, it was the same old trouble-Indians. The big rush to institute semiweekly departures simply failed to consider the redskin problem. Winnemucca’s Pah-Utes may have been whipped, but the Gosh-Utes and other tribes of the Shoshone nation were still on the rampage east of Washoe. Finally, in the middle of July, a rider reached Carson City. From there Finney testily explained the difficulty in a telegram to the impatient press. “There was no reason to expect the Pony more than day earlier than it came,” he remonstrated. “The express had to travel 200 miles with an escort and this, of course, detained it.”
Roy S. Bloss, Pony Express—The Great Gamble, 76
Effect of Way Stations on Overland Travel
“The most striking new developments [in overland travel] were prompted by the way station requirements of overland stagecoaching (to Denver and the Pike’s Peak country as well as to Salt Lake City and California) and the Pony Express. When coupled with the rapidity of rural and urban settlement west of the Missouri River, east of the traditional California and Oregon destination points, and on all sides of Salt Lake City, the net result was an overland trip which resembled the pioneering ventures of the early 1840s in name only. For in 1859 and 1860 there were, literally, hundreds of supportive facilities en route. Rarely did the emigrant travel more than twenty-five or thirty miles without encountering at least one habitation. Usually there were more. It made no difference whether the overlander began from St. Joseph and traveled via the overland trail on the south side of the Platte River or whether he launched out from Council Bluffs–Omaha on the north side of the Platte—supportive facilities were everywhere.”
John D. Unruh, Jr., The Plains Across, p. 298
Freighter Meal
“‘Bacon was the r e l i a b l e meat,’ and flap jacks, beans, crackers, and sour dough fried in a skillet and flooded with molasses was the most regular menu for the cook’s ‘guests.’ . . .
“The breakfast menu varied to the extent of having coffee, and fried bacon sandwiched between thick cornmeal bread covered with syrup.”
Floyd Bresee, Overland Freighting in the Platte Valley 1850–1870, p. 50, 52
Russell's Freighting Expands
While Majors was expanding his freighting business in the latter 1840’s and early 1850’s Waddell and Russell were reaching out in various directions at Lexington and elsewhere. In 1850 Russell, James Brown, and John S. Jones formed a partnership, called Brown, Russell & Company, and contracted to deliver at least 600,000 pounds of military stores in Santa Fe for 14% cents per pound. This was the largest contract for the transportation of government sup-plies ever let at Fort Leavenworth up to that time. In addition Brown also sent out 30 wagons of his own loaded with military stores. From September 14 to October 2, more than three months past the usual starting time, Brown, Russell & Company put four trains of 25 wagons each and one of 15 on the road to Santa Fe. These were organized into two caravans, with Brown himself in charge of the one in the lead. In the latter part of November this train ar-rived at the old Pecos pueblo, 45 or 50 miles from Santa Fe. Here it was stalled by a heavy mountain blizzard. Since they could not travel Brown rode into Santa Fe to report the situation to the commandant of the garrison and ask permission to lay over until better conditions prevailed. Immediately after arriving he suffered a severe attack of typhoid fever and erysipelas from which he died on December 5.
When he did not return at the time he said he would, his assistant, Charles O. Jones, brother of John S. Jones, rode into Santa Fe to ascertain the cause of the delay. He made the same request that Brown did, but was refused. Moreover, the commandant delivered an ultimatum that unless the caravan moved immediately he would bring it in himself at the contractor’s expense. There being no alternative Jones returned to the camp to do his best. He forced the caravan through to Santa Fe, but with the loss of most of the oxen. Forage alone for the animals cost the firm $14,000. Russell presented to congress a claim for losses amounting to $39,800, but it was several years before it was paid. The other two trains wintered in the neighborhood of Bent’s fort and went on to their destination in the spring. In 1851 Russell and John S. Jones, under the name of Jones & Russell, got a two-year contract to deliver government stores in New Mexico. This was the first time contracts for more than one year were given.
By 1860, overland stagecoaches carried more mail across America’s sea of grass than steamships on the rivers and oceans, but not even the postal subsidy and passenger revenue combined could sustain Butterfield’s stupendously costly enterprise. In March of that year, he was forced out of his own firm for failing to cover large debts to Wells Fargo, its major creditor, which took over his entire operation. A year later, just days before the Civil War began, the government awarded the postal contract to the renamed Overland Mail Company, which operated on the more northerly, soon-to-be-safer “Central” route, from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Placerville, California.
Winifred Gallagher, How the Post Office Created America, p. 127
Minahaska–Long Knife
“As has been said, in 1855, General W. S. Harney, who, whatever may be his faults as a diplomatist, is the most dreaded ‘Minahaska’ in the Indian country, punished the Brulés severely at Ash Hollow . . .
“‘Longknife.’ The whites have enjoyed this title since 1758, when Captain Gibson cut off with his sabre the head of Little Eagle, the great Mingo or Chief, and won the title of Big-Knife Warrior. Savages in America as well as Africa who ignore the sword always look upon that weapon with horror. The Sioux call the Americans Wasichi, or bad men.”
Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 88 and note
The Gratification of Slaying an Enemy
“In his correspondence with Einstein, Freud argued that each of us derives a very basic and profound gratification from slaying an enemy, however imaginary the act, and from viewing him prostrate at our feet. In movies, in Western literary fiction, we are the gunfighter and we ritually slay our adversaries again and again. We are our projected selves who destroy, with an imagined bullet, our frustrations, our obstacles, our guilt, and we slay them with anger, hostility, and relief. The scenario is a simple one, one against one. We can confront the enemy, can meet him face-to-face, and can destroy him in front of us. No long-range shots are necessary. The enemy is slain in front of our eyes, we see the bullet entering his body (or imagine we do) we see the body suddenly and violently hurled backward with the impact of the bullet’s blow, and then we see it crumple to the ground before us. When our frustrations are thus eliminated, we are relieved, our anxieties alleviated, however temporarily.
One of the most appealing parts of this murder is that it is painlessly and simply done. It is a victimless killing. There is no blood and no pain, and yet we derive that great satisfaction of experiencing the obliteration of feelings in ourselves that call for destruction. The experience is cathartic, renewing.”
Bruce Rosenberg, The Code of the West, p. 162
Secondary Consequences
“There was no government bailout for [Russell, Majors & Waddell]. Some could argue that the government or some officials did the opposite by making sure there were no government contracts for the firm. However, it did succeed in proving the practicality of the central route. And that route was almost instantaneously used by the telegraph, emigrant and freight wagons and much of it later by the Lincoln Highway, the first cross-country auto road in the early twentieth century. It also succeeded in relation to our broader American history regarding the Civil War by keeping California in the Union. These secondary consequences by themselves were actually more important than the success or failure of the firm of Russell, Majors [sic] and Waddell.”
(N.B. Emigrant and freight wagons’ use of the central overland route preceded the Pony Express over the central route, in emigrant’s case, by nearly 2o years)
William E. Hill, The Pony Express: Yesterday and Today, p. xvi
Their goods [emigrants from Ottowa, Illinois], consisting of plows, scythes, clothing, and in fact articles of agriculture and domestic use of all kinds, together with arms, were taken, and are now lodged in Majors & Russell’s warehouse, Leavenworth.
The warehouse of Majors & Russell, Leavenworth, is a general reselling shop of stolen goods. Many of the rifles taken at different points on the river, together with provisions, stores, agricultural implements, &c., taken from Free-State emigrants, are stored there. The firm is one of the most extensive in this locality. They are the agents of the Southern Aid Societies, and the money raised in the South is sent to them. Beside the arms and other goods they have stolen from Free-State emigrants, their warehouse has been made the depository of a large number—some five hundred stand—of public arms, nuns and bayonets. The Territorial officials might as well have left them in Weston, Mo., in the care of Gen. string fellow. The plunder and the public arms are stored together.
"Important From Kansas, New York Tribune, July 17, 1856
Mile 1944: Route Detour to Simpson Pass
Just past Sand Springs Station (at Mile 1944), the Pony Express Bikepacking Route stays on US 50 to Fallon, NV. The road at this point heads northwest. The original Pony Express Trail runs west at this point through Simpson Pass to Desert Station (or Hooten Wells Station) where it rejoins the Pony Express Bikepacking Route.
At Sand Springs Station (at Mile 1944) on the Pony Express Bikepacking Route at Ride With GPS, Jan makes a note: “Playa is unrideable.”
Jan’s comment (on Facebook):
“If one follows the route directly from Salt Lake City to Carson City, for around 500 miles, the only town directly on the route is Austin, NV where resupply consists of a minimally stocked convenience store with somewhat limited hours. Taking the difficulty of the section you rode into account, in addition to the vast distance from prior resupply, I felt that routing through Fallon was the best option. Thanks [Kurstin] for documenting your ride! I’m sure others will want to stick to the route as much as possible so this gives them that option.”
Kurstin Gerard Graham scouted the original trail through this section. Kurstin rode it from west to east (opposite to the track of the PX Bikepacking Route) and cut across some of the unrideable terrain just west of Highway 50.
To get to Simpson Pass while riding from east to west, Kurstin posted another map here, which follows dirt roads through the area. The turnoff is about 1/4 before the Sand Springs Station marker. [N.B. The second map does not cover the entire detour, just the western portion which offers a dirt road alternative harder-to-follow route on Kirstin’s original map. Also, FWIW, parts of this route seem hard to trace. Suggest anyone trying it be well stocked and very confident in their riding and navigation skills.]
I scouted the route between Sand Springs and Highway 95 in October 2020. My route reports are here:
But actually Four Bears [Mandan chief] had more iron in him than that. When he felt the fever come upon him he dressed in his most ceremonious garments. (Shirt of mountain sheepskin, quilled, bound with ermine skins, fringed with enemy scalps; deerskin leggings to the hip, quilled and fringed; quilled moccasins; warbonnet (from the Sioux); grizzlyclaw necklace; parfleche shield with cover of skunk fur; bow of horn backed with sinew (from the Nez Perces), arrow case of cougar skin; tobacco case of otter, catlinite pipe with skins of woodpeckers; medicine sack of beaver; lance and war club. And the robe which Catlin himself had reproduced:
Bernard De Voto, Across the Wide Missouri, p. 282
Overland Mail and the Confederacy
“‘Paul Jones,’ a correspondent writing from St. Joseph, October 17, lo the Missouri. Democrat (October 22, 1861), berated [CCO & PP President] Hughes as a rascal secessionist, and charged that the destruction of the Platte river bridge had ‘jarred the festering treason from his soul, or the fear of losing his salary of $5,000 per annum, causes him to be a thorough Union man. . . . While located in this city, that company were very careful that not a dollar of Uncle Sam’s money went into a loyal man’s pocket . . . . Why is Mr. Slade kept in their employ? . . a division agent . . . having charge of the entire route from the crossing of the South Platte to the Pacific Springs. He is a vile-mouthed, rabid secessionist. . . .'”
George Root, "Pike's Peak Express Companies," Part IV, Kansas Historical Quarterly, Vol. 14, No. 1 (1944) p. 81, n. 481
Causes of Death for Emigrants
“[T]he actual dangers of the overland venture have been considerably misrepresented by the myth-makers’ overemphasis on Indian treachery. The less than 400 emigrants killed by Indians during the antebellum era represent a mere 4 percent of the estimated 10,000 or more emigrant deaths. It follows that disease and trail accidents were far more to be feared by the prospective overlander than were the native inhabitants of the West.
Disease was far and away the number one killer, accounting for nine out of every ten deaths. Although the emigrant was never completely safe from the scourge of epidemic disease, the initial portion of the trail to Fort Laramie, otherwise the easiest segment of the journey, occasioned the most disease-induced deaths. . . .Diarrhea, tuberculosis, smallpox, mumps, and a host of other illnesses downed travelers, but the chief afflictions were cholera, mountain fever, and scurvy. . . .
[C]arelessness was second only to disease as a hazard of cross-country travel. . . . One of the most unexpected facets of the ‘overland’ journey was that death by water claimed almost as many victims during the antebellum era as did the much-feared Indians—perhaps as many as 300, at least 90 in 1850 alone. . . .
After drownings the commonest cause of fatal accidents was careless handling of the fantastic arsenal of firearms the overlanders carried with them.
John D. Unruh, Jr., The Plains Across, p. 408-410
Burnt Thighs
“The word Brulé, which is a French word, means ‘sun-burnt’ ; it was derived from the Indian name which in the Indian tongue meant ‘burnt-thighs.’ Their thighs exposed to the sun were sunburned in their constant riding on horseback. The words meant more than at first appeared; for, Indians who walked on the ground did not get their thighs burned more than other parts, especially as the Indians went practically naked when the sun was hot. Hence the words ‘burnt-thighs’ meant that the Brule Indians were riders; that they belonged to the cavalry, that is, the Chivalry ; in other words, they were of the equestrian class. The words constituted a boast that they were better than others and were the Rough-Riders of the plains. Such was the tradition of the name.”
Eugene Ware, Indian Wars of 1864, p. 149
The Oregon Trail
“There is such thing anymore as the Oregon Trail. There never was a single Oregon Trail. After Fort Kearny on the Platte in eastern Nebraska, some wagon trains hugged the north side of the Platte along the edge of the Sand Hills, and some took the south banks. To avoid each other’s dust and to hunt for game, the wagons fanned out widely across the prairie all day. The trains generally followed a set of central ‘ruts,’ or the rivers, for navigation, but the trail west was often five miles wide on either side of the river, or as much as twelve miles total, including both banks. By the 1850s, western Wyoming was a sprawling network of wagon tracks and shortcuts—the Lander Cutoff, the Farson Cutoff, the Sublette Cutoff, the Hams Fork Cutoff—that extended more than a hundred miles north and south, all of it considered the Oregon Trail. By some counts there are as many as forty cutoffs and alternate branches from the main ruts along the 2,100-mile route. The ‘trail’ was really just an aggregated landscape that the pioneers followed across the plains and then the high deserts.”
Rinker Buck, The Oregon Trail, p. 55
Number of Stations
Over the years historians and writers have provided different figures for the number of Pony Express stations. While that may be troubling, arriving at a particular calculation is very difficult. The Pony Express enterprise was in an almost constant state of flux. Stations were often being added, some as replacements, some as new ones. Stations were destroyed and some abandoned. Sometimes those events occurred at the same time . . . The number of stations cited by the National Parks is eighty-six when it began and 147 by mid-1861. By the end of the express, the number could have grown to between 190 and 200, but some may not have been used.”
[N.B. Moody states that “when they had finished their work 153 way stations and relay posts stood along the 1966-mile route between St. Joseph and Sacramento.” Moody, Stagecoaching West, p. 183.]
William E. Hill, The Pony Express: Yesterday and Today, p. 23
Mile 975: Martin's Cove
“This modest marker, labeled ‘Martin’s Cove,’ indicated a little recess in the hills here in 1856 an unfortunate company of Mormons were caught by early snows and suffered from exposure and starvation. A great many died. Just as the Donner party epitomizes the suffering of the California-bound emigrants, so this story of the handcart brigade is the crowning tragedy of the Mormon Trail.”
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 215
Mile 2056: Mormon Station/Genoa, NV
“Mormons had established a permanent settlement at Mormon Station, now Genoa, which was a rankling thorn in [the local Native Americans’] flesh. It was, however, a genuine spine-stiffener for the feminine portion of the early-day cavalcades. There were white women there, the first since Salt Lake City, and real houses with vegetable gardens at the foot of the forested mountain.” . . .
Mormon Station was, to all intents and purposes, a trading post. It maintained a store and a boarding house that served appetizing meals with vegetables and bread. There was even a dinner bell at noon and at sunset. One of the buildings was, in later years, treated to a genteel two-store false front as deceptive as a cheap toupee and as useful, and was the oldest house in Nevada when, quite recently [in the 1940s] it was destroyed by fire.
In the late fifties, after the difficulties between the Mormons and the government were settled, harassed travelers found a United States Indian agent in Genoa. Widows and orphans from Indian massacres were placed in his charge to be returned to their homes when opportunity afforded.”
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 437-438
Platte River
Campbell’s party reached the Platte well to the east of the forks, took the South Platte at the forks, and presently crossed to the North Platte. For a hundred miles the country had been gradually changing. The rains all but ceased, there was no more tall grass, drinkable water was becoming scarcer, the long upward inclination of the land had become apparent. The Platte was a thin mud that flowed sluggishly through innumerable islands of cottonwood and willow and might be a mile or more wide. It was the first of Western rivers to beget the standard quips — it was a mile wide and an inch deep and it flowed uphill, it was water you had to chew, it was good drinking if you threw it out and filled the cup with whiskey. Quicksands were added to the day’s hazards; Miller’s sketch is typical but can only imply the quaking and screaming of mules, who were intuitive about quicksands, and the bellowing of Campbell’s bulls.
Bernard De Voto, Across the Wide Missouri, p. 35
Slade's Meadow Valley House
“‘Hurdy girl’ or not, [Virginia Slade] filled the house (a stone house and not the customary sod-roofed log cabin) which Slade built for her eight miles from Virginia City in Meadow Valley with furniture which by today’s collectors’ standards was good, including a great walnut sideboard and a tall pier glass, framed in ornate, heavy gold.”
Virginia Rowe Towle, Vigilante Woman," p. 124
Spare Parts
“Since tongues, spokes, and axles were subject to breakage, spare parts were carried whenever possible, slung under the wagon bed. Grease buckets, water barrels (or india rubber bags), whips or goads, heavy rope, and chains completed the running gear accessories. If grease was not applied liberally to wheel bearings, a ‘hotbox’ developed. When store-bought grease was exhausted, boiled buffalo of wolf grease served.”
Merrill J. Mattes, The Great Platte River Road, p. 43
Persian Angareion
While Xerxes was doing thus, he sent a messenger to the Persians, to announce the calamity which had come upon them. Now there is nothing mortal which accomplishes a journey with more speed than these messengers, so skilfully has this been invented by the Persians: for they say that according to the number of the days of which the entire journey consists, so many horses and men are set at intervals, each man and horse appointed for a day’s journey. These neither snow nor rain nor heat nor darkness of night prevents from accomplishing each one the task proposed to him, with the very utmost speed. The first then rides and delivers the message with which he is charged to the second, and the second to the third; and after that it goes through them handed from one to the other, as in the torch-race among the Hellenes, which they perform for Hephaistos. This kind of running of their horses the Persians call angareion.
=========
Herodotus, in about 440 BC, describes the Persian messenger system which had been perfected by Darius I about half a century earlier (5th Century B.C.E.):
“The riders were exclusively in the service of the Great King and the network allowed for messages to be transported from Susa to Sardis (2699 km) in nine days; the journey took ninety days on foot. (Kia, Mehrdad (2016). The Persian Empire: A Historical Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO. p. 127.)(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angarium)
Macaulay, G. C.trans. 1914, Herodotus, The Histories, Book 8, Chapter 98
1923 Pony Express Celebration
Old St. Joe never needed much reason to recall its history, real or imagined, and in 1923, the town celebrated its legacy with a grand historical pageant. The year was of no special significance. Naturally, a bit of research was deemed appropriate for this occasion, and so another odd chronicler joined the ranks of those who wrote about the Pony Express.
“After sixty-three years the Pony Express will ride again!” trilled Louise Platt Hauck in the July 1923 issue of the Missouri Historical Review. Mrs. Hauck was a Missouri author and one of a standing army of Pony Express “authorities” who contributed to a century and a half of confusion and error. . . .
Mrs. Hauck’s account in the Missouri Historical Review was contradictory and confusing, too. She got the number of riders hired by the Pony Express wrong and the number of horses, too. She gave William Hepburn Russell’s first name as Henry. She insisted that Johnson Richardson was the first rider out of St. Joe despite the Pony Express committee’s finding. She made a point of noting that the reriders would be dressed in authentic garb, but no reliable account of the fast mail indicates that the riders had a standard uniform. In the historic reenactment, the riders looked like extras out of the musical Oklahoma!
Christopher Corbett, Orphans Preferred, p. 207, 209
Brief History of Mormon Settlement in Utah
“At the time the Mormons chose their new homeland on the Great Salt Lake and settled down to farm, their colony was in Mexican domain several hundred miles beyond the jurisdiction of the United states, while Bridger and Vasquez held their lands, totaling nine-square miles, under a grant from the Mexican government. Within a few months [February, 1848] the terms of peace at the close of the Mexican War threw them all into United States territory. . . .
As soon as [the Mormons] found themselves living once again in United States territory, they held a meeting, revowed allegiance to the Constitution and organized their own independent state, calling it Deseret. his was in 1849, so it will be readily understood with what curiosity the gold-seekers visited the Mormon colony. In 1850, Congress (which had ignored the state of Deseret) created the territory of Utah, cleverly appointing Brigham Young its governor. He accepted and took oath February 3, 1851.”
Brief History of Mormon Settlement in Utah
Telegraph Batteries
See how the towns are about fifty miles apart? Doug points out. When the Pony Express was replaced by the telegraph, that was the distance a battery could send a charge.
Jerry Ellis, Bareback!, p. 206
Mile 1078: Pacific Springs Station
“All the time that my brain was wandering in this pleasant fog of confused ideas, my feet were carrying me out of the troubled times of ’49 and into the comparative luxury of the sixties (for the log houses, toward which my gregarious husband started some time ago, date from the original staging days, when they constituted the important Pony Express and stage station called Pacific Spring). There are four buildings—two on each side of the old road—widely spaced so that they form the four corners of a rough rectangle. The house faces the old store and bar. The blacksmith shop stares across at the stables. It is now the John Hays horse ranch, and the buildings are in everyday use.”
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 236
Pony Express Schedule
“The time to Fort Kearny was to be 34 hours; Great Salt Lake, 124 hours; Carson City, 188 hours; Placerville, 226 hours; Sacramento City, 234 hours; and San Francisco, 240 hours. Telegraphic dispatches were to go to any place in California. from any point in the East in about 205 hours. . .
“A more complete time table appeared in the Elwood Free Press of April 7, with the following added stations: Marysville, 12 hours; Laramie, 80 hours; Bridger, 108 hours, and Camp Floyd, 128 hours.”
George Root, "Pike's Peak Express Companies," Part IV, Kansas Historical Quarterly, Vol. 14, No. 1 (1944) p. 51 and note 349
Increased Mail to the West
“Although inclined to southern interests, Postmaster-general [Aaron] Brown was also an exponent of the policy of generous postal extension into the West. He applied a liberal interpretation to the powers of the postal department and set about to do his part in furthering the development of the new region. After holding office bu two years Mr. Brown had six lines carrying mail to the Pacific Coast, where but two existed when he assumed his position in the cabinet. During this period, also, the frequency of mail transmission had been increased upon the most improved route from semi-monthly to semi-weekly service.”
LeRoy Hafen, The Overland Mail: 1849–1869, p. 103
Russell's Second Mistake
“The launching of [the Leavenworth and Pike’s Peak Express in 1858] was the second disastrous mistake Russell made. Had he resisted the temptation to join Jones in it and worked solely to repair Russell, Majors & Waddell’s damaged credit [after losses incurred during the Mormon War] the firm might have succeeded. His action further undermined its financial standing, earned for himself the reputation of being a reckless gambler and involving him and his partners in a series of catastrophic events which in the end brought total ruin.”
Settle and Settle, Empire on Wheels, p. 37
Westerners and Government Roads
“Individualism and adaptability characterized all those who participated in America’s westward movement. Frontiersmen evinced this as they sought out new routes toward the West and more convenient means of transport.
Despite this individualism, the Westerner has always sought the aid of the federal government in solving his transportation problems. Such a vast undertaking as the construction of wagon roads from the Mississippi west to the Pacific required more than half a century for completion. Federal sponsorship was essential, since there must be exploring expeditions, reconnaissance of trails, and the survey, building, and improving of roads.”
W. Turrentine Jackson, Wagon Roads West, p. 1
Mormons and the Courts
“It was in the judicial rather than the political field, however, that non-Mormons felt most keenly the dictatorial authority of the church. . . .At first the Mormons, believing that Gentile courts did not dispense justice, followed the advice of their leaders to use their own ecclesiastical tribunals in settlement of their mutual difficulties. Then the influx of Gentiles brought the Saints into legal entanglements that could be resolved only in territorial courts, other devices were employed to guard the interests of Church members. The legislature, for instance, by enactment in 1852 permitted anyone, with or without legal training, to serve as an attorney in court; two years later a more extensive act declared that only territorial laws, and those of Congress ‘when applicable,’ could be ‘read, argued, cited or adopted as precedent in any trial,’ Thus the Mormons tried to escape all laws, including English common law, that might serve to prejudice their search for autonomy. . . .
Of all the judicial defenses raised by the Church to protect itself, none caused so much trouble as the probate courts. In February 1852 the legislature gave these tribunals such exceptional powers that they came to have jurisdiction in criminal and civil cases. . . .In reply, many Gentiles insisted that thte extravagant augmentation of the probate courts’ authority was obvious proof of the Mormons’ ultimate intention to establish a community effectively independent of all federal control. W. W. Drummond, a federal judge who more than any other man brought about the Mormon War of 1857-58 . . . used this strange legal situation as one of his arguments for the need of an expedition against the Latter-day Saints.”
Norman F. Furniss, The Mormon Conflict, 1850-1859, p. 16-18
The Vehicle of Liminality
“The train had other dramatic possibilities for use in folk and popular culture. It seems to have been for some observers in the nineteenth century in many ways like the passenger airliner is for us today. The train is the vehicle of liminality; once aboard, passengers pass through geography that seems to have little relevance to their immediate condition. One leaves a portion of one’s life behind and moves on to another. But between, one lives, for the moment, on the train – or plane. Few novels of the period, and no folklore that I know of, have exploited the dramatic possibilities of the situation – passengers removed from their home environment and society and cast into a terrestrial limbo. The train becomes, for the length of the journey, the world for its passengers.”
Bruce Rosenberg, The Code of the West, p. 148
Mile 1328-1396: Salt Lake City to Callao, Utah Still from the video
“A little video I made of the first two days on the Pony Express trail from Salt Lake City to Callao, Utah. Unfortunately, due to time constraints that were too tightened for comfort by weather I had to call my ride to Sacramento on Ibapah, UT, right at the Nevada border.
I had hoped to document via video the whole route from Salt Lake to Sacramento and scout some more challenging options for the route. I am planning another trip later this summer, so I might still get that chance.”
The usual fare for breakfast on the trail was bread or pancakes, fried meat, beans, and tea or coffee. Pancakes were made with flour, water, and baking soda, and cooked in a large frying pan or baking kettle. If bread were baked, it was placed in a skillet or Dutch oven with an iron lid. The ingenuity of the overland women was enormous, but sometimes even that ingenuity could be defeated, as when one traveler noted that mosquitoes got into the dough and turned it black.
Nevertheless, the emigrant women displayed an astonishing versatility. Lucy Cooke rolled out her pie dough on the wagon seat beside her while they were traveling. Cecelia Adams wrote that on one Sunday in June, she had “cooked beans and meat, stewed apples and baked suckeyes [pancakes! … besides making Dutch cheese, and took everything out of the wagon to air.” Jane D. Kellogg, who was on her honeymoon, recalled that “our provisions consisted of hard sea biscuit; crackers; bacon, beans, rice, dried fruit, teas, coffee and sugar.” Charlotte Stearns Pengra was explicit about her chores, recording meal by meal what she had prepared. April 29, 1853: “I hung out what things were wet in the waggon, made griddle cakes, stewed berries and made tea for supper. After that was over made two loaves of bread stewed a pan of apples prepared potatoes and meat for breakfast, and mended a pair of pants for Wm. pretty tired.” May 8: “baked this morning and stewed apples this afternoon commenced washing … got my white clothes ready to suds …. I feel very tired and lonely.” By May 14, Charlotte was thinking she had become derelict in her duties: “gathered up the dishes, and packed them dirty for the first time since I started.” On May 18, with a burst of determination, Pengra “washed a very large washing, unpacked dried and packed clothing-made a pair of calico cases for pillows and cooked two meals—done brave, I think. Those who come this journey should have their pillows covered with dark calico and sheets colored, white is not suitable.”
Lillian Schlissel, Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey, p. 81
Mile 1678: Egan’s Station
“The rider carrying the August 1 westbound mail just missed an Indian attack on Egan Canyon station, which turned into a fierce battle between the Indians and the U.S. mounted cavalry commanded by Lieut. Weed. This battle occurred on August 11, based on the journal kept by Private Scott and, more definitively, the official report from Lieut. Weed dated August 12, 1860 (U.S. Senate Documents).
Lieut. Weed’s report and Private Scott’s journal entry agree on the basic facts. On August 11, shortly before 5 p.m., Lieut. Weed led three non-commissioned officers and 24 privates east from their depot in Ruby Valley toward Antelope Springs on a mission to “chastise certain Indians in that vicinity for depredations recently committed,” according to Lieut. Weed. A short distance before reaching Egan Canyon Station, a Pony Express rider heading east passed Lieut. Weed’s slow-moving convoy. As the rider approached Egan Canyon Station, he saw a large group of armed Indians surrounding the station and engaging in hostile acts. The rider turned around and quickly rode west to alert Lieut. Weed of the attack.
Leaving a non-commissioned officer with seven men to guard the two wagons, Lieut. Weed and 20 mounted cavalrymen galloped toward Egan Canyon Station. There they encountered 75 to 100 Indians around the station and a somewhat larger number 500 to 800 yards away in the surrounding mountains. The Indians had taken the station’s supplies and were holding the station keeper and another man captive. Lieut. Weed ordered his men to surround the Indians near the station, but before the soldiers could completely encircle them, two or three soldiers “fired prematurely, thus alerting the Indians, and leaving an opportunity for them to retreat…”
A firefight ensued, but the Indians were able to work their way up the sides of the mountains south and east of the station, where they were protected from the soldiers’ fire. Faced with the Indians’ superior position, Lieut. Weed ordered his men to withdraw from the pursuit, allowing the Indians to flee. Three of Lieut. Weed’s men were wounded, one of whom died two days later. One Indian was killed and four wounded. Lieut. Weed reported that two other Indians had fallen—mortally wounded, according to him—but they had been picked up and carried away.”
“The American frontiersman expressed his individualism by seeking an untrod path into the wilderness for a new home. Yet the pioneers’ individualism and adaptability did not preclude their willingness to call upon the government for practical help in solving problems of migration and transportation. When projects, because of size or financial outlay, were beyond the means of private enterprise or the collective action of a western community, the resources and sponsorship of the national government were unhesitatingly demanded. Local groups constantly besieged Congress with requests for roads and other internal improvements. In the process localism was broken down, and a great desire to expand national power soon permeated most western communities. The pioneer became a nationalist as well as an individual.”
W. Turrentine Jackson, Wagon Roads West, p. 319
Cribbing and Butterfield's Frequent Service
THE FOURTH ESTATE of California’s early years was a no-holds barred vocation in which the moral qualities, accuracy and objectiveness of one newspaper were held to be fair game for public ridicule in the columns of a competing sheet. Charges of plagiarism were rife, yet nearly every paper throughout the state copied, as a matter of course, items from other news journals. Cribbing was particularly evident on current out-of-state news, originating largely in letters from paid correspondents. These were employed by the papers which could afford them, in principal cities of the eastern states.
Until the 20-day Butterfield Overland Mail was inaugurated, contributions from correspondents were forwarded via the Isthmus of Panama, making the arrival of every steamer at San Francisco a news event of major proportions. It wasn’t so much the speed of the Butterfield line (approximately equal to that of the Panama route) as it was the stage company’s more frequent, twice-a-week schedule that caused it to find especial favor in the eyes of California publishers. Its overland route was a means of halving the time between news making and news printing.
Roy S. Bloss, Pony Express—The Great Gamble, 55
Contemplation on the Trail
“Hours of contemplation, however, are not wanting to any traveller, and so far these would not be different from many nights at sea; but this whole period was one in which, if ever, one might feel the truth of the poet’s ‘suave mari magno,’ &c., as I have often felt its falsity. One seemed cut off from all the din and turmoil of the world, and the hopes and fears of a life in it, as much as if one had been a denizen of the happy valley. There was the daily work to do and the daily bread to eat (bad luck on it, there was no fresh buffalo meat!); so it was yesterday, so it would be to-morrow . . .
“At any rate, it is neither unpleasant nor uninstructive to have a few such months, like the small space of blue sky that often appears between the clouds that have passed and those that are coming up, and seems the very ideal of tranquillity. True this life was not to last very long, but while it did last one looked upon the future as through a wall of glass very thick.”
William Chandless, Chandless, W. (1857). A Visit to Salt Lake, p. 84-85
Republican River
“Among the several branches of the Pawnee was one called the ‘Republican,’ because when they were visited near their village near present Red Cloud by early Spaniards, followed by Zebulon Pike in 1806, it seemed to these explorers that the Pawnee had a re[publican form of government. The river on which the pawnee village of Pike’s visit was located thus came to be called the Republican. This joins the Smoky Hill near present Junction City, Kansas, to form the Kaw (Kansas) River, and the Big Blue flows into the Kaw a few miles below at Manhattan.”A
Merrill J. Mattes, The Great Platte River Road, p. 159
1861 Mail Appropriation
Despite all the sound and fury, however, the Post Route Bill enjoyed surprisingly good progress and early in February reached the upper house. In it was a provision for daily mail between California and the Missouri River for which the government would pay not over $800,000 per year. Russell’s optimism flew high. His inquisition by the Select Committee was ended, the inquiry having been closed February 8th, and he had already cleared the indictment hurdle. In a letter to Waddell he expressed “great faith in getting the mail contract, all right.”
Hardly had the Senate begun deliberations when sobering advice reached the capital: Confederate forces had cut the Butterfield line near Fort Chadbourne, its stages had been stopped and the movement of mail halted. As it eventually turned out, the accused Texas Rangers actually hadn’t stopped stages but merely had appropriated a large amount of the company’s grain and several horses. The mail delay had taken place coincidentally, when Indians swooped down on the line in the treacherous Apache Pass.
But the first word, coming at the climax of national tension, gave Washington the jitters. The danger was all too apparent. Prominent voices in California had been loudly sympathetic with the southern cause. The Golden State’s strategic location and Midas-like mineral wealth were rich prizes for both secessionists and loyalists-prizes the Union could ill afford to lose on default, for lack of an unbroken line of communication.
Roy S. Bloss, Pony Express—The Great Gamble, 123
Constructing a Cache
“‘A proper place being selected, which is usually near the border of some stream, where the bank is high enough to be in no danger of inundation, a round hole two feet in diameter is carried down to a depth of three feet, when it is gradually enlarged, and deepened until it becomes sufficiently capacious to contain whatever is destined to be stored in it.’ They covered the bottom and sides ‘with sticks to prevent the bales from touching the ground, as otherwise they would soon contract moisture, become mouldy, and rot.’ When everything was ‘snugly deposited and stowed in,’ the trappers sealed the cache with ‘valueless skins.’ They covered the surface with beaten earth to prevent the ground from settling or sinking. The displaced soil was ‘carefully gathered up and thrown into the stream, and the cache finally completed, by replacing stones and tufts of grass, so as to present the same uniform appearance.’ Goods stowed in such a cache in a hard clay bluff would ‘keep [for] years without damage’—provided the cache was truly waterproof.”
Will Bagley, South Pass: Gateway to a Continent, Location 798 [Kindle Edition]
Mormonism Antipathetic to Democracy
Mormonism was in several ways—and its persecutors rightly felt it so—antipathetic to the unlicked democracy out of which it grew. Far from separating church and state, it made them synonymous. (“Theoretically,” said Apostle Franklin D. Richards in 1880, “Church and State are one. If there were no Gentiles and no other Government there would be no Civil Law.”) Instead of celebrating the free individual, it celebrated the obedient group. For the will of the people it substituted the will of God as announced by the priesthood. Its internal elections showed only one slate, its votes were not choices between competing candidates but “sustaining votes” for candidates proposed by the hierarchy—and it took a bold man to vote Nay. Its shibboleths were not the catchwords of republicanism, but were lifted from the patriarchal vocabulary of the Old Testament, especially Isaiah. What they went to build in the Great Basin was not a state, not a republic, but a Kingdom. Hierarchic, theocratic, patriarchal, this strange descendant of New England puritanism was in some ways wildly un-puritan—or seemed so. For ever since some time in the 183o’s the doctrine of plural marriage had been secretly making its way among them. Not an indulgence but a divine command, it had been revealed privately by Joseph to his most confidential counselors, had been put into writing in 1843 for the eyes of the High Council and of Joseph’s difficult wife Emma, and had finally been publicly admitted in 1852. As if all this were not enough, the Mormons tended to vote solid in state and national elections, and as a “closed” society surrounded by an open one, they had a tendency to attract outlaws looking for asylum, to breed fearful rumors, and to infuriate the Gentiles with their smug assumption that they alone held the keys of truth, they alone were the chosen of the Lord.
Wallace Stegner, The Gathering of Zion, p 4-5
Robber's Roost
“While the Shoshonee is tracking and driving the old mare, we will glance around the ‘Robber’s Roost,’ which will answer for a study of the Western man’s home.”
[Note: Long disparaging description follows.]
Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 468
1849 Stage to California
“At least one Independence firm, Hansford and Peacock, and one St. Louis firm, Turner and Allen, planned passenger trains to California in 1849. . . .Whether Hansford and Peacock’s train ever departed is not known, but Turner and Allen’s venture received such an enthusiastic response that two California-bound trains were dispatched, even though only one had been initially advertised. . . .
[E]ager forty-niners willingly paid the 200-dollar fee. For this they were promised a ride to California in spring wagons carrying six passengers each, food rations for the entire trip, and the transportation of 160 pounds of baggage. . . . Further, while the trip was optimistically projected for sixty days, enough provisions would be carried for a hundred days . . .
The experiment had been an interesting one, but the surviving passengers, especially from the first train, were in anything but a friendly mood after their agonizing trip mercifully ended in long-awaited California. . . .When D.T. McCollum finally reached Sacramento, he calculated that 159 days had passed since the sixty-day train had left Independence.”
John D. Unruh, Jr., The Plains Across, p. 101-102
Prairie Grasses
In the prairie country the tall grass falls into three sub. ,ions, or communities: the blue-stem sod, the blue-stem 1ch grass, and the needle grass and slender wheat grass. blue-stem sod is found in Illinois, Iowa, eastern Kansas, in parte of Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas, and in western Minnesota, eastern North Dakota, South Dakota, and Nebraska. The whole region is rich, and the central portion forms what is known as the corn belt.
The blue-stem bunch grass lies west of the blue-stem sod and extends along the boundary between the short and tall grass from Nebraska to Texas, having its best growtn in central Kansas and Oklahoma. The rainfall here is from twenty to thirty inches, and the soil mcisture is from two to four feet, with dry subsoil beneath. This is the great winterwheat region. The needle grass and the slender wheat grass grow in the northern Plains and in Nebraska, North and South Dakota, and Minnesota. The rainfall ranges from eighteen to thirty inches. This region has become a part of the winter-wheat region.
The short, or Plains, grasses are the grama, galleta, buffalo, and mesquite. All these types occur west of the ninety-eighth meridian. The grama-grass area extends through Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah. It is by no means continuous, but occurs in the higher valleys and plateaus. “The grama-grass type marks the portion of the short-grass area which has the lowest evaporation and the coolest, shortest eeason, but which has a relatively low rainfall.” 1 The galletajass area lies south and west of the grama. It is found in northern New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah. The grama and ~uffalo grasses cover a wide belt extending from South Dakota along the boundary line of Wyoming and Nebraska, Colorado andKa nsas, and New Mexico and the Panhandle of both Oklahoma and Texas. The mesquite grass is classified as a desert grass. It grows in western Texas, in southern New Mexico, and in Arizona. It is a grass of summer rainfall, though it can lie dormant for long periods during summer, reviving with a little rain.
West of the grasslands lies the desert-shrub area, the intennountain region. This vegetation belongs to three general types : sagebrush, or northern-desert shrub ; creosote bush, or southern-desert shrub; greasewood, or salt-desert shrub. In all this region the desert type of vegetation prevails over the grassland. From the point of view of utilization, however, the whole region is closely akin to the Plains; that is, the problems of utilization are similar. In Texas the ninety-eighth meridian is generally accepted as a dividing line for both the floral and the faunal species.”
Walter Prescott Webb, The Great Plains, p. 29-31
Buildings at Julesburg
“At Julesburg—in early staging days one of the most important points along the Platte—were erected the largest buildings of the kind between Fort Kearney and Denver. They were built of cedar logs, hauled from near Cottonwood Springs by oxen, a distance of 105 miles. . . .
Julesburg, located at the Upper (California) Crossing of the Platte (which went by several names), was named after Jules Beni, a pioneer French Indian trader who bad been made station agent by Beverly D. Williams. One of Ficklin’s reforms (1860) was the removal of “Old Jules” for theft and other abuses, and the appointment of Jack Slade as his successor. See Overland Stage, pp. 217.”
[quoting from Root and Connelly, Stagecoaching to California]
George Root, "Pike's Peak Express Companies," Part III, Kansas Historical Quarterly, Vol. 13, No. 8 (1944) p. 496 (an note 249)
Francis Parkman's Group
“[Parkman] could not suffer the Pukes or the Suckers. So he joined three Englishmen whom he had met at St. Louis, preparing for a summer on the plains, and who also wanted no truck with the “Kentucky fellows.” They were three of God’s innocents and one of them had high ranking among God’s bores. Captain Chandler had retired from Her Majesty’s Army on a competence; he had his brother with him and a Mr. Romaine. This was a faintly literary gentleman who bossed everything, knew nothing, was inept in all things, and expressed his type at the very beginning by leading them off the trail for a full week.
Yet he had to be accorded a certain authority since he had been on– and survived – a mountain expedition in 1841. Parkman had hired his mountain man, Henry Chatillon, and a humble Canadian pork-eater named Delorier; the Britishers had three engages. Ten strong altogether, with twenty-three horses and mules, they fled the movers into the prairies, where there would be no worse affiiction than the Pawnee. They intended to travel a long way, the Englishmen to the Pacific and Parkman as far as need be to find the noble savage in his unspoiled state. One supposes that Henry Chatillon assumed they must soon join a wagon train; otherwise, to take so small a party west was folly. “
Bernard De Voto, The Year of Decision, 1846, p. 142-143
Destruction of Butterfield's Line
. . . the Overland Mail line had been “cut up by the roots” by the Confederates in Texas and all its stages stopped. . . . The mail had been halted at Fort Smith, Arkansas, in the east and Tucson, Arizona, in the west. The stage station at Syracuse, Missouri, and the principal railroad bridges on the Missouri Pacific Railroad west of St. Louis had been burned. Service on the Southern Route was never resumed. For a period of approximately three months the only mail service the people of the west coast had was carried to them by Pony Express and the Russell, Majors & Waddell Company or by sea.
Raymond W. Settle, "The Pony Express, Heroic Effort—Tragic End," Utah Historical Quarterly, Vol. 27 n.2, p. 109
Mile 655: Chimney Rock Landmark
“Chimney Rock was the most famous of all the landmarks on the Great Platte Road. This is not idle rhetoric. . . . Chimney Rock is mentioned of described in 97 percent of [known emigrant journals and guidebooks]. The nearest competitor is Scott’s Bluff, with a figure of 77 per cent. Then comes Independence Rock with 65 per cent, South Pass, 51 per cent, the Court House, 46 per cent, and Ash Hollow, 44 per cent.”
Merrill J. Mattes, The Great Platte River Road, p. 380
Motivations to Emigrate
“Since American scholarship has virtually enshrined the continent-wide westward movement, it is only natural that must of the speculation concerning the overlanders’ motivations has revolved around the so-called ‘pioneer instinct’ of restless frontiersman. . . . Those overlanders who chose to record the stimuli they believed to be impelling them westward, however, usually mentioned such prosaic factors as financial difficulties, the hope of economic improvement in the Far West, the search for better health, or political or patriotic considerations, before admitting to a general restlessness or a desire for adventure. Occasionally noted was also was the desire to get away from the increasingly virulent passions surrounding the Negro and slavery, the wish to flee the artificialities and restraints of society, the possibility of of evading capture for indiscretions ranging from theft to murder, the willingness to undertake missionary work among the Indians, the attempt to forget a romance gone sour. Some even claimed to be moving because of the better fishing reported in Oregon.”
John D. Unruh, Jr., The Plains Across, p. 91
Last Performance of Buffalo Bill's Show
Did you know that right here in Julesburg was where Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show had its last performance before the banks foreclosed on it?
Jerry Ellis, Bareback!, p. 135
Sand and Alkali
“This report of the eyes is a fact of which I have spoken before. The incessant wind which blew upon the plains, and kept the sand and alkali in circulation, affected the eyes of the men, and there were constantly some of the men who were unable to do much until their eyes were well; and this was so general a matter that all of the ranches kept large spectacles or goggles to sell to the ‘pilgrims,’ and we had a lot in our company to be used by the men when they felt that they were beginning to suffer.”
Eugene Ware, Indian Wars of 1864, p. 181
The Word "Mail"
The word “mail” derives from Middle English maille, or “metal link,” for the woven-metal bags carried by the armed couriers of the Hanseatic League, an organization formed at that time to protect the business interests of member German towns and merchant communities.
Winifred Gallagher, How the Post Office Created America, p 12
Bullwhackers' Mess
“Before starting, the bullwhackers were divided into messes of five or six men each, one of whom served as cook. The others took care of his oxen for him. Each was expected to have a ‘chip sack’ attached to the side of his wagon into which he tossed buffalo chips or other fuel which came his way during the day. Equipment for cooking was simple and limited to a pot or two, a skillet, a coffeepot, and a Dutch oven for baking bread. Each man had an iron knife, spoon, fork, tin cup, and a plate which he washed and scrubbed with sand after each meal.”
Settle and Settle, Empire on Wheels, p. 31
Mormon Polygamy
On July 12., 1843, apparently as a way of quieting opposition, including that of his first wife Emma, Joseph dictated to William Clayton the revelation on celestial marriage, but he had been taking plural wives well before, as had others of the hierarchy. In the last three or four years of his life, if Mrs. Brodie’s count is accurate, Joseph had taken forty-eight wives besides Emma. And though the doctrine of celestial marriage stressed responsibility and duty and greater glory in Heaven and even a sort of eugenics as its justifications, and though many of the priesthood, including Brigham Young, entered into it in anguish of spirit and only because it was God’s commandment, there is little evidence that to the full-blooded prophet polygamy was especially puritan.
Wallace Stegner, The Gathering of Zion, p 32-33
Adjusting to the West
“It was the end of August, and the skies were cloudless and the weather superb. In two or three weeks I had grown wonderfully fascinated with the curious new country, and concluded to put off my return to ‘the States’ awhile. I had grown well accustomed to wearing a damaged slouch hat, blue woolen shirt, and pants crammed into boot-tops, and gloried in the absence of coat, vest and braces. I felt rowdy-ish and ‘bully,’ (as the historian Josephus phrases it, in his fine chapter upon the destruction of the Temple). It seemed to me that nothing could be so fine and so romantic.”
Mark Twain, Roughing It, p. 169
Valley Tan
“Tannery was the first technological process introduced into the Mormon Valley: hence all home industry has obtained the sobriquet of ‘Valley Tan.'”
Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 170 (note)
Mile 890: Deer Creek
“After ten miles of the usual number of creeks, ‘Deep,’ ‘Small,’ ‘Snow,’ ‘Muddy,’ etc., and heavy descents, we reached at 10 A.M. Deer Creek, a stream about thirty feet wide, said to abound in fish. The station boasts of an Indian agent, Major Twiss, a post-office, a store, and of course a grog-shop. M. Bissonette, the owner of the two latter and an old Indian trader, was the usual Creole, speaking a French not unlike that of the Channel Islands, and wide awake to the advantages derivable from travelers: the large straggling establishment seemed to produce in abundance large squaws and little half-breeds. Fortunately stimulants are not much required on the plains: I wish my enemy no more terrible fate than to drink excessively with M. Bissonette of M. Bissonette’s liquor. The good Creole, when asked to join us, naively refused: he reminded me pf certain wine-merchants in more civilized lands, who, when dining with their pratique, sensibly prefer small-beer to their own concoctions.’
Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 138-139
Sage Brush Camp Fire
“When a party camps, the first thing to be done is to cut sage-brush; and in a few minutes there is an opulent pile of it ready for use. A hole a foot wide, two feet deep, and two feet long, is dug, and sage-brush chopped up and burned in it till it is full to the brim with glowing coals. Then the cooking begins, and there is no smoke, and consequently no swearing. Such a fire will keep all night, with very little replenishing; and it makes a very sociable camp-fire, and one around which the most impossible reminiscences sound plausible, instructive, and profoundly entertaining.”
Mark Twain, Roughing It, p. 34
Brigham Young's Kingdom
The “Kingdom” had once been projected from the crest of the Rockies to the crest of the Sierra Nevada, and a number of anchor points had been settled: Fort Limhi on the Salmon River in Idaho, Genoa in the Carson Valley in Nevada, San Bernardino in California, Las Vegas on the Spanish Trail in the Nevada desert, and Fort Supply, once Fort Bridger, on the Overland Trail. If the original plans had matured, the Gathering would shortly have had a second route—or rather a third, since it was already possible to go by ship to San Francisco and cross the desert backward on the California Trail—by sea to San Diego and inland by San Bernardino and Las Vegas and the Southern Utah settlements.
The war stopped that, and stopped it for good. San Bernardino, founded by Amasa Lyman and Charles Coulson Rich, was abamdoned and its settlers recalled to Zion. The same thing happened to Genoa in the Carson Valley, and to the other Genoa far to the east on the Loup Fork, which had been hopefully colonized as a major supply station on the Mormon Trail, and to all the more ephemeral posts set up to serve the Y.X. Express. Deer Creek, Pacific Creek, Big Sandy, Fort Bridger and its close neighbor Fort Supply were evacuated ahead of the expeditionary force, and Bridger and Supply were burned to the ground to prevent their being put to use by the enemy.
Wallace Stegner, The Gathering of Zion, p 280
Central Overland's Mail Monopoly
“The effect of the Pony Express on Washington was immediate and profound. Five weeks after the Pony was launched, a special Congressional committee recommended building a railroad along the Platte River route to Salt Lake City. On May 11, also just five weeks after the Pony Express got under way, Postmaster General Holt abruptly annulled George Chorpenning’s semi-monthly mail contract between California and Salt Lake and awarded the annual $83,241 fee to the Central Overland instead. For the first time, William Russell’s company help a monopoly on U.S. mail service over the entire central route, enabling it to compete head-to-head with Butterfield’s southern route for the primary transcontinental federal mail contract.”
Dan Rottenberg, Death of a Gunfighter, p. 195
Historic Examples of Pony Express
The idea of a courier carrying messages on horseback over long distances was old when Columbus pointed the prows of his tiny vessels toward the Wes tern Hemisphere. In the 12th century Genghis Khan, Mongolian conquerer of Northern China and Central Asia, organized a vast, empire-wide network of military communication lines over which relays of fast riding horsemen sped messages to the capital. The idea was not new, even with him, for horses in the West and camels in the East had been employed in travel and communication since time immemorial.
Post roads were common is England and on the Continent long before the Pilgrims exiled themselves in Holland in 1608. At Scrooby, where the band of expatriates originated, William Brewster, like his father before him, was keeper of the inn, and supplied horses for both stage coaches and post riders on the London-York road. Postmen with relays of horses were known in America as early as 1692, when Thomas Neale was authorized to take charge of the colonial postal business. During the Revolution, military expresses rode continually between the various armies in the field and Congress in Philadelphia. As the frontier moved westward, postmen on horseback rode the wilderness trails farther and farther west.
In 1825, David Hale, a New York newspaper editor, used fast horsemen to carry news from various parts of the state, and five years later Richard Haughton, of the New York Journal of Commerce, used them to collect election returns. James Watson Webb, of the New York Courier and Enquirer, in 1832, established a pony express between Washington and New York.
During the War with Mexico, expresses regularly traveled the nine hun· dred miles along the Santa Fe Trail between Fort Leavenworth and Santa Fe, and Colonel Alexander W. Doniphan sent at least one back from Chi· huahua. He also sent another from that city to General Zachary Taylor at Monterey seven hundred miles to the south. In 1848 Francis X. Aubry made the first of his four famous rides from Santa Fe to Independence, Missouri. On the last of these he covered the distance in five days and sixteen hours, using relays of horses. Alexander Majors, who saw him on o.ne of these rides, said those long journeys greatly influenced him and his partners in founding the Pony Express. In 1853, when an important Presidential message reached San Francisco by steamer, the Adams and Wells Fargo Express Companies agreed to make a race of delivering it to Oregon by relays of fast riding horsemen. The Adams Company won the race.
During the Mormon War in Utah, express men carrying reports by General A. S. Johnston regularly rode the twelve hundred miles between Camp Scott and Camp Floyd, and Fort Leavenworth. As previously shown, Morehead and Rupe made the trip in midwinter of 1857-58, and Majors himself rode to Utah and back in the latter year, arriving at Nebraska early in January, 1859. Travel over the Central Route was so common there was not the slightest doubt in Russell’s mind or the minds of his partners that a pony express could be successfully operated the year round. Majors and Waddell never questioned the possibility of that. They did, however, doubt that it would be a money-making enterprise.
The experiment of carrying the mail from the Pacific Coast to Salt Lake City by muleback was made by George Chorpenning with his “Jackass Mail” in 1851-58. Throughout the venture he simply loaded the pouches onto the backs of mules and made the trips without relays. In 1858 he arranged for swift riders, perhaps also mounted upon mules, to carry President Buchanan’s annual message to Congress in as short a time as possible. This was done in midwinter, and the document was delivered in California in seventeen days, eight and one half hours. It should be observed that this feat, which at that time was regarded as amazing, was accomplished at about the time that Morehead and Rupe were bucking the snow on their way to Fort Leavenworth, and more than a year and a half before Colonel Bee went to Washington. Both Russell and his Salt Lake City associates no doubt heard about it.
Settle and Settle, "Orgin of the Pony Express," Missouri Historical Society Bulletin Vol. 26, No.3, April 1960, p. 206-207
Lightening the Wagons
“As the emigrants moved up the grade approaching the Rockies, it became obvious that the overloaded wagons had to be lightened, and gradually they discarded materials not essential for survival. Domestic goods, of course, were most easily excluded from the essential category, much to the dismay of the women. “We came across a heavy old fashioned cook stove which some emigrant had hauled all those weary miles mountain and desert, only to discard it at last,” wrote Lavinia Porter. “No doubt some poor forlorn woman was now compelled to do her cooking by the primitive camp fire, perhaps much against her will.” True recalled that by the time hisparty reached the Great Basin all his mother’s camping conveniences had been discarded, greatly adding to her labors and filling her days with anxiety. This anxiety was not only the effect of added work. Books, furniture, knickknacks, chine, daguerreotypes, guitars—the very articles that most helped establish a domestic feel about the camps were the first things be discarded. Lightening the wagons, however necessary, was interpreted by women as a process operating against their interests. In one party a woman “exclaimed over an escritoire of rare workmanship” she had found along the trail “and pitied the poor woman who had to part with it.
“The loss of a sense of home—the inability to ‘keep house’ on the trail—was perhaps the hardest loss to bear, the thing that drove women closest to desperation.”
John Mack Faragher, Women & Men on the Overland Trail, p. 169-70
Telling Time by Moons
“The time of these conventions was generally set by a formula; the Indians could not go by the days of the month, so the date was fixed for a certain number of moons ahead, and the time set was ‘when the moon is straight up at sunset. ‘ When the moon was overhead at sunset it gave time for the pow-wow, and then the Indians had a full moon in which they could ride night and day going home.”
Eugene Ware, Indian Wars of 1864, p. 204
End of the Spanish Empire
Toward the end of the Columbia’s winter stay the Americans had witnessed the incidents that produced the “Nootka Sound Controversy.” Vancouver Island, which was not yet so named, was Spanish and all ships that touched there did so by favor of His Catholic Majesty. (This was quite clear and the East India Company acted in accordance with it, sending its first ventures there under the flag of Portgual, which had treaty privileges.) In 1788 Meares built some earthworks and a shack on a site which he claimed to have bought from the local chief for two pistols, and announced that he was setting up in business. In the spring of 1789 the Spanish commandant seized the shack, searched, seized, and released several British ships, and ended by again seizing several – one of which belonged to Meares – and keeping them.
Since the great value of the Northwest trade was now understood, the British government demanded restitution, reparation, and recognition of the right to trade. Spain answered with a demand that her sovereignty be acknowledged. It was an explosive situation in a jittery world and would have led to war – but the beginning of the French Revolution had cut off the possibility of French help and Spain had no choice but to accede to the British demands. . . .
Thus Spain abandoned her claim to exclusive sovereignty over Nootka Sound. In effect she relinquished the rights she had asserted ever since Pope Alexander VI drew his demarcation line in 1493, and the breakup of the Spanish Empire had begun. The Spanish concession had the utmost importance for the United States. California remained entirely Spanish but how far north did California extend? The Republic began to engross the Northwest trade and, as the wars of the French Revolution developed, went on to appropriate a steadily increasing part of the world’s carrying business. Though it was so weak a political and military power that the crises of the I790’s seemed likely to break it up, it was becoming a great maritime nation. The biggest business it was engaged in was the triangular trade with China. This was based on the Northwest coast, and the Northwest coast was the width of the continent away from the seaboard cities. From now on no American statesman and no continental thinker could forget for a moment that Spanish Louisiana lay between the western boundary of the United States and Captain Gray’s river.
Bernard De Voto, The Course of Empire, p. 331-32
Fastest Pony Express Time
“Perhaps the greatest feat of the Pony Express service was the delivery of President Lincoln’s inaugural address in record-breaking time. In order to surpass all previous performances, each horse along the line was led out from the different stations, and each traveled a stretch of only about 10 miles. Every precaution being taken to prevent delay, a transit was accomplished in the unprecedented time of seven days and seventeen hours over the 1,950-mile course.”
George Root, "Pike's Peak Express Companies," Part IV, Kansas Historical Quarterly, Vol. 14, No. 1 (1944) p. 64
Larger Land Units on the Plains
“The next step in the enlargement of the land unit came as the frontier passed beyond the prairie region and entered the Plains proper. Here the influence of aridity was added to that of a level and treeless country. For this situation there was evolved a new land unit which had no counterpart in the East. It was a contribution from Latin America, and it came by way of Texas into the Great Plains; it was the cattle ranch. The history of the ranch has been given in another place, where it was made clear that it began as an open range oi free land and, through the use of barbed wire, developed into the modern ranch of the big-pasture country. The point of emphasis now is that the unit of utilization was far larger than anything known in the East, even on the Southern plantations during the slavery period. A ranch may be as small as two thousand acres, but such a ranch is barely within the range of respectability. A real ranch comprises from two to fifty thousand acres. Such extensive landholdings were not uncommon in Mexico, whence the ranch came, but they were rare indeed in the region east of the ninety-eighth meridian. The forces of aridity gave a monopoly of land to those who controlled the scanty supply of water; hence the ranches extended from water front to “divide” by virtue of physical conditions or natural law.”
Walter Prescott Webb, The Great Plains, p. 392-93
Bullboats
“Crude rafts and hollowed-out cottonwoods were not suitable for commercial loads. The fur traders first attempted a modification of the circular Indian bullboat. This was an ingenious contrivance, resembling an enormous oval basket yp to twenty-five feet in length. The framework was composed of long and pliable poles from green aspen or willow. This was covered with dressed buffalo hides sewn together and then soaked. The shrinkage produced a tight covering, the seams of which were made water-tight by a mixture of buffalo fat and ashes. This resulted in a craft of extreme buoyancy which could transport up to three tons without displacing more than ten inches of water. The bullboat could be quickly and easily manufactured, but it would as easily be wrecked by snags and hidden bars in shallow water, and in deeper water would readily capsize.”
Merrill J. Mattes, The Great Platte River Road, p. 247-248
Mile 291: Oregon Trail Marker on Juniata Road
This section of the trail falls between branches of Thirty-Two Mile Creek and is very smooth. The inscription on the granite stone reads, “Oregon Trail Marked by the State of Nebraska 1912.” Scout troop 192 helped erect this marker.
Located at https://goo.gl/maps/uLX6HFid7PJHAMkV6. Note: The XP Bikepacking Route goes north of this marker. I you want to see it, sty on Oak Ridge to Junaita, then turn right. It rejoins the XP Trail about one mile up, just past the marker.
The old Overland Trail, taken as a whole, is rightly spoken of as the cord that held the East and West together during the troubled years before the Civil War. It is composed of several strands which are united as a complete, intermingled thread only for the passage of the Rocky Mountains [through South Pass], springing widely apart at either end. On the eastern terminus these strands, in turn, ravel out into a confusion of small roads—feeders from the frontier towns.
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 20
Performance of the Daily Overland Mail
“During the summer and autumn of 1861 the service was satisfactorily performed, despite the difficulty occasioned by accumulations of mail at the eastern end. The paper mail was usually carried through in twenty-eight days and the letter mail in twenty.
However, as winter approached, greater difficulties were encountered. . . Friends of the Ventral route were liberal ad blamed the unusual weather without condemning the route . . . On the other hand the champions of the southern route were quick to declare the service a failure . . .
But after making allowances for sectional bias, the fact remains that the service was slow and very irregular during the first winter. The Alta California admitted in the latter part of January that it had been about a week since the last mail came in from the east. . . .
During March and April there was little or no improvement . . .Between the snow and the mud the stage-coaches had a difficult time. . . . Sleighs were often employed over the heaviest snow stretches . . . Deep, still mud in paces made the empty coach a full load for the team, and passengers were compelled to walk. Mail bags full of government documents were frequently employed to fill in ‘chuck-holes’ in the worst patches of the road . . .
It was August however, before all the back mails of March and April which had not been destroyed, were delivered at the places of designation.”
LeRoy Hafen, The Overland Mail: 1849–1869, p. 224-228
Utah Territory and the State of Deseret
“Although the Church had deliberately built its new home in a region far removed from other settlements, its leaders in 1849 realized that Salt Lake Valley would need a more temporal government, in form at least, than the one they had at first devised. . . . In early March, therefore, a convention of Church members drew up a constitution for the proposed State of Deseret, and immediately upon ratification of thi document the people elected men to fill the offices. . . .
When the United States acquired possession of the Salt Lake Basin as a result of its war with Mexico, the Mormons found themselves once more encamped upon American Territory. Now under the jurisdiction of the federal Congress, they needed its acknowledgement of their new state if it was to have any pretense to legality. Accordingly, the General Assembly in July 1849 delegated Almon W. Babbitt to secure this recognition from the Government. The choice of emissary was an unhappy one . . . As a counterweight to this agent the Mormons had two other advocates, men of greater ability than Babbitt. Dr. John Bernhisel, who had in May brought the formal petition for statehood to Washington, soon proved that his quiet lobbying was more effective than Babbitt’s brash conviviality. The other spokesman for the Mormons was young Thomas Leiper Kane, a self-chosen champion of the oppressed who, though not a member of the Church, used his considerable political influence throughout the 1850s to advance its interests. . . .
Despite Kane’s and Bernhisel’s enterprising work, the Saints failed to secure the desired position of statehood, receiving only territorial status. . . . Congress voted early in September 1850 to establish the Territory of Utah, and Fillmore signed the bill on September 9. Too late, the Church leaders tried to forestall this event by instructing Bernhisel to withdraw their petition, since they realized that they would suffer less from Gentile interference as an unsupervised provisional state than as a territory under congressional regulation . . . The law, however, had already been enacted. . . .
Upon learning of the President’s territorial appointees, however, the Mormons in Salt Lake Valley felt no great concern for their future. Of primary satisfaction to them was Brigham Young’s continuance as governor under the new dispensation. In this selection Fillmore had depended on the counsel of Thomas L. Kane . . .”
Norman F. Furniss, The Mormon Conflict, 1850-1859, p. 6-11
First Western Mail Service
“The Mormons’ [who’d settled the Salt Lake area in summer 1847] need to maintain contact with their missionary organizations in the States and Europe provided the impetus for America’s first Western mail service.”
Dan Rottenberg, Death of a Gunfighter, p.58 (citing Settle and Settle, Empire on Wheels
"Finding" Missing Stock
“[A] number of overlanders ruefully discovered that even when a horse trade had been accomplished they could not be absolutely certain that the horse was definitely theirs, since a fellow emigrant, from whom the horse had initially been stolen, occasionally came up to claim his property. . . .
There was also a profitable variation on this deceitful tactic. Indians would steal horses or other stock, make an arrangement on a certain price for ‘finding’ the animas with the emigrants from whom they had stolen them, and then quickly appear with the animals to claim the reward. Overlanders suspected Indians of employing this strategem as early as 1843.”
John D. Unruh, Jr., The Plains Across, p. 163
Road Over The Sierras
There is likely no more detailed and graphic description of the devastated and hazardous conditions existing along this main immigrant thoroughfare than that written by J. Ross Browne, who, afoot, negotiated the entire trail to Carson City, over the very route taken by Upson, only a few days after the latter’s epic ride.
“The road from Placerville to Strawberry Flat is for the most part graded, and no doubt is a very good road in summer; but it would be a violation of conscience to recommend it in the month of April,” Brown noted. “In many places it seemed absolutely impracticable for wheeled vehicles . . . for the road was literally lined with broken-down stages, wagons, and carts, presenting every variety of aspect, from the general smash-up to the ordinary capsize. Wheels had taken rectangular cuts to the bottom; broken tongues projected from the mud; loads of dry goods and whiskey-barrels lay wallowing in the general wreck of matter … whole trains of pack mules struggled frantically to make the transit from one dry point to another; burros . . . frequently were buried up to the neck … Now and then an enterprising mule would emerge from the mud, and, by attempting to keep the edge of the road, lose his foothold, and go rolling to the bottom 9f the canyon, pack and all.”
Roy S. Bloss, Pony Express—The Great Gamble, 48
No-One Remembers Russell, Majors & Waddell
In the spring of 1860, following Greeley’s overland adventure, with the nation perched on the brink of civil war, Russell, Majors & Waddell established a subsidiary business, a privately financed gamble designed to prove that mail could be moved quickly—in ten days or less across nearly two thousand miles of still-wild North America. To do this, they would use a relay system of experienced riders and the best horses money could buy. No one today remembers the names Russell, Majors & Waddell or the vast freighting empire they presided over in the good years before the Civil War. No one remembers their rolling armada of tens of thousands of oxen, vast fleets of oxen, vast fleets of wagons, or armies of bullwhackers—the greatest such venture of its kind ever assembled. Their legacy would be the most obscure of footnotes in the history of the opening of the American West but for the little venture into which they poured their fates and fortunes. They spun the business off their stage line operations linking the Missouri with Denver and Salt Lake City, calling it the Central Overland California & Pike’s Peak Express Company. The name was too long-even its initials, COC&PPEC, were too cumbersome—and so it was called simply the Pony Express.
Christopher Corbett, Orphans Preferred, p. 18-19
Mile 1075: South Pass
“But South Pass was the halfway mark on the wagon journey [to Oregon], and by now the pioneers had survived two months of Platte River storms, the outdoor cholera wards, and the high-altitude weariness of the Rockies. There had to be something to say about reaching such an important milestone. For the gifted Margaret Frink, who understood that the small, telling detail is everything, the spare surroundings at South Pass presented few problems. In her Journal of the Adventures of a Party of California Gold Seekers, she reported finding the first post office in almost a thousand miles along the trail, and in the disance she heard live music at the summit . . .”
Rinker Buck, The Oregon Trail, p. 328
A Gallant Figure
A gallant figure, that rider of long ago! Young, for the wise heads of the company, realized that only to daring, reckless youth did such an enterprise appeal! Brave, for there were Indian attacks to be feared, wild beasts to be guarded against! Hardy and enduring, to face the burning heat of the deserts, the cold of the desolate mountain passes; picturesque and romantic in their buckskin jackets, their spurred boots, their pistols thrust through a gaudy sash! For seventeen months these boys journeyed across half the continent, their record achievement being the delivery of Lincoln’s inaugural address in seven days and seventeen hours. Then they vanished into the mists of the past and only the sound of their ponies’ hoof beats comes echoing down to us through the years. Their brief career forms a theme more fitting for the romancer than the historian, so colorful, so dramatic is it.
Louise Platt Hauck, "The Pony Express Celebration," the Missouri Historical Review, Vol. 27, no. 4 July 1923, p. 439
Desipere in Loco
“Unaccustomed, of late years at least, to deal with tales of twice-told travel, I can not but feel, especially when, as in the present case, so much detail has been expended upon the trivialities of a Diary, the want of that freshness and originality which would have helped the reader over a little lengthiness. My best excuse is the following extract from the lexicographer’s “Journey to the Western Islands,” made in company with Mr. Boswell during the year of grace 1773, and upheld even at that late hour as somewhat a feat in the locomotive line.
These diminutive observations seem to take away something from the dignity of writing, and therefore are never communicated but with hesitation, and a little fear of abasement and contempt. But it must be remembered that life consists not of a series of illustrious actions or elegant enjoyments; the greater part of our time passes in compliance with necessities, in the performance of daily duties, in the removal of small inconveniences, in the procurement of petty pleasures, and we are well or ill at ease as the main stream of life glides on smoothly, or is ruffled by small obstacles and frequent interruptions.
“True! and as the novelist claims his right to elaborate, in the ‘domestic epic,’ the most trivial scenes of household routine, so the traveler may be allowed to enlarge, when copying nature in his humbler way, upon the subject of his little drama, and, not confining himself to the great, the good, and the beautiful, nor suffering himself to be wholly engrossed by the claims of cotton, civilization, and Christianity, useful knowledge and missionary enterprise, to desipere in loco by expatiating upon his bed, his meat, and his drink.”
[Note: “dulce est desipere in loco” = Latin phrase: it is pleasant to be frivolous at the appropriate time.]
Richard Burton, The City of Saints, ix
Mile 1115: Farson and the Green River Basin
“Crossing the Green River Basin redefines monotony. The plains roll on endlessly, blanketed by the same wearisome mantle of sagebrush and greasewood. Outside of the river bottoms and the few towns, there is not a tree in sight. Scabby buttes, eroded from the stacked limestone and shale layers of an ancient lakebed, pop up here and there across the plains. The landscape is riven with ravines, most of them bone-dry in summer. The scenery has hardly changed since emigrant days. For Edwin Bryant, it was “scarcely possible to conceive a scene of more forbidding dreariness and desolation than was presented to our view on all sides.” Only the wind seems happy in the Green River Basin. It shrieks with glee across the plains, sweeping up wraithlike clouds of grit. “It has
been windy, and there is nothing but sand—sand all around us, which is drifting constantly, filling our eyes and ears, as well as the frying pan,” A. J. McCall groused, adding, “It is not strange that it affects the temper of the men—marring all good fellowship.”
After a day of pummeling by Wyoming’s biggest bully, I can vouch that nothing is more welcome than a building-shelter!—even if it is a run-down gas station in a run-down town like Farson, a forlorn little hamlet marooned in the sagebrush wilderness of the Green River Basin. I sipped burnt coffee there one afternoon,
hiding from the wind, while leaves, newspapers, and other flotsam flew past the windows. Was this typical? Oh yes, the attendant sighed. The windows appeared cloudy. A closer look showed that they had been etched by windborne sand. Merciless wind and winter beat up the small rural towns of Wyoming. The results are evident as potholes, peeling paint, broken roofs, leaking pipes, and plywood windows. Yards spill over with rusted cars, wrecked parts, writhing heaps of hose and pipe, and tires-many, many tires. Anything that might be useful, might a save a few dollars one day, joins the heap. But local folk brim with friendship and conversation, a pleasant upshot of life with so much open space and so few people to fill it.”
Keith Heyer Meldahl, Hard Road West, p. 142
Magraw and the Survey of Fort Kearny, South Pass, and Honey Lake Wagon Road
“[In] 1857 Congress passed the Pacific Wagon Road Act. The act appropriated three hundred thousand dollars to survey and construct the ‘Fort Kearney, South Pass, and Honey Lake Wagon Road.’ Having bitterly alienated the people of Utah while mismanaging the federal mail contract for the territory, William M.F. Magraw [sometimes spelled ‘McGraw’] used his immaculate political connections [i.e., his friendship with President Buchanan] to win appointment as the project’s superintendent.. . .
A notorious alcoholic, Magraw managed to squander much of the appropriation before leaving the frontier. With Tim Goodale, the expedition’s guide and interpreter, he smuggled more than three tons of liquor to Fort Laramie in government wagons. As a disgusted military officer wrote the survey’s officers concluded Magraw was ‘an ignorant blackguard, totally unfit for the head of such an expedition, while the chief engineer [William Lander] is.”
[N.B. “Goodale and Magraw could not come to terms [regarding the alcohol] at jouney’s end. Although the guide pulled the superintendent’s beard and tromped on his feet to invoke a fight as a means of settling the matter in true mountain style, the dispute had to be adjudicated by the officers at Fort Laramie. Five days were lost as a result of the altercation.” W. Turrentine Jackson, Wagon Roads West, p. 197]
Will Bagley, South Pass: Gateway to a Continent, Location 3341 [Kindle Edition]
The Runaways
“[T]he decade of the 1850s began harmoniously enough. . . . The cordial atmosphere continued briefly after the arrival Fillmore’s appointees in 1851. . . .
Almost from the first day the Saints had trouble with the new [territorial] officers. The Government had given [Almon] Babbitt $20,000 to deliver to governor [Brigham] Young for the construction of a statehouse, but this wayward Mormon doled out the sum in exasperatingly small amounts. Secretary [Broughton] Harris was equally unmanageable, his possession of another $24,000 in gold making him the more uncooperative. . . .
If the sniping of Babbitt and Harris was irritating to a man of Young’s nature, the actions of the bumbling [Associate Justice Perry E.] Brocchus enraged him and his people. On July 24, 1851, the Mormons had celebrated Pioneers’ Day, commemorative of their arrival in the Valley in 1847, and as usual on such occasions their thoughts had turned to their sufferings in Missouri and Illinois. Daniel H. Wells, which had fought the Gentiles in Nauvoo, spoke bitterly of these wrongs. He also introduced the martyr-mongering myth, later to be frequently heard in Utah, that the requisition of the Mormon Battalion in 1846 had been intended as a blow at the weakened and homeless Saints. Brigham Young, perhaps remembering Zachary Taylor’s opposition to the Mormons’ request for statehood, asserted that Taylor was undoubtedly suffering the torments of Hell for his wickedness. . . .
[Brocchus] accordingly felt a patriotic sermon, delivered with suitable rhetorical flourishes and a nice wit, was necessary to remind the people of their duty as citizens. . . . [His] inference that the Mormons’ patriotism was questionable caused restlessness among the members of the audience, but Brocchus, engrossed in his subject, was unaware of it. Now near the end of his speech, he turned from patriotism to morality. In a transparent reference to polygamy and with possibly an attempt at facetiousness he lectured the women at some length on the importance of virtue. . . .
Instead of receiving exuberant applause for his efforts, Brocchus found himself in imminent peril of an unpleasant death at the hands of an incensed throng of Mormons. . . . Afterward Young said that could have loosed the congregation upon Brocchus with a gesture of his little finger, but he satisfied himself with a tongue-lashing. The ashen-faced Brocchus, with [Chief Justice Lemuel] Bradebury and Indian Agent henry R. Day, who shared the platform on that unhappy occasion, was thankful to escape with his life. . . .
The excitement attendant upon the speech convinced Brocchus, Harris, and Brandebury they could no longer fulfill their duties in Utah, and within a week they were making preparations for departure.”
Norman F. Furniss, The Mormon Conflict, 1850-1859, p. 20-26
Attack by Lot Smith
“After we had been here about a week, Oct. 4, I think it was, Lot Smith, a Mormon captain with two hundred mounted men came riding into camp, stopped awhile, then rode off toward Green River. About seven miles out, he met one of the Company’s trains. He stopped them and ordered them to go back. The boss, seeing that they had the advantage of him, said that his cattle were nearly worn out, and that he would have to rest them before he could go far. Smith allowed them to camp and rest up, and then he and his men rode on. When he was out of sight they yoked up and came on to Ham’s Fork.
Smith reached Green River just as another train had unyoked, and drew their guns and demanded their arms. The boss, seeing they had no show, surrendered. Smith’s men set fire to their train. The boss plead for their private property-clothing, bedding, guns-and the mess wagon with their provisions which they finally allowed them, but burned the twenty-five wagons of government goods before their eyes. Smith then ordered the men to take good care of the cattle till he came back after them.
He and his men went from here to the Sandy and came upon two trains close together, camped for dinner, the next day, and burned the wagons, allowing the men their private property and mess wagons and cattle to haul them back to the States. They drove the rest of the cattle back to Green River, where the others were, and left them there. The boss of the Green River train, with his assistant, came to Ham’s Fork the next day.”
William Clark, "A Trip Across the Plains in 1857," Iowa Journal of History and Politics, 20 (1922), p. 192-193
Whore With a Heart of Gold
“A superficial look at women in the West did not reveal very much: the “whore with the heart of gold” (Julia Bulette in Virginia City, “Silverheels” in Montana, Mattie Silks in Colorado, Martha Camp in Panamint, etc.) and those women who attained their immortality because they could do masculine things and do them better than most men could: Annie Oakley, Calamity Jane, Belle Starr. But just beneath this surface are the stories and legends of a great many women-the martyred Narcissa Whitman, the sentimentalized “Baby Doe” Tabor, even Willa Cather, or the thousands of women whose names are not known to us but who commanded the “deference universally paid” them – and the roles women played in the history of the West were so varied and so full that it would be unfair to try and discuss them in a single chapter. The method of this book has been to construct composite narratives or to search for representative stories; either method would do a great injustice to women, especially if they were to be discussed only in a chapter on, say, “The Whore With The Heart of Gold.”
Bruce Rosenberg, The Code of the West, p. 11
Government's Strategy Toward Utah
“The Government’s strategy was to put a Gentile in Utah’s executive office and to support him against a possible Mormon insurrection by a strong detachment of men, acting as posse comitatus. But this plan required that the governor accompany the soldiers to Utah. If the army should arrive first, without civil officers, the Mormons could with some reason claim that they were being invaded by a hostile force sent solely to destroy them, and war, not a pleasant possibility to Buchanan, might ensue. Therefore, final preparations for the campaign could not be made until the new governor had been appointed. The search for a candidate consumed precious weeks, since the job was not especially attractive. . . .
At last, in the second week of June, the Government found a suitable candidate in Alfred Cumming. Even he had refused the appointment at one time, but after a change of heart had come to Washington armed with the effective sponsorship of the omnipresent Thomas L. Kane. Yet Cumming’s initial acceptance was apparently conditional, for he journeyed to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, presumably to inspect their preparations for the campaign, before finally agreeing to take the position. Secretary of State Cass did not send him his commission until July 13, when the days were growing shorter and the nights a bit cooler in the country beyond South Pass.”
Norman F. Furniss, The Mormon Conflict, 1850-1859, p. 96-97
Removal of General Johnson from California
Colonel E. D. Baker, although a Senator from Oregon (in 1861), was looked upon by Californians as being more a representative of their own state than of Oregon. And since he represented the loyal sentiment of the people of California more truly than California’s own Senators did, he gave great satisfaction to all loyal citizens. He it was who explained to President Lincoln, a life-long friend of his, the importance of sending a loyal man of high military rank to relieve General Johnston, commanding the Department of the Pacific.
(James McClatchy, editor of the Sacramento Bee, hearing of suspicions about General Johnston, sent word to Lincoln through Colonel Baker, urging the removal of General Johnston.)
Imogene Spaulding, "The Attitude of California to the Civil War," Annual Publication of the Historical Society of Southern California , 1912-1913, Vol. 9, No. 1/2 (1912-1913), pp. 121 and n. 2
Mile 330: Fort Kearney
“Of the five historic trail ‘forts’—Kearney, Laramie, Hall, Boise, and Bridger—we were now approaching the first in point of geography, last in point of time. It was established in 1848 as a curb to the exuberant habits of the Indians and was the only one of the five actually to be built for the accommodation of soldiers (the other four were originally trading posts and were established much earlier). . . .In accordance with the casual habit of the day, the name was a duplication of an older and already abandoned fort on the Missouri River just below Table Creek.”
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 83-84
Period Rush
“As a channel evolves into ever more extreme loops, eventually two separate bends may approach one another and join. When this occurs, the river takes the shortcut and establishes a new channel, bypassing the cutoff loop. The abandoned channels, which may be miles long on large rivers, record the curve of the channel like a letter C or U. Geologists call such abandoned channels oxbows because their curves are reminiscent of the U-shaped pieces of wood that fasten the yokes onto the necks of oxen (see fig. 2.3). The emigrants-despite handling real oxbows every day-didn’t use that term. They called the abandoned channels sloughs.
When they first form, oxbows contain standing water—a haven for mosquito larvae. Over time, with no moving water to keep them scoured, these stagnant ponds fill in to become low, swampy depressions. Emigrants along the Humboldt saw oxbows at all stages, from fresh ones holding several feet of water to ones that had progressed to the swampy stage. You can see the same thing along the river today. And if you want a “period rush,” as history buffs call it—meaning that you want to transcend time and touch the past in a personal way—then wait for dusk on a summer evening along the banks of the Humboldt River. As the sun slides below the horizon, the keening mosquito hordes emerge from the thickets, proboscises armed and ready. That’s when any spark of romance that you might still feel about the westward journey winks out, and you feel only profound gratitude for living in an age of sealed windows and insect repellant.”
Keith Heyer Meldahl, Hard Road West, p. 216
Mile 890: Billboard on the Emigrant Trail
“[In 1847] at Deer Creek, you saw a billboard! Of course, it was a poor thing compared those magnificent ones now lining our highways over the mountains and across the deserts, giving our city-dwelling drivers a feeling of comfort and security. Still, great oaks can only grow from little acorns, and this beginning at Deer Creek stood thus:
Notice
The the ferry 28 ms the ferry
good and safe, maned by experienced
men, black smithing, horse and ox
shoing done al so a wheel right
This was the Mormon ferry, near the site of present Casper, Wyoming, established by order of Brigham Young on June 18, thus to turn an honest penny for the benefit of the Saints.
[N.B. Deer Creek Station later became a home station for the Pony Express. It is located in present-day Glenrock, WO, at about Mile 890 on the Pony Express Bikepacking Route]
George R. Stewart, The California Trail, p. 187-88
Scalping
“Scalping is generally, but falsely, supposed to be a peculiarly American practice. The Abbe Em. Domenech (‘Seven Years’ Residence in the Great Deserts of North America,’ chap, xxxix.) quotes the decalvare of the ancient Germans, the capillos et cutem detrahere of the code of the Visigoths, and the annals of Elude, which prove that the ‘Anglo-Saxons’ and the Franks still scalped about A.D. 879. And as the modern American practice is traceable to Europe and Asia, so it may be found in Africa, where aught of ferocity is rarely wanting. . . .
“Scalp-taking is a solemn rite. In the good old times braves scrupulously awaited the wounded man’s death before they ‘raised his hair;’ in the laxity of modern days, however, this humane custom is too often disregarded. Properly speaking, the trophy should be taken after fair fight with a hostile warrior; this also is now neglected. ‘When the Indian sees his enemy fall he draws his scalp-knife—the modern is of iron, formerly it was of flint, obsidian, or other hard stone—and twisting the scalp-lock, which is left long for that purpose, and boastfully braided or decorated with some gaudy ribbon or with the war-eagle’s plume, round his left hand, makes with the right two semicircular incisions, with and against the sun, about the part to be removed. The skin is next loosened with the knife-point, if there be time to spare and if there be much scalp to be taken. The operator then sits on the ground, places his feet against the subject’s shoulders by way of leverage, and, holding the scalp-lock with both hands, he applies a strain which soon brings off the spoils with a sound which, I am told, is not unlike ‘flop.’ Without the long lock it would be difficult to remove the scalp; prudent white travelers, therefore, are careful, before setting out through an Indian country, to ‘shingle off’ their hair as closely as possible; the Indian, moreover, hardly cares for a half-fledged scalp. To judge from the long love-locks affected by the hunter and mountaineer, he seems to think lightly of this precaution; to hold it, in fact, a point of honor that the savage should have a fair chance. A few cunning men have surprised their adversaries with wigs. The operation of scalping must be exceedingly painful; the sufferer turns, wriggles, and ‘squirms’ upon the ground like a scotched snake. It is supposed to induce brain fever; many instances, however, are known of men and even women recovering from it, as the former do from a more dreadful infliction in Abyssinia and Galla-land; cases are of course rare, as a disabling wound is generally inflicted before the bloodier work is done.”
Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 113-114
Mile 1078: Pacific Springs Pacific Springs, WY
“Pacific Springs is a marshy area just beyond South Pass in Wyoming. Seemingly unassuming, it was the first source of water for riders on the western side of the continental divide. And the Pony Express station that was built here in 1860 was the first station on the Pacific side of the United States encountered by west-bound riders! This station burned to the ground in 1862, but the remains of a cabin built in the late 1800s/ early 1900s marks its general location.”
Encouraging the people’s expectation of a place on the country’s communications grid was essential to the republic’s physical and political development as well as the post’s. Pioneers were likelier to venture into the wilderness if they anticipated maintaining a link to the great world and having an outpost of the federal government, a place on the map, and a civic identity. The first step in the so-called petitioning process for mail service required a community to badger the Post Office Department or their congressman for it. In many instances, the congressman then submitted the constituents’ appeal to the postmaster general, who had retained the constitutional power to establish post offices. If service was deemed warranted, he authorized a new post office, and Congress, responding to the direct will of the local people, determined the route by which the mail would reach it.
Petitioning processes were very often successful, especially in the freewheeling territories, as areas under federal jurisdiction but lacking the status of an official state were called. Indeed, complaints about the overabundance of post offices created by legislators’ pork-barreling were voiced by the turn of the century. Nevertheless, Americans had objective proof of their national government’s responsiveness to their direct input, which not only brought them mail but also turned clusters of cabins in the middle of nowhere into villages with names, and rutted trails through dense forests into roads on a map.
Winifred Gallagher, How the Post Office Created America, p. 35
Changing Landscape
“This country was quite different from that we had passed over. From Leavenworth across to where we struck the Platte River near Fort Kearny, it was a fine, beautiful country mostly prairie, with an occasional belt of timber along the streams. But up the South Platte it was comparatively a level, grassy plain from the river back to the sand hills, with no timber, and here we had to substitute buffalo chips for fuel. After reaching Ash Hollow we began to get some scrubby wood.
The whole appearance of the country had changed. It began to be more wavy and rocky, and occasionally there were some scrub cedars, scattered among the rocky hills. The tops of the waves were covered with rock in all the shapes the imagination of man can picture.
After leaving our eamp near Chimney Rock, we travelled in the midst of this grand and beautiful scenery a few days, undisturbed by Indians, much to our relief. We now came to Fort Laramie.
The country along the North Platte was nearly the same all the way, although it changed a little as we neared the Laramie range of mountains. There were more of the scrub cedars on the rocky bluffs.
The Laramie Mountains were quite bald, there being little timber except in the canyons.’
William Clark, "A Trip Across the Plains in 1857," Iowa Journal of History and Politics, 20 (1922), p. 187
Marcy Expedition Crossing the Rockies
“Marcy offered the [Ute] chief the value of three horses if he would guide the party to Cochetopa Pass, the only feasible route in miles over the continental divide. But the Indian was adamant, indicating that the white men would die if they tried to cross.
“On the 11th of December the ascent of the western slope of the Rockies was commenced. Soon snow began to impede progress and presently became deeper with a crust on the surface which cut the legs of the mules. Deeper and deeper it grew and the order of march was changed. Instead of having the animals break the trail the men were ordered in front and proceeding in single file, tramped down a path. But despite this solicitude for the animals the poor beasts began to weaken. The bitter pine leaves from the evergreens formed their only sustenance and on this unwholesome forage the famished brutes grew thin, weak, and began to die. Burdens must be lightened if the crossing was to be made, and accordingly, all surplus baggage was cached.
“But still the mules continued to perish. One day five were lost, and on the following morning eight others lay stark and rigid on the mountain side. Not only was the pace being greatly reduced but the food supply of the men was becoming alarmingly small. All the beef cattle had been consumed and the bread supply was very limited. To husband the strength of men and animals Marcy now ordered all baggage discarded except arms and ammunition and one blanket for each man.
“The snow, now four feet deep, was so dry and light that the men when walking upright sank to their waists in the fluffy whiteness. Jim Baker decided to try snow-shoes, but found the snow too loose and powdery to sustain them. In breaking trail through the deepest part the men in front now found it necessary to crawl on their hands and knees to pack the snow so that it would bear up the other men and the animals. The leading man was usually able to go about fifty yards before he became exhausted and dropped out into a rear position.
“Rations had been reduced and finally were exhausted before the summit of the divide was reached. The only food now available to the hungry men was the meat of the famished animals.”
LeRoy R. Hafen, "A Winter Rescue March Across the Rockies," p. 9-10
Post Route as Future Railroad Route
[Benton] had his eye on the Pacific railroad, which he thought he was about to establish on his central route. The overland mail, he said, “will give the Central route a development, a notoriety, and a prominence which will protect its character and bear down all opposition. * * * * The post route and the branches are a skeleton of the future railroad.”
Curtis Nettles, "The Overland Mail Issue During the 1850s," The Missouri Historical Review, XVIII, no. 4 (1924), 523
Stagecoach Driver
“The ‘ripper,’ or driver, who is bound to the gold regions of Pike’s Peak, is a queer specimen of humanity. He usually hails from one of the old Atlantic cities in fact, from settled America and, like the civilized man generally, he betrays a remarkable aptitude for facile descent into savagery. His dress is a harlequinade, typical of his disposition. Eschewing the chimney-pot or stove-pipe tile of the bourgeois, he affects the ‘Kossuth,’ an Anglo-American version of the sombrero, which converts felt into every shape and form, from the jaunty little head-covering of the modern sailor to the tall steeple-crown of the old Puritan. He disregards the trichotomy of St. Paul, and emulates St. Anthony and the American aborigines in the length of his locks, whose ends are curled inward, with a fascinating sausage-like roll not unlike the Cockney ‘aggrawator.’ If a young hand, he is probably in the buckskin mania, which may pass into the squaw mania, a disease which knows no cure: the symptoms are, a leather coat and overalls to match, embroidered if possible, and finished along the arms and legs with fringes cut as long as possible, while a pair of gaudy moccasins, resplendent with red and blue porcelain beads, fits his feet tightly as silken hose. I have heard of coats worth $250, vests $100, and pants $150 : indeed, the poorest of buckskin suits will cost $75, and if hard-worked it must be renewed every six months. The successful miner or the gambler in these lands the word is confined to the profession will add $10 gold buttons to the attractions of his attire. The older hand prefers to buckskin a ” wamba” or round-about, a red or rainbow-colored flannel over a check cotton shirt; his lower garments, garnished a tergo with leather, are turned into Hessians by being thrust inside his cow-hide Wellingtons; and, when in riding gear, he wraps below each knee a fold of deer, antelope, or cow skin, with edges scalloped where they fall over the feet, and gartered tightly against thorns and stirrup thongs, thus effecting that graceful elephantine bulge of the lower leg for which “Jack ashore” is justly celebrated. Those who suffer from sore eyes wear huge green goggles, which give a crab-like air to the physiognomy, and those who can not procure them line the circumorbital region with lampblack, which is supposed to act like the surma or kohl of the Orient. A broad leather belt supports on the right a revolver, generally Colt’s Navy or medium size (when Indian fighting is expected, the large dragoon pistol is universally preferred); and on the left, in a plain black sheath, or sometimes in the more ornamental Spanish scabbard, is a buck-horn or ivory-handled bowie-knife.”
Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 23-24
Waddell's Gift of Slaves
This [taking up farming] proved to be a fortunate move, for nearby lived Susan Clark Byram, daughter of William and Susan Phillips Byram, a wealthy Kentucky planter, whom he married on January 1, 1829. The bride’s father, with customary generosity, started the young couple off with the gift of Negro slaves, horses, sheep, $1,500, and a feather bed. Now it appeared that Waddell was launched upon the successful, though somewhat prosaic career of a Southern gentleman farmer.
“Some of the watercraft drafted into use by the increasing pressure of travel [from St. Louis to Independence on the Missouri River] were old and flimsy, and chugging along upstream, were all too easily sprung open by the great snags, or sawyers, in the river—trees whose heavy butts lay sunk in mud, and whose jagged tops swung down with the current. . . .
River craft, especially if of value, were usually tied up at night—sawyers and the ever shifting sand bars were bad enough to encounter in daylight. In dry seasons, it was no uncommon thing to see all the passengers footing it along the bank while the steamer was jacked over a slightly submerged bar by means of ingeniously arranged poles and cables.”
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 7-8
Grattan Fight
“The casus belli was a lame cow! The Mormons, whose cow had been taken, complained at Fort Laramie, and a rash young officer, Lieutenant John Grattan, rode out [to the Sioux camp] with twenty-eight men and a small cannon.
The soldiers fired the canon and wounded two warriors. This was too much for a proud people, even though they had fallen to the point of scavenging on emigrants. The Sioux charged, and in a few minutes, Lieutenant Grattan had twenty-four arrows in him, and his men had been wiped out.
The fat was in the fire, but the Sioux were not yet capable of waging a real war. (They would learn. Before the story was over, Fetterman, Custer, and others would discover how well Sioux had learned!).”
Grattan Fight
John Colter and Blackfeet Antipathy
Colter reached the equator of the Missouri, the mouth of the Platte and there met a big party coming upriver, bound for the rich beaver country which the return of Lewis and Clark had publicized. It was commanded by the veteran St. Louis trader Manuel Lisa, the shrewdest mind in the business and by far the most successful bourgeois the American trade was to have during its first period. Lisa had hired George Drewyer as his guide and principal dependence in the new country. He had also hired the John Potts and Peter Wiser who had been with Lewis and Clark, and now he got another member of the great company. For again Colter turned back to the wilderness, and this time he marched into American legendry. Where the Big Horn River empties into the Yellowstone, a site that had been duly recommended by William Clark, Lisa built the first post of the Western fur trade. Thence he sent Colter to find the Blackfeet and bring them in to trade. Without companions Colter made a journey so remarkable that it makes one’s breath catch. His route has been much disputed and will never be confidently established, but he went up the Big Horn and found the Stinking-Water River (more gently the Shoshone in these days) and the neighboring bitumen springs and thermal phenomena that were called “Colter’s Hell” thereafter – and were laughed at by greenhorns back home as a damned amusing lie. He crossed the Divide, the first white man to do so after the expedition, and traveled across part of the more spectacular hell that is now Yellowstone National Park. Before he met the Blackfeet he met their implacable enemies the lcrows and traveled with them. So when the enemies met he had to fight with the Crows, killing some Blackfeet.
Some writers have held that this encounter sealed or perhaps created the murderous hostility to American trappers that the Blackfeet maintained for many years. Probably it was more complex than that, and perhaps a great part of it was the natural belligerence of the Blackfeet who never kept the peace with anyone for very long, not even with themselves, but there is no doubt that the anti-American policy existed. And in the next year and a half Colter helped a good many Blackfeet find the sunset trail.
Bernard De Voto, The Course of Empire, p. 491-92
Pony Takes Railroad into Sacramento
In June, 1860, the General Agent of the Pacific made another, more permanent change in mode of travel, this time east of Sacramento. Until then, the Pony Express, coming into the city, had followed the White Rock road from Placerville. What happened now may come as a shock to horse lovers and dedicated followers of Pony lore. Finney decided that the mail would ride the iron horse of the Sacramento Valley Railroad between Sacramento and Folsom, a distance of 22 miles. . . .
East of Folsom the route was laid along the Mormon Island-Green Valley section of the Overland Road to Placerville. ·The intervening distance required but one remount station, which was arranged for at the Pleasant Grove House. . . .
The unique arrangement didn’t eliminate any riders, but did release the horses at three remount stations along the White Rock road. These were then sorely needed in the Utah Territory where raiding Pah-Utes were busy running off stock from Pony stations all across the desert.
Roy S. Bloss, Pony Express—The Great Gamble, 60-61
Bones for Fires
“Buffalo herds were behind the hills, but we were too full of sleep to follow them. The plain was dotted with blanched skulls and bones, which would have made a splendid bonfire. Apparently the expert voyageur has not learned that they form good fuel; at any rate, he has preferred to them the ‘chips’ of which it is said that a steak cooked with them requires no pepper (The chip corresponds with the bois de vache of Switzerland, the tezek of Armenia, the arghol of Thibet, and the gobar of India. With all its faults, it is at least superior to that used in Sindh.).
Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 48
Spread of the Cattle Kingdom on the Plains
“In this way the cattle kingdom spread from Texas and utilized the Plains area, which would otherwise have lain idle and useless. Abilene offered the market; the market offered inducement to Northern money; Texas furnished the base stock, the original supply, and a method of handling cattle on horseback; the Plains offered free grass. From these conditions and from these elements emerged the range and ranch cattle industry, perhaps the most unique and distinctive institution that America has produced. This spread of the range cattle industry over the Great Plains is the final step in the creation of the cattle kingdom.
The first step was made when the Spaniards and Mexicans established their ranches in the Nueces country of southern Texas, where natural conditions produced a hardy breed of cattle that could grow wild ; the second step occurred when the Texans took over these herds and learned to handle them in the only way they could have been handled – on horse-back; the third step was taken when the cattle were driven northward to market ; the fourth came when a permanent depot was set up at Abilene which enabled trail-driving to become standardized; the fifth took place when the overflow from the trail went west to the free grass of the Great Plains. . . .
The purpose here is to set forth the processes by which civilization came about on the Great Plains. We are well aware that the Texans did not take the first cattle to the northern Plains; the Spaniards, of course, took the first. The Mormons, the Oregon Trailers, the Santa Fe Traders. the Forty-niners, and perhaps others took live stock. But all these took cows, not cattle: domestic stock, not range stock. There were survivals of the old Spanish ranching system in California and in New Mexico. But the process by which the Great Plains were stocked with cattle, by which ranches were set up wherever there was grass, much or little, was essentially as described. All the exceptions may be admitted, are admitted, but the essentials of the story remain the same.
The following, from the Nimmo Report, pp. 95-96, is an account that one commonly finds of how people learned the value of the Northern range. People inferred from the presence of buffalo that the northern range would be suitable for cattle; but the first practical demonstration of the fattening effects of Northern grasses came in the winter of 1864-1865, when E. S. Newman, who was conducting a train of supplies overland to Camp Douglas, was snowed up on the Laramie Plains. He made a winter camp and turned the oxen out to die. Spring found them not only alive, but in much better condition than when turned loose to starve and feed the wolves. This accidental discovery led to the purchase of cattle and the beginning of cattle-raising on the ranges of the Northwest.”
Walter Prescott Webb, The Great Plains, p. 224 and note 1
The Decision to Emigrate
“It is interesting to look at the decision to emigrate to Oregon or California in the light of the legal model of husbands’ power. In their diaries and recollections many women discussed the way in which the decision to move was made. Not one wife initiated the idea; it was always the husband. Less than a quarter of the women writers recorded agreeing with their restless husbands; most of them accepted it as a husband-made decision to which they could only acquiesce. But nearly a third wrote of their objections and how they moved only reluctantly.”
John Mack Faragher, Women & Men on the Overland Trail, p. 163
Mail "Avalanche"
“An incident we occasionally experienced, and which was a pleasing one, was the meeting of the mail stage, or being passed by the same on its western way The vehicle itself was a cumbrous affair, and was known by the ‘Pikers’ as an ‘avalanche,’ which was as near as they could be expected to come to ‘ambulance.’
Thaddeus S. Kenderdine, A California Tramp and Later Footprints, p. 47-48
Mile 137: Marysville, KS
“Marysville was the direct result of a route surveyed from Fort Leavenworth to Salt Lake City in 1849 by Lieutenant Stansbury. At this point, he was concerned mainly with locating an easy ford across the Big Blue. The town sprang up unbidden; its small board shacks mushroomed amongst the hurly-burly of wagons camped at the crossing, and its first citizens lived by the traffic of the trail.”
[Just above this paragraph is a wonderful description of Marysville in June: “Our first impression on entering Marysville was of a motley assortment of red brick wall broken by a lion-guarded gate crouched at one side of the street whicle, ahead of us, the clock in front of the funeral parlor was suitably dead. There was no need for time today. No one was keeping appointments.”]
“Here at Marysville the travelers from St, Joseph merged with that part of the traffic from Independence, Missouri, which had continued up the east bank of the Big Blue. They all forded at one place in an indistinguishable Mass and went on six miles to the next point of interest, the junction of the St. Jo Road with the one which came swinging up from the Independence Crossing.”
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 53 and 62
Stagecoach Conditions to Denver, 1860
“With the ‘gentlemanly’ express messenger, J. S. Stephens, and the driver, a total of 11 people rode this coach, including two children. A traveler who arrived at Denver in August, 1860, complained about the crowding of nine or ten passengers into the coach, with carpet sacks and express matter in the bottom ‘until your chin and knees came close enough together to make the one serve as a pillow for the other.’ In addition there were at times two ‘substantial ladies weighing about two hundred pounds avoirdupois, with all the crinoline fixings. . .’ However, the rate of travel was most pleasing. Those not caring for a seven-day-a-week diet of pork and beans, varied by beans and pork–the standard dish at all station houses, should take ‘a few cans of fruit, a few bottles of pickles, and many bottles of Bourbon or Otard [cognac].”
George Root, "Pike's Peak Express Companies," Part IV, Kansas Historical Quarterly, Vol. 14, No. 1 (1944) p. 71, n. 443
Mile 1193: Fort Bridger
“The majority of the migration arrived at Fort Bridger in the month of July. . . . The valley of Blacks Fork is beautiful out of all reason, like a charming but improbable stage setting, for which the snow-topped Uinta Mountains provide a magnificent backdrop. Apparently from sheer altruism the river divides near the head of the valley and sends its cool waters through this lovely flat land in several clear-flowing channels which unite again some miles below, forming a group of islands. On the westernmost of these we found the fort.
When, in the early forties, Jim Bridger built his first rude cabins at this garden spot and fenced them in with a stockade of small logs, he executed quite a stroke of business. . . .
There is evidence that he had completed something in the way of building by the summer of 1842, because an eccentric minister, Williams by name, returning from Oregon, passed on July 3rd of that year and made mention of reaching Bridger’s fort. . . .
Dirty little log outposts of civilization such as this, chinked with mud and roofed with sod, were the first exponents of a new type of business, the emigrant trade, which rolled merrily along throughout all the years of the migration, amassing fortunes for those who embraced its opportunities. Fort Bridger was the first trading post west of the Missouri built especially to cater to this business, and it was a blow when the opening of Sublette’s Cutoff to wagons drew thousands of prospective customers away. In the summer of 1849 Bridger’s partner, Louis Vasquez, with a retinue of Indians camped at South Pass, trading with the emigrants and trying to persuade them to go by way of Fort Bridger.”
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 246-247
Mountains and Desert
“Mr. Street’s contract was a vast work, every way one looked at it; and yet to comprehend what the vague words ‘eight hundred miles of rugged mountains and dismal deserts’ mean, one must go over the ground in person—pen and ink descriptions cannot convey the dreary reality to the reader.”
Mark Twain, Roughing It, p. 114
Rise in Personal Letter Writing
By the mid-nineteenth century, the post, long primarily a vehicle for newspapers, now also enabled average Americans to enjoy easy, back-and-forth personal correspondence for pennies, and they did so in rapidly accelerating numbers. Statistics on volume are dodgy, but around 1820, most Americans still received fewer than one letter per year; that figure rose to nearly three by 1850, to seven by 1854, and kept on rising. In what historian David Henkin calls “the postal age,” their correspondence no longer had to be reserved for matters of life and death but could carry on casual written conversations between friends.
Winifred Gallagher, How the Post Office Created America, p. 91
Mile 304: Oregon Trail Marker One Mile South of Kenesaw Cemetery
Just west of Kenesaw the trail jogged sharply west and then north to avoid a lagoon that is hardly visible today. John Klusman, while taking a break from planting in May, 2008, explained that the land had been leveled and drained in such a way that the lagoon that had previously been so prominent was no longer visible. The writer jogged this section of the trail in the late 1970s and recalls a large lagoon that obviously would have caused the wagons to detour. The goal was to get to Ft. Kearny with as little wear and tear on stock and equipment as possible; they were not going to get bogged down in a lagoon to save a mile. This marker was erected by the State of Nebraska in 1914.
The location is at https://goo.gl/maps/NDVHDwQT6f9278jh6. Note: The XP Bikepacking Trail passes .2 miles north of this marker. To see it, turn left (south) on Smith Lane (Hwy 1A) for .2 miles.
“The mochilla [sic] system developed out of necessity—an adaptation made to problems encountered in the daily operation of the Pony Express. There is no indication that these special pouches were ordered and used before the first run of the Pony Express in April 1860. Evidently, they were not put in use until after late 1860, for when the English traveller Richard Burton passed along the route at that time, he mentioned that letters were carried in leathern bags, and that they were “thrown about carelessly” when the saddle was changed between horses.39 Given the Spanish nomenclature, it may have been adapted from similar pouches in use in California.”
Anthony Godfrey, Historic Research Study Pony Express National Historic Trail, p. 65-66
Russell's First Mistake
“On June 19 [1857], Captain Thomas L. Brent, quartermaster at Fort Leavenworth, called upon Russell and served notice that the firm would be required to transport three million pounds of supplies to Utah [in support of the war effort] in addition to what had already been sent elsewhere. Russell’s reply was that their [wagon] trains were already upon the road, the time for getting ready was too short, and that to comply with the request would ruin Majors & Russell [the name under which the partners of Russell, Majors & Wadell contracted to supply the army]. Captain Brent admitted the truth of what Russell said but urged him to undertake the task anyway. . . . Russell at length agreed, with the understanding that Captain Brent would assist him in making up and p[resenting a claim to Congress for additional renumeration.
What Majors & Russell should have demanded, and got, was a new contract covering the circumstances. In this vitally important matter both Russell and the War Department were at fault. . . .Failure to write a new contract was a grave mistake. In fact it was the beginning of a series of mistakes which brought ruin upon the firm.”
Settle and Settle, Empire on Wheels, p. 18
Mile 2148: Placerville
“And Hangtown—what of it? Built flimsily at a carefree slant on the two sides of a shallow pine-filled canyon, the log-framed, canvas-roofed buildings of ’49 gradually gave way to better arrangements. Men found there was sure money to be made in limber, and small mills hacked out heavy timbers for warmer houses. A crude but effective line of stores centered the rambling elongated town and soon became a recognized goal for gold seekers. It was the third largest city in the state. And, only second to Sacramento, Hangtown symbolized for the overland Argonaut, their arrival in the west. . . .
The settlement started its diversified career under the title Dry Diggings, but was rechristened in honor of its early citizens’ well meant exertions in the cause of justice. Two Frenchmen and a Chileno were hanged on an oak in the center of town in January, 1850.Several other executions followed rapidly—possibly too rapidly. The place was irrevocably dubber Hangtown. When California became a state, later in the same year, the more aesthetic citizenry had its name legally changed to Placerville.. In the spring of ’53, still struggling for less violence, they narrowly prevented another lynching and had the oak cut down. The top was made into souvenirs, but the stump is beneath a building within a few feet of the memorial plaque.”
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 453-454
Short Cut to Cold Springs Station
“After a midday halt, rendered compulsory by the old white mare, we resumed our way along the valley southward, over a mixture of pitch-hole and boulder, which forbids me to forget that day’s journey. At last, after much sticking and kicking on the part of the cattle, and the mental refreshment of abundant bad language, self-adhibited by the men, we made Cold-Springs Station, which, by means of a cut across the hills, could be brought within eight miles of Smith’s Creek.”
Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 487
Character of Plains Settlers
In a letter to Manypenny, September 12, 1856, [Fort Laramie area Indian Agent] Twiss pointed out that the Indians were “not being improved, but rather deteriorating, and becoming worse from year to year.” This condition was due, in part, to the fact that all too often “those whites who reside among the Indians of the prairies are neither the pioneers of civilization nor settlements, but emphatically fugitives from both…. It is impossible for them to reside in the States or organized Territories, because the relat.ions of peace and amity between them and the courts of justice are inter- rupted…. [They] teach the Indians lessons in their own school of depravity.” Good missionaries and teachers, and honest traders – desirable at all times – were far from plentiful.
Twiss thus appears to have been firm in upholding his own rights and the rights of his department; ready to do the best by the Indians a.s he saw the best; keenly alert to Indian problems; but ever pessimistic or questioning the ultimate fate of the Red Man.
Alban W. Hoopes, “Thomas S. Twiss, Indian Agent on the Upper Platte, 1855-1861,” The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Vol. 20, No. 3 (Dec., 1933), pp. 364
Russell's Status at 45
In March, 1857, Russell and Limrick, as trustees, sold the re-mainder of the tracts, 3,881 acres, to Waddell. After holding the lands for a short time Waddell sold them to Russell for $25,000.° This transaction undoubtedly made Russell one of the largest land owners in Lafayette county. Now at the age of 45 he possessed the credentials—land, a big house, money, and slaves—to admit him into the inner fellowship of very important people in the busi-ness and social circles of the town.
Saved from failure and forgetting, the story of the Pony Express would become a great saga, a heroic episode in the opening of the American West. It would become a memory of the vanished West that Americans would be proud to recall. It would take its place alongside other American sagas, actual events that were much embellished, from Paul Revere’s ride (a la Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem) to the defense of the Alamo to Custer’s Last Stand. It would nearly become another sort of American story, the tall tale, in the tradition of Paul Bunyan, Johnny Appleseed, and John Henry.
But even if facts were never quite right, there is an essential truth about the Pony Express. It was a splendid moment of history, a rare event where the taming of the West took no victims. It remains forever fond and familiar because it is a recollection of the West unlike any other. This was not the West of the mindless slaughter of the buffalo, the decimation of the Indian, or the greedy exploitation of the land. This was not the West of gunfighters or cattle rustlers.
The story of the Pony Express was about a lone rider facing the elements, racing time and racing the transcontinental telegraph, too. It was the story of an audacious adventure and the bravura involved in crossing the country, night and day, in all kinds of weather, a man (or boy) alone on the back of a galloping horse. It was a story of chance and courage. It was the story of the West that might have been, the West that should have been. Americans love a race and they love a winner, and they loved that man on the horse.
We hear the fading distant hoofbeats of that horse across nearly a century and a half, faintly but still quite audibly. It is a sound that never fails to inspire. No memory of the vanished nineteenth-century West is more revered, and few are more beloved and cherished, than that of the long-ago riders of the Central Overland California & Pike’s Peak Express Company. And some of those memories are even true.
Christopher Corbett, Orphans Preferred, p. 9
West of the Great Bend
“West of the Great Bend [of the Arkansas River], there was, and still is, a marked change in the appearance of the countryside: the green fields gave way to great reaches of short brown grass and small prickly pear. Here the summer temperature of one hundred or more degrees and the dry wind bore hard on the traveler. In his report to the Chief of Topographical Engineera, United States Army, made in 1846, Lieutenant William H. Emory noted that beyond Pawnee Fork he had entered on ‘that portion of the prairie that well deserves to be considered part of the great desert.”
Henry Pickering Walker, The Wagonmasters (1966), p. 24
Purpose of the Pony Express
Forty-five years later Alexander Majors said that Russell, Majors & Waddell took over the Express Company to protect its own and Russell’s credit. While this was true, there was far more to it than that. First of all, they had to take it over or write off their claim of $190,269, which they were not disposed to do. By taking over the bankrupt concern, which would bring them $198,750 in mail pay alone to November 15, 1860, they thought they saw a chance to come out whole. They also held a monopoly on the stage coach, commercial and military freight, passenger, express, and mail business on the Central Route. The possibilities involved in these things were sufficiently great to justify whatever efforts were necessary to realize them.
That the foregoing measures were taken to place them in a position to compete with the Butterfield Overland Mail Company for the great $600,000 mail contract, which would be up for renewal in 1862, is plain. That was the end for which the Central Overland California & Pike’s Peak Express Company was organized. Encouraged by politics and the continual barrage of complaints against the Overland Mail Company, especially in California, Russell, Majors & Waddell felt they had a good chance of success, which they did have under ordinary circumstances. In the normal course of things, it was inevitable that the principal mail line would run over the Central Route. Nature had made that the shortest and best route, and sectional politics could not long prevent its adoption.
Settle and Settle, "Orgin of the Pony Express," Missouri Historical Society Bulletin Vol. 26, No.3, April 1960, p. 210
Army of Utah at South Pass
“On May 28, 1857, a small army . . .was ordered to assemble at Fort Leavenworth to march to Utah with the old Indian fighter, General S. W. Harney, in command. . . .
General Harney, being familiar with the country west of the Missouri River, was opposed to marching for Utah two months past the usual time for starting. He felt the journey should not be made until early in 1858. An over-eager administration in Washington ruled otherwise, however. This threw the Army of Utah and Majors & Russell’s trains so far behind the usual season for travel that by the time South Pass was crossed winter was setting in.”
Army of Utah at South Pass
Mile 1437: Simpson Springs
“Passing out of Skull Valley, we crossed the cahues and pitch-holes of a broad bench which rose above the edge of the desert, and after seventeen miles beyond the Pass reached the station which Mormons call Egan’s Springs, anti-Mormons Simpson’s Springs, and Gentiles Lost Springs.
Standing upon the edge of the bench, I could see the Tophet in prospect for us till Carson Valley: a road narrowing in perspective to a point spanned its grisly length, awfully long, and the next mail station had shrunk to a little black knob. All was desert : the bottom could no longer be called basin or valley: it was a thin fine silt, thirsty dust in the dry season, and putty-like mud in the spring and autumnal rains. The hair of this unlovely skin was sage and greasewood : it was warted with sand-heaps ; in places mottled with bald and horrid patches of salt soil, while in others minute crystals of salt, glistening like diamond-dust in the sunlight, covered tracts of moist and oozy mud.”
Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 454
Cause of the Paiute War
“The latter author points out that the real cause of this attack [The May 7 attack by Paiute Indians on the station of J. O. Williams, in which seven men were killed and the house burned] is not definitely known, but two stories exist, both of which blame tho occupants of William’ station. One account charges that they seized several young Bannock squaws (allies of the Pah-Utes), leading to a punitive expedition by the red men, and another that the station keeper, J. O. Williams, himself stole a horse of a Pah-Ute leading to retribution on this score. Even before this attack it was reported that 30 horses belonging to the Pony Express had been stolen by the Indians (San Francisco dispatch, April 27, in New York Daily Tribune, May 8, 1860). William B. Russell replied that inasmuch as the Express still operated, there could be no foundation for the rumor.—Leavenworth Daily Times, May 10, 1860.”
George Root, "Pike's Peak Express Companies," Part IV, Kansas Historical Quarterly, Vol. 14, No. 1 (1944) p. 58, n. 373
Van Vliet's Mission
“After the first elements of the [Utah] expedition had left Fort Leavenworth in July the Adjutant General’s office ordered [General William] Harney to send ‘a discreet staff officer’ to the Territory on a special mission. By July 28, [Stewart] Van Vliet, an assistant quartermaster in the army, had received his instructions. With a small detail he was to hurry past the column already on the road to Utah and to go ‘with utmost dispatch’ to Salt Lake City, where he was to make arrangements with the Mormons for the arrival and provisioning of the army. . . .
[Van Vliet] left Utah a sober man, greatly concerned for the safety of the army. . . .The Mormons, he wrote [to Harney], would resist the entry of the army into Utah to the death, although they would probably confine their campaign as long as possible to the burning of grass and other bloodless harassments. If confronted with superior forces, they would destroy everything, and using three years’ supplies of food already cached would hide in the mountains, where they could annihilate any force sent against them. In light of this ominous situation, ad because of the lateness of the season and the nature of the terrain, Van Vliet urged Harney to consider the possibility of ordering the troops to winter near Fort Bridger.”
Norman F. Furniss, The Mormon Conflict, 1850-1859, p. 106-107
Mile 1311: Mountain Dell Station Mountain Dell Station, UT
“Pony express stations were usually not just Pony stations. Such as was the case with Mountain Dell Station, near the head of today’s Little Dell Reservoir. It served as a trading post, mailstation, and inn. The station was run by Ephraim Hanks, a jovial, sandy haired frontiersman with a grizzled beard and smiling mustache. Ephraim’s stepson worked as a Pony rider and his “plural wives” served meals (on at least one occasion, boiled badger) to well heeled stage passengers!”
[N.B. “The exact location of which has been much debated. It stood a distance up the slope from Little Dell Reservoir, but neither study of contemporary accounts nor an extensive archeological dig conducted by researchers from Brigham Young University has answered the question of the actual station site. . . . Ephraim Hanks [who ran the station] was also reported to be a leading figure among the Mormon Danites, or Destroying Angels. More info about hanks and the station here.]
“The “Great Migration” of the histories is variously the first big push toward Oregon in 1843 or the more populous one of ’45. The phrase is rightly used in that, as the texts say, those years made Oregon American soil no matter what might be said in Congress or Downing Street. Yet the migration of ’46 was the decisive one – this was the year of decision – and though [Francis ] Parkman failed to understand it, he was right in calling it great.”
Bernard De Voto, The Year of Decision, 1846, p. 119
Mile 777: Bitter Cottonwood Creek
“The next important stopping point, according to the diaries, was the Bitter Cottonwood Creek. Maps located it in Wendover, Wyoming, a railroad stop . . . Many miles to the left, Laramie Peak loomed high—the most famous single mountain on the trail. . . .
The name Bitter Cottonwood came, they say, from the narrow-leaved cottonwoods of bitter taste along the banks for the clear, pretty stream. . . . Camping was good, but the fast horse and mule outfits went on to Horseshoe Creek where the feed was better.”
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 178-179
Dry Season on the Platte
“From Fort Kearney, for many miles up, there was no water in the river. The water seemed to be in The underflow. We not infrequently rode down to the river, and with shovels dug watering-places in the sand of the bed. We always found permanent water within eighteen inches of the top, no matter how dry the sand on top appeared to be. We were told that 75 miles of the river were then dry, and that generally about 125 miles of it were dry in the dryest season. At Frenches ranch the water began to appear on the surface in the shape of damp places and little pools.”
Eugene Ware, Indian Wars of 1864, p. 56-57
Pony Express Symbolization
Harper’s may have been read by frontier hearths and even in the occasional outhouse, but the magazine’s real audience was back east. Readers’ lives weren’t generally as dangerous or physically daunting, but they were cutting new trails as well: in commerce, in science, even in how they lived. The line of “real life” heroes stretching back through Hickok and Kit Carson to the founders of the country connected them to the deeper values that their lives were founded on.
They saw that, too, in the Pony Express. People were excited about the service, not just because they wanted information as quickly as possible, but because the service and especially its riders embodied or symbolized some of the things they cared about: courage, physical prowess, the willingness to risk all in a race against Nature and Time.
If gunplay figured into it, so much the better, but you didn’t have to be literally wild to be celebrated. Being tenacious and undaunted in the face of myriad hardships would do.
================
Buffalo Bill gets a lot of credit for advertising the Pony Express, and he deserves it. Not only did he include vignettes in his Western shows, he recruited riders and others who had worked for the service and put them onstage with him. He even rescued Alexander Majors from obscurity, retrieving him from Denver, enlisting Ingraham to “help” write his autobiography, and paying Rand McNally to publish the book a year before Majors turned eighty.
Generous though he was, Cody would not have done any of this if the Pony had not already been held in high regard and was at least somewhat famous, if not quite at the level that it would be as Cody’s shows gathered strength. The words Pony Express were synonymous not only with speed, but with adventure and rugged individualism and against the elements and all that. Cody enhanced the legend, but he didn’t invent it.
==================
It’s often said that the transcontinental telegraph killed the Pony Express. While the service did end the day the line was completed, that was by design; the Pony was always a short-term project.
It’s also said—less often—that the railroad killed the Pony and its ilk. There’s more truth to that, but again, people like Russell and his partners knew that day was coming; they all rode trains, Russell quite a lot. The idea was to sew up a monopoly before the transcontinental railroad came in. Then anyone who wanted to use the railroads-anyone who didn’t live next to the tracks—would have to pay. . . .
But our memory of [the Pony Express] has survived because it was far more. For us, the mystic chords of memory that Lincoln so memorably mentioned at the end of his inauguration address strike notes with deep roots. The tales, even those not entirely provable, are deep into who we want to be today and tomorrow. The values that we see in the Pony riders are values we cherish, even if we’ve never been near a barn, let alone a horse: adventure, speed, determination, endurance. The values of the service itself: dependability against all odds, unflagging commitment to a mission—these are values we too want to emulate, whether or not we’d go to the extreme lengths of Pony Bob or the White Indian.
======================
The raw ingredients of the Pony story—young men, horses, hardships, and danger—are potent bits for any narrative, whether in a rodeo ring or on the big screen. But there’s more to the Pony Express’s staying power than galloping horses and reckless young men. As important as Bill Cody and his shows were in keeping the memory of the service alive, I think it’s likely that we’d remember it even without the great showman. The Pony is the perfect transport vehicle for the things we still value in America, and for the realities we as a nation continue to face: speed, courage, individualism … distance, time, and, yes, money. If the Pony riders were brave archetypes of the American spirit racing across the American heartland, Russell and his partners were surely nineteenth-century venture capitalists. The fact that they failed so spectacularly is itself thoroughly American. If you’re going to fail, fail big.
======================
It didn’t make them better than us; we live in different times, with different challenges. But it does make their lives worthy of study and, at their best, emulation. The Pony flashed briefly across the American landscape, a strike of lightning in a sky often dark with danger and ambiguity. In its history, real and sometimes imagined, we see ourselves as we’d like to be: brave, resourceful, racing against nature and all manner of dangers, with determination in our hearts and a smile on our faces.
Jim DeFelice, West Like Lightning, p. 49-50, 252-53, 265-267
Performance of the Butterfield Line
“Even though northern interests continued to criticize the selection of a southern route by postmaster general Brown, mail service on the southern route proved satisfactory, averaging twenty-one to twenty-five days. First-class postage for letters was three cents per half ounce, and each stage carried an average of 170 pounds of letter mail and another 140 pounds of newspapers. By 1860, more mail was carried by Butterfield coaches than by any other means of transportation.”
Anthony Godfrey, Historic Research Study Pony Express National Historic Trail, p. 16
Mile 284: Lone Tree Station
“In time or course climbed slightly to a flat upland covered with grain. This was evidently Nine Mile Ridge, where in staging days stood Lone Tree Station. The solitary tree for which the station was named used to be visible for a long distance in each direction and helped to break the monotony of the bare, rolling prairie hills. It was hard to imagine such a condition faced, as we were, with ranches and roadsides planted thick with shrubs and shade trees.”
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner,p. 77-78
The Pony's Load
“[Russell, Majors & Waddell] immediately set to work, making careful plans for speeding and safeguarding the Pony Mail. They believed that both depended on the swiftness and endurance of relay ponies, since a single rider could not fight off Indian attacks and would have to escape them by running away. For this reason, a pony’s load must be no more than 165 pounds. Only riders weighing 120 pounds or less would be hired, equipment must weigh no more than 25 pounds, and each rider’s mail load would be limited to 20 pounds.”
Ralph Moody, Riders of the Pony Express, p. 17
Mile 1299: Big Pass Update
“Pony’s clear from Henefer to at least Ibapah. Can’t vouch for Wyo. Be careful if you decide to take the singletrack off of Big Mtn Pass in Utah. They made the lower reaches by Mtn Dell Reservoir more MTBish.”
Borby Kennedy on Bike The Pony Express , 5/5/2020
Women's Struggle on the Trail
“If we are to trust and respect their revelations in their diaries and recollections, the greatest struggle of women on the trail was the struggle to endure the hardship and suffering without becoming bitter and resentful, without becoming the carping wife, without burdening their marital relationship with the bad feelings that burned inside them. If we are to judge them not by our standards but their own, we will not resurrect and applaud every little act of womanly resistance and mean feminine spirit but examine and attempt to understand the powers of endurance that permitted them to act out the role of good wife through the whole hated experience. The women’s materials give us a penetrating look at the feminine psychology of social dependency.”
John Mack Faragher, Women & Men on the Overland Trail, p. 174
Pony Express Route Near Austin, NV Routes near Austin, NV
“Thanks to research from Joe Nardone, and some sleuthing from Trails staff: ‘As you can see, there’s a lot going on [near Austin]. First, there’s a route that stays north of the Simpson Park Mountains – you can see only part of it on this map. That’s the main route that was used for the entire existence of the PX, except during the Paiute War. Then there’s the route that dips around the south end of the Simpson Park Mountains. His (Joe Nardone’s) note says it was used by the PX from mid-May-Aug 1860, so the riders could avoid the Indians during the Paiute War. He cites a Pony Express rider’s journal for that information. Now look at the bottom of the dip where he’s (Joe Nardone) marked Cape Horn Station. There’s a third route peeling off of that, where he shows the Cape Horn Station. That was a stage station and a stage route used July 9, 1861 to 1864 by the Overland Stage… According to Joe, the Pony riders never went that way.'”
Kirtland became the Mormon headquarters after January, 1831; the Independence colony was established six months later. Years before the panic of 1837 and the collapse of Joseph’s “anti-bank” broke up the Kirtland community, Joseph had prophesied the ultimate removal of all the Saints to the frontiers. . .
Independence, the site of the Garden of Eden, where revelation had said would one day be built “the chief city of the Western Hemisphere” (it turned out to be Kansas City) turned hostile almost at once. The Saints were driven from it into more northerly and less-settled counties in 1833 . . .
Thrown out of Jackson County, the Saints settled in Caldwell and Daviess Counties, in the towns of Far West (now Kerr, Missouri) and Adam-ondi-Ahman. The first, said Joseph when he arrived there from the debacle of Kirtland in the spring of 1838, was the exact spot where Cain had killed Abel; the second was the place where Adam and Eve had lived after their expulsion from the Garden near Independence. Holy ground, and rich, and free from Gentile interference—for a time.
Wallace Stegner, The Gathering of Zion, p 18-20
The Crowded Trails
“these masses of westering overlanders do not coincide with the popular media image of widely scattered wagon trains traveling in relative isolation. Indeed, particularly between 1843 and 1853, most overlanders longed for privacy instead of the congested trails, crowded campsites, and overgrazed grasses they were experiencing. So many overlanders, for example, set forth from near St. Joseph on the same day in 1852 that teams traveled twelve abreast.”
John D. Unruh, Jr., The Plains Across, p. 119
Mile 689: Robidoux Pass
“The river lapped at the very base of Scott’s Bluff. The wagons must go inland. This was the more difficult because the bluff is not an isolated rocky formation, but the end of a line of hills. Several more of less parallel canyons break through, and of these Mitchell’s Pass, used by the highway, is the best and shortest and lies nearest the river; but it was not passable to the early migrations. Probably it was obstructed by fallen rock and debris. Instead the wagons toiled through Robidoux Pass, the next canyon to the south. . . .
Robidoux Canyon or Pass is reached from the town of Gering. One proceeds first over a decided rise and then down into a large circular valley of loose sandy loam. The emigrants’ columns raised storms of dust through which exposure of Scott’s Bluff showed fitfully until they reached the canyon and entered its obscuring walls. The dust was bad for lungs and equally so for eyes. Helen Carpenter’s little dog became entirely blinded and caused her mistress some bad hours by getting lost in the billowing clouds that smothered the teams. Many stated that they suffered more acutely from eyestrain and from cracked and bleeding lips than from any other cause.
Graves grew thick and thicker.They were no longer approached on paths worn smooth by enquiring emigrants who trudged up from the road to read the crude marker and learn who lay below. Now the travelers were too intent upon their own discomfort to bother . . . And still the westbound families camped near and, unless the smell was offensive, even on the graves in stoical disinterest.
The diarists raved about the distant beauty of Scott’s Bluff. It gave off romance in practically visible emanations, but they seldom mention being comfortable there.”
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 148-149
Pony Express Timetable
[T]he regular time for starting the express from St. Joseph soon changed to Friday mornings at nine o’clock. The run from San Francisco to St. Joseph continued to depart at 5 p.m. on Tuesdays . . . The announced time schedule for the Pony Express nationwide was as follows:
Marysville — 12 hours
Ft. Kearney — 34 hours
Ft. Laramie — 80 hours
Ft. Bridger — 108 hours
Great Salt Lake — 124 hours
Camp Floyd — 128 hours
Carson City — 188 hours
Placerville — 226 hours
Sacramento — 232 hours
San Francisco —240 hours
Anthony Godfrey, Historic Research Study Pony Express National Historic Trail, p. 64
Mile 366: Plum Creek Station
“As the emigrants approached Plum Creek, which was considered as the very center of buffalo country, the wagons lurched squarely across dozens of deep and parallel paths—some scarcely a foot wide but close together, like plowed furrows—which the great beasts had made single-filing over the grassy dunes to the river. The busy wind has left no trace of these characteristic trails, but throughout the emigration they were a major difficulty on the otherwise good Platte road.
In staging days Plum Creek Station was a well known stopping point and was the only station left undestroyed between Fort Kearney and Julesburg in the uprising of ’64—a pleasant circumstance which was supremely unimportant to its dozen or so inhabitants, who were all scalped. Their near-by grave evidently is seldom visited, but in the center of plot stands a massive stone monument inscribed, ‘The Pioneer Men and Women who Lost their Lives by Hostile Indians in the Plum Creek Massacre, Aug. 7, 1864.’
It is no more than right or fitting that their burial place should be signally and outstandingly marked. They paid a heavy price that some of the government services which we take for granted might be firmly established.Had it not been for the communicating stage lines and mail service, our western country might have had a far different history. This connecting chain was composed of many links which must hold fast if it were to endure. The stationmasters and stock tenders with their wives and families were these links. They lived rigorously at best, and often lost their lives at their posts. There can be no doubt that they helped to preserve the Union as surely as any soldier who died at Gettysburg.”
[N.B. The Plum Creek Cemetery had a Pony Express emblem from the Thirties until it was stolen sometime in the 70s. It was replaced, with a new granite marker, in 2018. The marker is at 740 Road and B Road, just about Mile 364 on the Pony Express Bikepacking Route map.]
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 96-97
Dogs on the Trail
“The ordinary [emigrant] party was accompanied by a number of dogs. Some of these were pets, and others were valuable for hunting and herding and keeping watch at night. But in addition to these well-trained animals there were the worthless curs, fighting, yapping, and snapping, pestering the cattle and horses by day, and keeping people awake at night with senseless barking and howling. Dogs were often the cause of quarrels among the people, and one company tried to outlaw dogs entirely, decreeing that they should be shot.”
George R. Stewart, The California Trail, p. 118
The Wagonmaster
“The kingpin of the whole freighting operation was the wagonmaster, and quite a man he must have been. He had full responsibility for $18,000 to $30,000 worth of wagons, livestock, and accessories that belonged to someone else . . . He had the responsibility for $25,000 to $250,000 worth of goods that did not belong to him. . . .
He had to be a farrier able to shoe oxen and mules and a wheelwright able to repair wagons with the simplest of tools. He had to know how to get wagons out of bog holes, up and down steep hills, and across rivers. He had to know where water and grass were to be found for the noon halt and the night camp. He was expected to be a physician to his men and a veterinarian to his animals. He had to be a hunter to provide fresh game as a relief from the usual sowbelly. He had to have the magic ability to be everywhere at one and the same time—riding out a mile or so ahead, scouting for campsites or bad places in the road, watching out for Indians . . . or looking up and down the lines of wagons stretched over a mile or more of prairie.”
Henry Pickering Walker, The Wagonmasters (1966), p. 76-78
A Real Desert by Daylight
“And it was pleasant also to reflect that this was not an obscure, back country desert, but a very celebrated one, the metropolis itself, as you may say. All this was very well and very comfortable and satisfactory—but now we were to cross a desert in daylight. This was fine—novel—romantic—dramatically adventurous—this, indeed, was worth living for, worth traveling for! We would write home all about it.
This enthusiasm, this stern thirst for adventure, wilted under the sultry August sun and did not last above one hour. One poor little hour—and then we were ashamed that we had ‘gushed ‘ so. The poetry was all in the anticipation there is none in the reality. Imagine a vast, waveless ocean stricken dead and turned to ashes; imagine this solemn waste tufted with ash-dusted sage-bushes; imagine the lifeless silence and solitude that belong to such a place; imagine a coach creeping like a bug through the midst of this shoreless level, and sending up tumbled volumes of dust as if it were a bug that went by steam; imagine this aching monotony of toiling and plowing kept up hour after hour, and the shore still as far away as ever, apparently; imagine team, driver, coach and passengers so deeply coated with ashes that they are all one colorless color; imagine ash-drifts roosting above moustaches and eyebrows like snow accumulations on boughs and bushes. This is the reality of it.
The sun beats down with dead, blistering, relentless malignity ; the perspiration is welling from every pore in man and beast, but scarcely a sign of it finds its way to the surface—it is absorbed before it gets there; there is not the faintest breath of air stirring; there is not a merciful shred of cloud in all the brilliant firmament; there is not a living creature visible in any direction whither one searches the blank level that stretches its monotonous miles on every hand; there is not a sound—not a sigh—not a whisper—not a buzz, or a whir of wings, or distant pipe of bird—not even a sob from the lost souls that doubtless people that dead air. And so the occasional sneezing of the resting mules, and the champing of the bits, grate harshly on the grim stillness, not dissipating the spell but accenting it and making one feel more lonesome and forsaken than before.
The mules, under violent swearing, coaxing and whipcracking, would make at stated intervals a ‘spurt,’ and drag the coach a hundred or may be ‘two hundred yards, stirring up a billowy cloud of dust that rolled back, enveloping the vehicle to the wheel-tops or higher, and making it seem afloat in a fog. Then a rest followed, with the usual sneezing and bit-champing. Then another ‘spurt’ of a hundred yards and another rest at the end of it. All day long we kept this up, without water for the mules and without ever changing the team. At least we kept it up ten hours, which, I take it, is a day, and a pretty honest one, in an alkali desert. It was from four in the morning till two in the afternoon. And it was so hot! and so close! and our water canteens went dry in the middle of the day and we got so thirsty! It was so stupid and tiresome and dull! and the tedious hours did lag and drag and limp along with such a cruel deliberation! It was so trying to give one’s watch a good long undisturbed spell and then take it out and find that it had been fooling away the time and not trying to get ahead any! The alkali dust cut through our lips, it persecuted our eyes, it ate through the delicate membranes and made our noses bleed and kept them bleeding—and truly and seriously the romance all faded far away and disappeared, and left the desert trip nothing but a harsh reality—a thirsty, sweltering, longing, hateful reality!
Two miles and a quarter an hour for ten hours—that was what we accomplished.”
Mark Twain, Roughing It, p. 143-144
Mile 1382: Dugout/Joes Dugout/Joe Butchers Station
“In conjunction with the Express and stage operation, Joseph Dorton operated a small grocery store. Clients were generally the soldiers from Camp Floyd. He also built a two-room brick home and log barn and provided a dugout for an Indian boy helper. Besides well water (Photo 16), water was hauled from Utah Lake and sold for twenty-five cents per bucket. Use of the station after 1861 is unknown. It may have continued in use as a stage station.
The sole practical preparation for war that had been made was the order for Commodore Sloat to seize the California ports if he should learn that war with Mexico had broken out. There had been some conversations between department heads and the appropriate committees of Congress. They had anticipated a war with Great Britain, however, and little action had come from them. Although Polk and his Cabinet had envisaged the possibility of war with Mexico from March 4, 1845, on to May, 1846, they had done nothing to prepare for it. They suffered the illusions of a nation that had not fought a war since 1814, had only fought foreign wars with the navy, and had never fought a war of conquest. The expected the irresistible sharpshooters of Yorktown and New Orleans to spring to arms; in Robert Dale Owen’s phrase, ‘two companies of Kentucky rifles’ could do the job. In June of ’46 the Americans were springing to arms all right, far more of them than could be used, but no one had any idea what to do with them.”
Bernard De Voto, The Year of Decision, 1846, p. 231-232
Russell's Reputation
Various writers recall that he was known, in the parlance of his day, as a plunger: a risk taker, a gambler, a speculator. An early observer of Russell’s business ventures, some of which were not successful, called them Russell’s Follies. He was deeply offended by criticism and angrily wrote once to his partner William Waddell, who fretted over Russell’s antics, to chastise those who thought so of him: “I am not a reckless gambler and I will not be so posted.”
Christopher Corbett, Orphans Preferred, p. 19
Western Superlatives
“It was a rare diarist or letter writer who did not at least once term some phenomenon ‘romantic,’ or ‘the greatest natural curiosity’ ever seen. Most of all, the emigrants viewed the West as larger than life; it was with superlatives that the overlanders reported the West to their countrymen and the world.
The scenery was the grandest they had ever seen, the trees the tallest, the natural roads the finest, the water the best, the grass the most luxuriant, the wind the strongest, the rainstorms the heaviest, the hailstones the largest, the lightning the brightest, the thunder the loudest, the rainbows the most brilliant, the mountains the most spectacular, the grasshoppers the biggest, the meat of the buffalo and the mountain sheep the juiciest, the Indians the handsomest, the rapid temperature changes the most phenomenal—the list is as endless as there were phenomena to describe.”
John D. Unruh, Jr., The Plains Across, p. 396-397
Russell's Retail Experience
At 19 years of age Russell appears to have been manager of the store [Aull’s in Lexington, MO]. The extent of the firm’s business is seen in the fact that it had an interest in three Missouri river steamboats, operated a ropewalk in Liberty, owned a saw and grist mill, and engaged in the Santa Fe and fur trade. It also contracted to furnish supplies to Fort Leavenworth, Indian missions, emigrating tribes, and United States troops.”
Although only fragmentary studies of this giant pioneer firm have been made, it is clear that during the early 1830’s it was the largest and most influential business enterprise on the western Missouri frontier. As such it not only constituted excellent training ground for Russell, but to a very great degree provided a blue print for his career in days to come. In breadth of vision, energy, daring, and remarkable skill in organization, he was destined to operate in a similar though much wider field and by far surpass his old employer and mentor.
“On November 3, Colonel Johnson arrived [to join Colonel Alexander at a point three miles below the junction of Ham’s Fork and Black’s Fork] with the rear of the army and a column of Major’s & Russell’s trains. Three days later he broke camp and marched for Fort Bridger to go into winter quarters. . . .At about noon a snowstorm so heavy the bullwhackers could scarcely see their lead teams swept down upon them. The oxen were turned loose to graze, but they could find nothing to eat. What little grass the Mormons had not burned was buried under seven inches of snow. . . .
On the morning of November 8 the thermometer stood at 3º below zero.The night before more than half of Majors & Russell’s remaining oxen some of the army’s mules had died. . . .
Conditions on the march of the 9th were worse than those of the day before. Again Majors & Russell’s oxen died on the road. The Army of Utah was now battling a foe far more dangerous and implacable than Brigham Young’s Mormons. The long, frigid Rocky Mountain winter had set in, animals were dying by the hundreds, the soldiers were exposed in the open to subzero weather, and the danger of losing all the supplies was acute.
The troops remained in camp on November 10 and 11 while Majors & Russell’s trains were being moved forward. Nobody thought of advancing upon Salt Lake City now. Fort Bridger, only a few miles away, was their sole hope of refuge.”
Army of Utah Winter Camp
Post Offices
“Continued population increase and settlement of Oregon, California, and Utah sustained a growing necessity for an east-west mail service. In response to these migrations and population increases, post offices were officially established in San Francisco (1848) and Salt Lake City (1849). Thereafter, the federal government let contracts to companies to provide east-west mail service.
For the next decade or so, vital questions regarding delivery routes (ocean versus overland), frequency of service (monthly or semi-monthly), speed of delivery (number of days for delivery), and costs were answered through pragmatic means—trial and error.”
Anthony Godfrey, Historic Research Study Pony Express National Historic Trail, p. 5-6
Pony Service During the Paiute War
“By the fall of 1860 more than half the Pony Express posts between Carson City and Utah Lake had been destroyed by Paiute ambushes set in every mountain pass along the trail. But except for one short period the mail went through. Never following exactly the same route twice in succession, and avoiding regular mountain passes whenever possible, the riders made their way across the deserts as best they could, depending on the speed of their superior mounts to outrun surprise attacks. But as more and more relay posts were destroyed the advantage of speed was lost, for a horse often had to be ridden a hundred miles to reach a remaining post. Many a rider was wounded bu Indian arrows but, miraculously, only one was killed. The mail was often late, sometimes as much as a week, but no rider ever turned back, and only one refused to make his run.”
Ralph Moody, The Old Trails West, p. 297
Take the Trail Where You Find It
“You’d better take your trail where you find it; and, if it’s easy for a while, you’re that much to the good. It’ll be tough enough later on, advised Dr. Neff practically.”
Take the Trail Where You Find It
Mile 841-878: La Bonte to Box Elder Station
“[We] headed for the succession of creeks which the pioneers had crossed in the next three days’ journey.
The first was Wagonhound [near Mile 844]. Few knew the name, but none ever forgot the creek, and it could always be identified by description, for it was red. The soil and the rock were almost audibly red, from the burnt hue of Mexican pottery to the clear vivd tone of a madrone trunk. . . . One woman was impressed by the lurid color and the general look of drastic upheaval that she painfully crawled to the top of one of the ‘mountains of red stone’ and inscribed upon it, ‘Remember me in mercy O Lord.’ . . .
A stream just beyond Grindstone Butte, modernly called Bed Tick Creek, was apparently nameless to the emigrants; but it furnished water and a little much-needed grass. Next came La Prelle, the first large stream after Le Bonte Creek, boasting a natural bridge of rock.
After La Prelle came Little and then Big Box Elder. . . .
Through all the years it was a great moment for the throngs of emigrants as they struggled over the last elevation [near Box Elder Creek]. Behind them, low ridge after low ridge, in serried order, marched the Black Hills. Ahead, the Platte twisted through the lowland, gleaming silvery on the curves: a strange river, blurred gray and untrustworthy . . .”
[N.B. There were Pony Express stations at La Prelle and Box Elder. Both sites, however, are off the Pony Express Bikepacking route]
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 185-191
Freighter Burial
“When a little out of sorts or low-spirited, the old professionals would make things worse by telling what became of the teamsters when they died, that is, in this world; for it is pretty easy to tell where most of the ‘bull-whackers’ went, unless orthodox theology is at fault. These Job’s comforters told how the translated unfortunates were buried in scant roadside graves, in boxes made from the sideboards of their wagons.”
Thaddeus S. Kenderdine, A California Tramp and Later Footprints, p. 18-19
Russell's Innovation
The organization he perfected surpassed anything of the kind ever known, even that of Genghis Khan, for efficiency, speed, and regularity. These things stand out all the more clearly when it is remembered that at least three quarters of the 2,000 mile route lay through uninhabited, mostly desert country. The innovations he introduced were the establishment of stations on the average of ten miles apart, the hiring of station masters and stock tenders to live in the stations, and the providing of relays of horsemen as well as horses.
Settle and Settle, "Orgin of the Pony Express," Missouri Historical Society Bulletin Vol. 26, No.3, April 1960, p. 207
First Appropriation for Overland Mail to California
“Bills authorizing an overland mail were introduced in Congress in 1855 and 1856, but they did not pass. On March 3, 1857, the Post Office Appropriations Bill, which bore an amendment authorizing an overland mail to California, became law. It provided $300,000 for a semimonthly service, or $450,000 for a weekly service, or $600,000 for a semi-weekly service.”
Settle and Settle, Empire on Wheels, p. 68
Pony Finances
Exactly what was the monetary worth of the Pony as a stake in this fabulous wager has been debated for years. At the outset, merely to equip the stations along the road with stock and provisions cost $70,000, according to an observation by Ben Holladay at the time. His conjecture on monthly expenses was that they would “foot up to $4,000, at least.” Long afterward, Alexander Majors simply dismissed the experiment as a loss of several hundred thousand dollars. In the spring of 1861, Russell said that, during four months of the preceding winter, the eastbound mail between San Francisco and Roberts Creek was run at a loss of over $10,000. At Sacramento, one of his contemporaries who had a mind for figures, calculated that depreciation on investment and operating expenses put the monthly cost at $52,200. An eastern newspaper set the cost at “only $500” for each trip. Scribes of later times have strived to find the elusive answer by subtracting an estimated half-million dollars in receipts from an arbitrary $700,000 in expenses.
Roy S. Bloss, Pony Express—The Great Gamble, 138-139
Kinnikinnick
“The red color soon mottles and the bowl clogs if smoked with tobacco; in fact, it is fit for nothing but the “kinnikinik” of the Indians.”
[Note: “Kinnikinnick is a Native American and First Nations herbalsmoking mixture, made from a traditional combination of leaves or barks. Recipes for the mixture vary, as do the uses, from social, to spiritual to medicinal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinnikinnick.]
Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 88
Platte Water
“The water could be improved a bit by letting the mud settle out in a pail. ”Water poor white with clay of which the Platte and the Mo. [Missouri] are alike,” Ameila Hadley remarked. “But by taking a pail full, and by putting in a little alum, it will settle in a short time.
Another trick for water along the Platte was to dig a hole a few feet deep near the river and let clean groundwater seep into it. Springs gave the best water of all.”
Keith Heyer Meldahl, Hard Road West, p. 35
Platte Valley
“The country from Fort Carney [Kearney] for four hundred miles up the Platte river valley and back from the high bluffs, that skirted the river on either side, was one vast rolling plain with no vegetation except a coarse luxuriant growth of grass in the valley near the river and beyond the bluffs; in spots that were not bare grew the prickly pear, and a short crisp grass of lightish color and of two varieties—the bunch and buffalo grasses—which were very nutritious, as the cattle thrived and grew fat on them.”
Charles E. Young, Dangers of the Trail, p.52
Mile 1557: Route Alternate
According to one source (William Hill, p. 214), the road over Rock Springs Pass was a summer shortcut. Winters, the route ran around the south of the Antelope Mountains. According to Richard Burton (quoted in Hill, p. 213), “Beyond Antelope Springs was Shell Creek, distant thirty miles by long road and eighteen by short cut.”
A detour along this route would continue southeast on White Pine County Road 32 to Twelvemile Summit, then turn northwest over Tippett Pass on White Pine County Road 34 to Hwy 893 (White Pine County Road 31) and rejoin the route at the site of Spring Valley Station.
Note: water is marked as available at Rock Springs on the summer route. No water sources are marked on the alternate.
William E. Hill, The Pony Express Trail: Yesterday and Today, p. 214
Slavery in Oregon and California
Oregon was less hospitable to blacks than many of them had hoped. The territorial legislature passed laws prohibiting admission to black settlers, even though exceptions were made on individual petition. When Oregon was admitted to the union in 1857, a Free Negro Admission Article was proposed for the state’s constitution. but it was defeated, and the small number of blacks who had made their way to Oregon lived uneasily until the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863.
California, on the other hand, outlawed slavery within its boundaries in 1850 because miners feared the appearance of slave labor. The mines soon became places where an exotic mixture of races and nationalities shouldered one another in the feverish search for wealth. Mary Ballou wrote home that she lived in a mining camp caUed “Negro Bar,” where “French and Duch and Scoth and Jews and Italions and Sweeds and Chineese and Indians” were all panning for gold. Even before the discovery of gold. California had been settled by men and women of Mexican, lndian, and African descent. Eighteen percent of the population, according to a Spanish census of 1790, were of other than Anglo-American origin. By 1849, San Francisco blacks had formed a “mutual Benefit and Relief Society” of their own. By 1854, that city had three black churches, and within the next decade there were three black newspapers and as many black churches.
Lillian Schlissel, Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey, p. 136
First Through Coaches on the Central Route
“The first through daily coaches on the Central route left St. Joseph and Placerville simultaneously on July 1, 1861, and both arrived at their destination on July 18, in a few hours over seventeen days-well ahead of the contract schedule of 25 days.”
George Root, "Pike's Peak Express Companies," Part IV, Kansas Historical Quarterly, Vol. 14, No. 1 (1944) p. 79
Mile 1059: Rock Creek Hollow Rock Creek Hollow, WY
“Rock Creek Hollow. A stop along the trail that holds significance for the Mormon faith.
Mormons made the trek to Salt Lake City with only hand pushed carts. They could only carry about 25 lbs [250lbs?] of items on these carts total. The cost was a fraction of that of a wagon and oxen or mule team. They could also make the journey in far less time as they could move at a quicker pace.
Along this section of the trail, from Casper, one will find a number of Mormon monuments and campgrounds.
I came upon this one with 4 hours of daylight left but decided I would set camp. There is a bubbling stream that I filtered water from and sat and watched a storm brew at the base of the Wind River range.
One of the best nights I’ve ever had in the back country!”
“Like every political question in America in the late 1850s, mail service to California was eclipsed by the slavery question. Although Americans in California, Oregon, and Utah repeatedly pleaded for better mail service, Congressmen couldn’t agree on a transcontinental mail route. Northerners and southerners each insisted on a route through their respective sections in anticipation of the very real prospect that the Union would split. Their stalemate, meanwhile, encouraged another prospect: that without reliable mail, California itself would split off from the Union.”
Dan Rottenberg, Death of a Gunfighter, p. 103
Use of Horses for Stagecoaches
“Stagecoaches, pulled by six horses (for speed) or by mules (for endurance), traveled much faster than wagons pulled by an equal number of oxen. A coach could cover about 110 miles in a twenty-two-hour day, compared to only about 15 miles for a loaded freight wagon.”
Dan Rottenberg, Death of a Gunfighter, p. 93
Mile 1119: Simpson's Hollow and Simpson's Gulch
“One other landmark caught our attention on the trek toward Green River—the graves in the stretch of river bank where the coulee of Simpson Hollow opens out to the Big Sandy. We were on the bridge over Simpson Hollow when we saw, coming up the gulch, a flock of soft dun sheep that blanketed the rolling banks on either side like a spread cloth of nubbly wool. A herder followed . . . Yes, there were graves there—quite a lot, he told us, getting more and more indistinct as years passed until now he only remembered where to find one or two. As a boy he had considered it almost a trail cemetery.
And how did travelers know that it was ahead? Well, word of tomorrow’s travel and what it would bring seems to have sifted throughout the whole line of wagons, probably from those favored trains who had guides or from travelers who had crossed the continent before. So, because of the overwhelming need to leave their dear ones in some place which they might some day find again, they sometimes carried them many miles to be buries at tis accepted spot—where a stretch of hard-baked sage land at the end of a smudgy coulee still holds the now forgotten dead.”
[N.B. There is a marker for Simpson’s Hollow on Route 28 just past Mile 1119 on the Pony Express Bikepacking Route. Just past there is a dirt road that seems to lead to Simpson’s Gulch (about 3/4 of a mile to the Gulch)]
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 239
Teton Sioux
“Titonwan (Teton, ‘Village of the Prairies’), inhabiting the trans-Missourian prairies, and extending westward to the dividing ridge between the Little Missouri and Powder River, and thence south on a line near the 106 meridian. They constitute more than one half of the whole Dakotah nation.”
Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 97
Freight Wagon Dust
“On a clear still day the clouds of dust stirred up by the moving wagons could be seen ‘twenty miles away,’ and there was heard when the wind favored “the pop-popping of the bullwhips for a good two miles. There is a record of one freighter in 1866 that trains, when on a hard trail, could be heard while “three or four miles away.”
Floyd Bresee, Overland Freighting in the Platte Valley 1850–1870, p. 63
Russell Starts New Companies Instead of Paying Debts
Fortune favored them in 1855 and 1856, and their profits from freighting military supplies those two years amounted to about $300,000. That was the only period of unbroken prosperity they would ever know. The year 1857 began auspiciously. By the time it ended, 14 entire trains, including 1,906 oxen, which had hauled supplies to Utah for Gen. Albert S. Johnston’s army were destroyed. This disaster cost Russell, Majors & Waddell $230,208.20. Additional cost for agents and teamsters who had to spend the winter in Utah amounted to $35,167.15 making a total of $265,375.35. Russell prepared a claim against the United States, which included $228,378.26 extra compensation for trans-porting supplies to Utah over and above that for which their con-tract called. The total amount of the claim was $493,772.61. It was presented to congress in February, 1860, but none of it was ever paid. All the financial troubles Russell, Majors & Waddell encountered from 1857 on had their roots in the losses in Utah and the failure of the government to reimburse them.
Russell made many mistakes in his career, but the one which proved fatal in the end was that instead of paying the firm’s debts he used whatever funds were available to launch new and profitless enterprises. Chief among these were the Leavenworth & Pike’s Peak Express Co., the Central Overland California & Pike’s Peak Express Co., Miller, Russell & Co., and the Pony Express. In fact the only concern which made a profit after 1855 was the freighting firm of Russell, Majors & Waddell. It not only more than paid its own way, but also financed the undertakings which proved to be nothing more than liabilities. Waddell and Majors saw the folly of Russell’s policy and protested again and again, but he never aban-doned it. Being inextricably bound to him by business ties, and moved by a misguided sense of loyalty, they followed him in a course that could only lead to ruin.
“Our fuel, if we are fortunate enough to camp by timber, is the dryest branches we can find, but in certain districts we used ‘buffalo chips.’ This last was not repulsive, only by association, and I have seen ‘Pikers’ roasting hoe cakes in their embers, with mouths a-water. ‘Pikers’ and Missourians were synonymous.”
Thaddeus S. Kenderdine, A California Tramp and Later Footprints, p. 33-34
Mile 1075: South Pass
“The Sweetwater Valley took the emigrants smoothly uphill 1oo miles to the Continental Divide at South Pass. This fortuitous gap in the Rockies exists because of geologic happenstance. A Wind River-sized mountain range—the Sweetwater Range—once filled the east-west gap where the Sweetwater Valley is now. Several million years ago, it foundered to form the valley, thus opening the way west to South Pass. The Sweetwater Hills represent the exposed ridgeline of this buried range. These granite hills include two of the most famous landmarks on the Oregon-California Trail: Independence Rock and Devils Gate.”
Keith Heyer Meldahl, Hard Road West, p. 96
Butterfield's Pony Express
“So successful did the Pony Express appear during the first few weeks of operation, that it was rumored as early as April 14, 1860, that the Butterfield Overland Mail Company or Overland Mail Company planned on starting their own horse express to compete with Russell, Majors, and Waddell. Reportedly, the Butterfield express proposed covering the 1,500 miles between Fort Smith, Arkansas, and Los Angeles in five or six days, and transmitting telegraph messages between these two points. Not to be outdone, C.O.C. & P.P. Express Co. agents confidently promised they would compete by establishing a similar enterprise reaching California in four and a half days, whether or not the telegraph was extended further westward from St. Joseph, Missouri.”
Anthony Godfrey, Historic Research Study Pony Express National Historic Trail, p. 68-69
Pony Express as Icon
“Though William F. (Buffalo Bill) Cody demonstrated the Pony Express in his Wild West shows in the 1880s, recognition of the significance of the Pony Express came at the turn of the century after the publication of Frederick Jackson Turner’s famous essay “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” in 1893. Thereafter, fearing the consequences of the frontier closing on our American character, we as a nation, drew strength from our frontier heritage and rise of the American West. In this quest for a usable past, the Pony Express became a usable American Western icon, symbolizing America’s strength, work ethic, entrepreneurship, and individual heroism. . . .
“Since the turn of the century, Pony Express celebration events have allowed Americans to become familiar with the activities of the Pony Express. The historical significance of the Pony Express was first highly publicized in 1912, when the Daughters of the American Republic erected a monument in St. Joseph, Missouri, to commemorate the starting point of the Pony Express. In honor of the event, Colonel W.F. Cody and Charles Cliff, former Pony Express riders, attended the dedication.”
Anthony Godfrey, Historic Resource Study Pony Express National Historic Trail, p. 226-227
Steering Oxen
Unlike horses and mules, oxen are not directly controlled with bridle, bit, and reins handled by a driver seated in the wagon behind them. Instead, the drover walks to the left of his teams while giving direction with voice, bodylanguage, and the whip. “The drover does not follow the oxen, as some writers seem to think,” Ford points out. “The oxen go where they think the drover wants them to go. They know they are expected to give him the room he needs to maneuver by watching the direction of his travel, his whip signals, or his silent body language, such as turning or changing pace. A properly trained nigh ox knows he must keep pace with and stay at arm’s length from thedrover on his left side.” And those are just the requirements for the “undergraduate” ox degree.
Dixon Ford and Lee Kreutzer, "Oxen: Engines of the Emigration," Overland Journal, V. 33. No. 1 (2015), p. 11
Russell Escapes Conviction
Within a week Russell’s case was called in the Criminal Court of the District of Columbia. There his attorney must have been no less enterprising than himself, for the lawyer boldly argued that the defendant should go free. It was a Machiavellian maneuver. He pleaded the Act of 1857, which exempted witnesses before Congressional committees from later prosecution on the matter about which they had testified.
What cleverness! First indicted as a criminal, he could, by law, have chosen not to testify before the Committee and thereby incriminate himself. But taking the opposite course and, with a great show of cooperation, freely answering its questions, he neatly established an immunity against prosecution, and probable conviction.
Roy S. Bloss, Pony Express—The Great Gamble, 119
Cooke's March to Fort Bridger
“Although the expedition’s desperate march to [Fort Bridger on] Black’s Fork had brought it to a satisfactory haven for the winter, Johnson’s command was still not safely united. One detachment of calvary under Lt. Col. Philip St. George Cooke remained on the snowy road east of the new camp.
After their tour if duty in Kansas, during which time Governor Walker had called upon them only once, the Second Dragoons had hastily assembled at Leavenworth in mid-September preparatory to joining the rest of the Utah army. This force was needed not only to protect the expedition from the raids of the Mormons but also to provide an escort for the corpulent person of the Territory’s new governor, Alfred Cumming, and his charming, if loquacious, wife. . . .
From the first, Cooke’s party had experienced difficulty on its trek to Mormon country. At the end of the first four days it had traveled only twenty-two miles, the condition of the animals and the poorness of the road impeding its progress. y the time the Dragoons reached Fort Kearney, seventy-seven soldiers had deserted. West of Kearney the command met its first rain, then eleven days of snow and sleet, which decimated its horses, already weakened by the absence of sufficient forage. . . . Cooke’s orders would have permitted him to winter at Fort Laramie, but the conscientious officer had learned of the army’s need for calvary and pressed on.
This final march was an ordeal for everyone. Early in November a savage snowstorm scattered the troops and their stock near Devil’s Gate. On November 8, when the thermometer reached 44 degrees below zero, Cooke abandoned five of his wagons, hoping that thus unimpeded he could make more rapid progress, and struggled on through two feet of snow. On November 15 the severe cold inflicted serious damage when thirty-six soldiers and teamsters were frostbitten. Maddened by cold and lack of food, the mules destroyed the wagon-tongues to which they were tied, ate away their ropes, and attacked the camp’s tents, dying in great numbers. . . .
[O]f the 144 horses in his original command, 130 lay dead on the thousand miles of Plains behind him.”
Norman F. Furniss, The Mormon Conflict, 1850-1859, p. 117-118
Female Stereotypes
“As for the historical understanding of Western women, the perspective of the old Western history could have been capsulated in three stereotypes: “Molly, Miss Kitty, and Ma.” Molly, the Eastern schoolmarm in The Virginian, comes West to find “a man who was a man.” Miss Kitty, the enterprising but fallen saloon keeper of television’s long-running western series Gunsmoke. And Ma, the supportive farm wife in The Little House books of Laura Ingles Wilder. These stereotypes shaped not only hundreds of Western stories, images, and movies, but also what passed for history.”
John Mack Faragher, Women & Men on the Overland Trail, p. xiii
California Money for the Union
As has been mentioned, the Golden State was very liberal with her gold in aiding the national cause. No claim or demand made by the national government was ever delayed or questioned. When Lincoln came to the Presidency, the finances of the country were in so deplorable a condition that Chase, Secretary of the Treasury, found it necessary to call on the people for contributions to keep the wheels of government in motion. California responded gladly and substantially. In all monetary matters—except the “Specific Contract” act, she (through the legislature) declared her devotion to the government; e. g., $24,600 was appropriated by the legislature to aid recruiting officers in filling up volunteer regiments, $100,000 to place the Coast in a more efficient state of defense, $600,000 for a soldiers’ relief fund, etc. Even the tax in 1864 on gold and silver bullion was patriotically paid without murmur of objection. And, it is generally conceded that the war could not have been carried oq by the North, had California not given of her wealth to the national treasury. General Grant, in fact, said: “I do not know what we could do in this great national emergency, were it not for the gold sent from California.”
Imogene Spaulding, "The Attitude of California to the Civil War," Annual Publication of the Historical Society of Southern California , 1912-1913, Vol. 9, No. 1/2 (1912-1913), pp. 125
Horses for Buffalo Hunting
. . . and, as I said before, they should not be made to travel faster than a walk unless absolutely necessary; neither should they be taken off the road for the purpose of hunting or chasing buffalo, as one buffalo-chase injures them more than a week of moderate riding.
Randolph Marcy, The Prairie Traveler, 92
Growth of Trading Forts
“In 1840 Fort William [at the confluence of the Platte and Laramie Rivers], operated by the American Fur Company, was the lone American enterprise near the trails.
The next year, there were three. One, Fort Platte, still clearly reflected the fur-trade era . . . Constructed within two miles of Fort William, [Fort Platte] specialized in dispensing illicit whiskey to facilitate Indian trading. In response to this challenge, the American Fur Company promptly commenced a new adobe fort to replace the deteriorating Fort William. The proprietors designated the new structure Fort John but almost everyone called it Fort Laramie, by which name it became famous. The third post begun in 1841, Fort Bridger, was the first definite response to the emerging era of overland travel.”
John D. Unruh, Jr., The Plains Across, p. 244-245
Camp Scott
The advance reached Fort Bridger on the 16th or 17th of November, having consumed ten days in moving thirty-five miles. Fortunately for the Army, the Mormons, after seizing the place the preceding May, had enclosed the original structure in a stone wall 15 feet high. Attached to this was another enclosure 100 x 80 feet with walls seven and a half feet high. As the wagons were unloaded the boxes were knocked to pieces, which, together with their sheets, were used in making shelters against the stone walls for their stores. Tents were pitched around the Fort and the place was called Camp Scott.
Settle and Settle, "Napoleon of the West," Annals of Wyoming Vol. 32, No.1, April 1960, p. 21
Fort Laramie
[Fort Laramie] was one of the great fixed points of the later fur trade, in the heart of the Sioux country, on the way to the Shoshone country, linked to Bent’s Fort (Pueblo) by a well-traveled trail along the Laramie Fork and the Chugwater, linked to the lower Missouri posts by the great highway of the Platte valley.
Established in 1835 by William Sublette, it was first called Fort William for its builder. In 1841 the log fort was rebuilt of adobes on almost the same site and renamed Fort John, for John Sarpy, whom the Mormons knew as the friendly bourgeois of the American Fur Company post at Bellevue, below Winter Quarters. But not everyone called it Fort John. Most knew it as Fort Laramie, and literally everyone who traveled the Overland Trail knew it. Whether bound for Oregon, California, or the valleys of the mountains, whether traveling south bank or north, they had to come up the trough of the North Platte, and just at the bottleneck where the river emerged from rough country into the comparative open, there sat the fort on its barren gravel flat within a bright swift curve of the Laramie Fork, two miles above its junction with the North Platte.
Emigrants coming up the south bank forded the Laramie Fork to reach the fort, those coming up the North Platte forded or ferried the North Platte, depending on the season and the stage of water. From Fort Laramie onward to beyond South Pass, a distance of three hundred miles, the country cramped the several streams of the emigration into a single channel, at least at first. After 1850, when a way was opened along the north bank of the North Platte between the mouth of the Laramie Fork and the so-called Last Crossing (modern Casper, Wyoming), some trains, especially Mormon trains, elected to by-pass Fort Laramie. Their reasons were various—hurry because of lateness on the trail, fear of contamination by Gentile companies, unwillingness to pay bridge or ferry charges, or plain well-organized bull-headed self-sufficiency. But most, after weeks of plodding up the hot, dusty, treeless, brain-baking Platte valley, found the attractions of companionship, news, trail information, gossip, trade, repairs, and Taos Lightning more than mortal flesh cold resist even if it wanted to.
Wallace Stegner, The Gathering of Zion, p 141-42
Postmaster Brown and Southern Politicians
With the passage of this act, the matter went to Postmaster General Aaron V. Brown. Brown was a Tennesseean sympathetic with Buchanan’s policies, a leader in the councils of the Democrats, and a not unlikely aspirant for party leadership in the campaign of I860. He called Senators Rusk and Gwin into conference, consulted with the leaders of the Administration; and by April, 1857, rumors reported that he was set upon having a southern route.
Curtis Nettles, "The Overland Mail Issue During the 1850s," The Missouri Historical Review, XVIII, no. 4 (1924), 525
Russell, Majors, and Waddell's Support of Slavery
From the very beginning of the vicious, bloody struggle to determine the status of Kansas as a free or slave state, Russell, Majors & Waddell, being slave owners in Missouri, threw their weight as the most influential capitalists in the territory on the side of slavery. Majors and Waddell do not seem to have actively participated in the battle, but Russell did. When David R. Atchison of Platte City, Mo., former United States senator, standard bearer, and chief rabble rouser of the Proslavery element on both sides of the border, formed an association to make Kansas a slave state Russell became treasurer of it.”
He also became a member of the “Law and Order Party” when it was organized in 1856. He and five other members of the organization were appointed to prepare a fervent appeal to the South for Proslavery immigrants and money. On July 2 of that year it was announced the “Majors, Russell & Company will receive money for proslavery immigrants to Kansas.” In Columbia, Mo., on July 28, in a meeting called to raise money to promote the interests of slavery in Kansas, Russell made a speech. A correspondent for the New York Tribune wrote that the Russell, Majors & Waddell warehouse in Leavenworth was used as a depot for selling rifles, stores, and agricultural implements which had been seized from Free-State immigrants.
The fact that Russell was appointed postmaster at Lexington in 1841 would appear to indicate he was a Whig in politics. Waddell probably was also. When that party lost power and disintegrated, Russell, like many other men in western Missouri and the nation, formed ties with the Democrats. The town of Leavenworth, laid out by a town company organized in Democratic, violently pro- Southern Platte county, was headquarters for the proslavery faction which was dedicated to making Kansas a slave state. When Russell, Majors & Waddell established its business there in 1855 Russell not only identified himself with that faction, but as previously shown, became something of a leader in it. When he went to Washington about that time to attend to the business of the freight-ing firm he cultivated the Southern Democratic members of the administration from the president on down.
What had happened was this: the Post Office Department cut off mail service to California via steamer from New York with the expectation that the bill to forward it overland would pass Congress. Russell had already offered to take a contract for three times a week from St. Joseph to Folsom, California, on a twenty-five day schedule, for $900,000 the first year and thereafter six times a week for the same amount.
Congress failed to pass the bill, and Russell with the aid of Senator Gwinn of California urged President Buchanan to order the service as a public necessity. In a cabinet meeting on June 10 this question was debated, and the decision was to do nothing.
Russell was now doomed. Not even desperate measures, which he unwisely took a bit later, could save him. Three factors combined to make his problem insoluble—expenses incident to putting the C.O.C.& P.P. into operation, failure to secure the big mail contract, and delay in forwarding supplies to the southwest. . . .
He was not to blame for losses incurred on account of the Mormon incident, the failure of the government to reimburse his firm for them, or for the failure of the War Department to order supplies out on the New Mexico Route at the anticipated, proper time.
Settle and Settle, "Napoleon of the West," Annals of Wyoming Vol. 32, No.1, April 1960, p. 36
First Mileposts on the Emigrant Trail
“They arrived in time and were turned over to Parley’s brother, the Apostle Orson Pratt. Orson was the best educated of the Saints and one of the principal intelligences, a remarkable man who had been the faculty of the putative Nauvoo University as he was to be the faculty of the University of Deseret. He determined the latitude and longitude of the camp whenever observation was possible, and examined the terrain for all conceivable information. He soon found that his observations were more precise than those of Fremont, whose map they were using. Therefore, in collaboration with Willard Richards and William Clayton, two other trained minds, he proposed to make a new map. Eventually the data they assembled were digested by Clayton in The Latter-Day Saints Emigrant’s Guide. Published the next year, it was the most accurate study of the trail before Stansbury’s. Clayton, who had been detailed to compute distances, grew bored with counting the revolutions of a wagon wheel – 36o to the mile – and so Orson Pratt invented an odometer. Appleton , Harmon carved its gears from planking and thereafter the distances were exactly known. At intervals a kind of logbook of the pioneers, together with all relevant information and the counsel of the Twelve, was deposited in a slotted board and set up where the next company would see it. They dotted the route with such “prairie postoffices” and occasionally set up signboards giving the total distance from Winter Quarters and other landmarks. These were the first mileposts ever erected on the Oregon trail. The pioneers also sent back letters and counsel by everyone whom they met coming down the trail.”
Bernard De Voto, The Year of Decision, 1846, p. 458
Pony Express Temporarily Suspended
“On May 7, a band of Paiute Indians attacked a Pony Express station in the Carson Valley west of Salt Lake City, killing seven men and burning down the station house. The attacks spread over the next few weeks, forcing the closing of numerous stations west of Salt Lake City. On June 1 the Pony Express service was temporarily suspended until the route could be properly protected. . . . Eventually, at the request of several Congressmen, Secretary of War Floyd dispatched troops from Camp Floyd in Utah. But only after a bloody month-ling struggle—and an additional outlay of more than $75,000 by the Pony Express—were the Paiutes subdued and service restored on June 22.”
Dan Rottenberg, Death of a Gunfighter, p. 199
Post Offices on the Pacific Coast
California was desperate for fast, efficient mail. Miners wanted to correspond with the folks back home, perhaps on the new illustrated stationery that predated picture postcards. Businessmen needed to transfer bank drafts and contracts. In 1848 Postmaster General Cave Johnson authorized its first post offices, in San Francisco and Sacramento, but service remained so poor that, in 18501 irate residents didn’t get the news that they had achieved statehood until six weeks after the fact. . . .
The federal government had been quick to use the post to strengthen its new stake in the Pacific Northwest, at least in theory, by authorizing the first post offices west of the Rockies in 1847: one at Astoria, a deepwater port on the Columbia River, and the other at Oregon City, on the outskirts of today’s Portland. By 1851, the region also had eighteen postal routes. However, mail from the outside world still had to reach San Francisco first, then travel north by bimonthly steamers to Astoria, where the portion destined for Oregon City was dispatched. Hopeful recipients had to travel to an often distant post office to fetch their letters in person or wait for an obliging traveler to bring them into the outback.
In 1853, the northern section of the Oregon Territory split off to become the Washington Territory. The tiny village of Seattle, founded in what’s now the Elliott Bay neighborhood, boasted a log post office as well as a church, a brothel, and two blockhouses used for protection during Indian attacks. Nevertheless, one of the few things on which its fifty or so white, Indian, Hawaiian, and Cape Verdean residents could agree was that postal service was worse on their side of the Columbia River.
Winifred Gallagher, How the Post Office Created America, p. 120, 122-23
The Prairie in Spring
They were on the route which Ashley’s men had established and along which the United States was to follow its western star. (Oregon began at the Continental Divide, that is, halfway through Wyoming, and from the western end of the pass that crossed the Divide you could see the tips of Mexican mountains.) They headed westward into Kansas, then turned northwest, crossing innumerable creeks and such rivers as the Kansas and the Big Blue. Beyond that the Little Blue, which brought them to Nebraska, and on to the Coasts of the Nebraska, the valley of the Platte. This was prairie country, lush with grass that would be belly-high on your horse, or higher, by June. In May it was spongy from violent rains, in long stretches little better than a bog. The rains struck suddenly and disastrously, drowning you out of your blankets, interspersed with snow flurries or showers of hailstones as big as a fist, driven by gales that blew your possessions over the prairie and froze your bones. Continuous deafening thunder might last for hours at a time. It stampeded the stock, by day scattering packs for five miles perhaps, by night scattering horses and mules even farther — and every one had to be searched for till it was found. Every creek was a river, every river a sound, and every brook a morass — and across these a hundred and fifty horses and mules, with sheep and the cows, had to be cursed, beaten, and sometimes pulled by ropes. They squealed, snorted, bolted, bit, kicked, and got mired down. The prairies were beautiful with flowers, waving grasses, and the song of birds — all carefully noted in Stewart’s novels — but not during the spring rains.
Bernard De Voto, Across the Wide Missouri, p. 23
Joseph Smith
“But it must not be forgotten that, during the last two years of his life, Joseph’s paranoia had increased. He had always been drunk on glory, now he was drunk on power. His fury fell alike on those who questioned him within the Church, the Missouri Pukes, and the Congress and President of the United States. In musical-comedy uniforms, he was lieutenant general of the Nauvoo Legion; its rituals were fantastic but its muskets were just as usable as any the Pukes had. He had announced himself as a candidate for President against Polk and Henry Clay – his platform was mostly apocalypse but included a plank for the seizure of the West – and several hundred missionaries were stumping the East to get him votes. He had dropped some of the secrecy that had hidden the doctrine of polygamy; he and many of his hierarchy were practising, it with a widening range that could not be altogether covered by denials.
“All these were blunders; the last was the worst blunder. There had always been dissent in Israel, backsliders, apostates, a sizable if futile bulk of opposition. Suddenly opposition to polygamy crystalized in a revolt led by men of courage and genuine intelligence. They struck hard, establishing in Nauvoo a newspaper which def nounced Joseph. He struck back, and the newspaper printed one l issue only. Joseph’s marshal, assisted by Joseph’s Legion, pied its type and pounded its press to pieces in the street. The rebels fled. The Illini, especially the politicians who had been sold out, needed f just this to produce their own uprising. Illinois had had enough of the Mormons, the mob rose, and Joseph was killed.”
Bernard De Voto, The Year of Decision, 1846, p. 87
Lure of the Trail for Men
“The male camaraderie of country life, in fact, was exaggerated by the dangers and excitements of the trail. “Men drawn together on the plains as in every day walks of life,” William Thompson remembered, “only the bonds were closer and far more enduring. The very dangers through which passed together rendered the ties more lasting.”
This chance for an exaggerated and extended occasion masculine good times lured men to the trail. Truly one of the great attractions of the trip was the notion of spending entire spring and summer “in the rough” with the boys, away routines of farm work. Trail work was hard, to be sure, but farm drudgery held none of this romantic allure. The idea of an overland emigration struck romantic chords deep within the male breast. One midwestern visitor reported that men “spoke of ‘Old Kentuck’ and ‘Old Virginny’ in a tone that sounded like deep emotion,” and Indiana farmers “related with glowing eyes” tales of how their fathers had emigrated from the valleys of Appalachia. William Oliver told of how the men at an inn along the National Road in Manhattan, Indiana, listened almost reverently as a gnarled old frontiersman recounted his adventures, supposedly at the side of Daniel Boone, hunting ‘Injuns.’ On the trail men could live out collective fantasies that some had experienced in the early days of the midwestern frontier but most had only dreamed of on their staid and settled farms. Here on the trail was an opportunity to bring to life that male self-image. The project of Oregon and California settlement itself included a male vision of life in a time and place where men played a man’s role with long rifle and hunting knife as well as plough and cradle.
Hunting has continually recurred as a theme in these pages of the importance it assumed for emigrant men. It was in this context of male fantasy and the measurement of masculine identity against the standard of earlier, heroic generation of men that hunting took on its meaning. At home the rifle had retained its symbolic if not practical place as the key instrument of male activity. As such, the rifle was the object around which men organized their conception of the trip. By insisting that their rifles would again become the means of securing nourishment for their families, men allowed their own projections to set the form and the content of the journey. Matthew Field captured something of this with a description of the emigrants passing through Westport, men to the front, “rifles on their shoulders, … looking as if they were already watching around the corners of the streets for game.” Hunting, of course, supplied very little of the actual nourishment for the overland travelers, and experienced observers, from the beginning, advised against wasting valuable time on the hunt.But the men nonetheless insisted on approaching the trip as at least a hunting expedition.”
John Mack Faragher, Women & Men on the Overland Trail, p. 135-36
Mormon Exodus to Far West, MO
At Far West began the first attempt at the City of Enoch, the New Jerusalem, and to Far West the faithful began to gather. From apostasy-riddled Kirtland, on July 6, 1838 started a caravan composed of fifty-eight wagons and 515 people and hundreds of cattle, sheep, swine-the first of the villages on wheels that would rock through Mormon history. Like most of those later caravans it was fleeing trouble and hunting sanctuary. Unfortunately, on July 4, two days before it set out, Joseph’s counselor Sidney Rigdon had made a fire-eating speech at Far West, daring the Gentiles to come on and threatening what would happen to them if they did. The Lord three days later sent a sign, ambiguous and troubling, by blasting the flagpole in the square of Far West with a thunderbolt. Rumors of Rigdon’s words and rumors of the Mormon secret avengers who called themselves the Sons of Dan spread through Gentile Missouri growing more fearsome with each repeating, and all Missouri that was not already in arms to harass the Mormons flew to arms to repel them, When the Kirtland company dragged wearily in on October 4 they found not sanctuary but bloody crisis. Missourians and Danites were raiding each other and burning farms and looting. On October 26 they clashed at the Battle of Crooked River, with casualties on both sides. Three days later two hundred men, either militiamen or mobbers ( the Mormons saw no reason to make a distinction), burst upon a little group of Mormon families gathered for safety at Haun’s Mill. They killed several at the first fire. The women and children ran screaming for the woods, men and boys dove for shelter into the blacksmith shop. The mobbers put their guns to the cracks and shot them as they huddled together or tried to hide behind the forge. When the women crept back later they found seventeen dead and fifteen others shot to bi~s but still living. Stiff with horror, terrified for their own lives if the mob should return, they dragged the bodies of their husbands and sons across the yard and dumped them into the well, and with their wounded escaped to Far West.
Wallace Stegner, The Gathering of Zion, p 20
Mile 1095: Parting of the Ways
“About 20 miles west of the Continental Divide, the main road forked at a spot called Parting of the Ways—a point of decision. From there, travelers could either follow the Sublette Cutoff heading due west toward the trading post at Fort Hall, or take the original, better-watered route southwest toward Fort Bridger and Utah. “
“This station, similar in construction to Brigham Young’s Beehive House, stood where the Salt Lake Tribune Building now stands, at 143 South Main. Because of recent street beautification, the monument has been moved to the south. According to Sir Richard Burton, the station was one of the better facilities along the Overland Trail for food and lodging. Horace Greeley and Mark Twain were among the guests.”
Freighting across the Plains became big business with accelerated military campaigns of 1857 and 1858, and one of the biggest was the contracting firm of Russell, Majors and Waddell. Thaddeus Kenderdine, a bullwhacker, arrived at Fort Kearny in August, 1858, and throws some light on that activity: ‘When within a mile the train was stopped, and orders given for each man to overhaul his load, and out the flour which was in any way damaged by rain in the bottom, so as the load would pass governmental inspection. We were forced to become parties to this fraud.'”
Merrill J. Mattes, The Great Platte River Road, p. 228
Mormon Assassins
“‘Mormon’ had in fact become a word of fear; the Gentiles looked upon the Latter-Day Saints much as our crusading ancestors regarded the ‘Hashshashiyun,’ [Hashshashin, Order of Assassins]whose name, indeed, was almost enough to frighten them. Mr. Brigham Young was the Shaykh-el-Jebel, the Old Man of the Hill redivivus, Messrs. Kimball and Wells were the chief of his Fidawin, and ‘Zion on the tops of the mountains’ formed a fair representation of Alamut [region in Iran]. ‘Going among the Mormons!’ said Mr. M— to me at New Orleans; ‘they are shooting and cutting one another in all directions; how can you expect to escape?'”
Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 2
Jim Bridger and Brigham Young
Mormon legend has it that Bridger so scorned the Great Salt Lake country that he offered to give a thousand dollars for the first bushel of corn they raised there. It would have been a rash statement, for when a Mormon community wants to prove something to the Gentiles it can grow corn in a cement sidewalk. But like many stories of the trail, the story of Jim’s offer is somewhat stretched. Bridger actually took a more favorable view of the Bear River Valley than Black Harris had, he thought the Utah Valley a very likely place for a settlement, and he gave them a good report of the valley the Sevier and of the country along the eastern rim of the Great Basin for two hundred miles south of the Salt Lake. He expressed doubt about the Salt Lake Valley only because he thought the nights might be too cold for the maturing of corn. The discontent they felt at his information reflected more bewilderment than disappointment. For the knowledge in Old Gabe’s head was too broad to be handily condensed, or perhaps they had primed him with too much tongue-loosener, or perhaps their extraordinary attentiveness, with three trained clerks keeping minutes and a dozen other men taking notes, led him into expansiveness. From whatever cause, his specific, information on the country they wanted to know about was half lost in a rambling discourse that covered the whole West from the Pima country to Oregon. Clayton, who set down pages of Bridger’s answers to their questions concluded that “it was impossible to form a correct idea of either the route or the country “from the very imperfect and irregular way he gave his descriptions,” and, that “we shall know more about things … when we have seen the country for ourselves.” Since Bridger was bound for Fort Laramie they got him to carry a letter to Thomas Grover at the ferry, and: thdmselves rolled on, more confused than enlightened, toward Fort Bndger.
Wallace Stegner, The Gathering of Zion, p 156
Holladay Operates the Stage Lines
“Holladay now managed the firm as the Overland Stage Line, although he continued its operation under the Kansas charter of the ‘C. O. C.’ until February, 1866, when be obtained a new charter from the territory of Colorado, under the name of the Holladay Overland Mail and Express Company.”
George Root, "Pike's Peak Express Companies," Part IV, Kansas Historical Quarterly, Vol. 14, No. 1 (1944) p. 91
The Finger of God
“Medical missionary Samuel Parker traveled overland to Oregon in 1835, and in his Journal of an Exploring tour beyond the Rocky Mountains intimated that if an elderly minister of the gospel could make it to Oregon, anyone could. When reviewing Parker’s book, the American Biblical Repository rejoiced in the knowledge that there was indeed an easy road to Oregon ‘excavated by the finger of God.'”
John D. Unruh, Jr., The Plains Across, p. 29
Mile 1948: Sand Springs Station Sand Springs Station, NV
“While some Pony Express stations were located in pre-existing buildings (on ranches, in stage stations, etc.), others had to be built from the ground up. What was it like to build a Pony Express Station in the 1860s?
For workers hired to build stations in Western Nevada, easy would not be a word to describe it! They built corduroy roads of willows in Carson Sink, fought hordes of mosquitoes, and erected station houses with adobe bricks. In preparing the bricks, they tramped the mud with their bare feet (to ensure proper consistency). This required at least a week of time and when they were through, the skin had peeled from the soles of their feet! One of these workers, J.G. Kelley, would eventually become assistant station keeper at one of the stations he built, Sand Springs.”
“Here is the valley of Lodgepole Creek through which passed historic trails, telegraph lines, and railroads. The famed Pony Express followed the valley in 1860-61. “Nine Mile” Pony Express station was located just southeast of present Chappell; “Pole Creek No. 2” station was a few miles west of here. Near Sidney, the Pony Express trail turned northwestward, passing Mud Springs station and Courthouse Rock en route to the North Platte River. In 1861 the first transcontinental telegraph line was built through the valley. Stagecoaches of the Central Overland Route soon followed, carrying passengers and mail. Former Pony express stations continued to serve the stage line, providing lodging and provisions for travelers. When the tracks of the Union Pacific Railroad reached here in 1867, wagon and stagecoach travel declined. Today modern highways retrace historic trails through the valley. Two miles east is Chappell, at first only a railroad siding. The townsite was surveyed in 1884 and a post office was established two years later. Chappell became the county seat of Deuel County in 1894.”
” The feet, being more used than the other extremities, and unconfined by boot or shoe, are somewhat splay, spreading out immediately behind the toes, while the heel is remarkably narrow. In consequence of being carried straight to the fore the only easy position for walking through grass they tread, like the ant-eater, more heavily on the outer than on the inner edge. The sign of the Indian is readily recognized by the least experienced tracker.”
Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 104
Concavity of the Plains
“It is a fact observed by all the travelers on the High Plains that because of the extremely level surface one gets the impression of being in a concavity; it is uphill every way one looks.”
Walter Prescott Webb, The Great Plains, p. 105, n. 1
Sharing a Blanket
“In this connection I might say that at least one of the men is still on earth. I refer to Thomas Crummel, ex-mayor of Auburn. He was my ‘partner’ on that trip, slept with me under the same blankets, and a truer or more loyal fellow never cracked a whip or stole a chicken from a ranchman.”
George P. Martin, "Bull-Whacking Days," Proceedings and Collections of the Nebraska State Historical Society, 1902, p. 230
Mile 996: Split Rock
“Once we stopped on the indefinite summit of a foothill swell to look our last at Split Rock, one of the less known trail landmarks. From this distance, it was merely a small excrescence among other similar bumps on top of Granite Range, different only in the cleft that split it vertically through the middle.”
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 220
End of the Overland Era
By 1912, when the last documented wagon trains crested South Pass, as many as 500,000 mostly white individuals had used this great highway.
Guenther, Todd. “‘Could These Bones Be From a Negro?’” Overland Journal 19, no. 2 (Summer 2001), 45
Galvanizing Effect of Joseph Smith's Death
Joseph Smith, the Prophet, Seer, Revelator, and President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and his brother Hyrum, its Patriarch, were shot to death by a black-face mob in the upper room of the jail at Carthage, Illinois, on June 27, 1844. That act of ruffianism, which culminated (though it did not end) the hostility of the middle border toward Joseph’s peculiar people, was expected to scotch the Mormons for good. Instead, it did two things: it tempered their already well-tempered steel in the blood of martyrs, and made zealots out of men and women who might otherwise have been only die-hards; and it assured the carrying-out of migration plans that had been fitfully contemplated long before Joseph’s death.
Wallace Stegner, The Gathering of Zion, p 17
Express Rider's Clothing
The riders wore their own clothing, perhaps a buckskin hunting shirt or one of red flannel, cloth trousers, high boots, a jockey cap or slouch hat. There were no uniforms. They carried only what they needed, only what was absolutely necessary. Armed at first with a Spencer or Sharps rifle and two Colt revolvers, the riders eventually carried only a single Colt, often with an additional cylinder of ammunition.
Christopher Corbett, Orphans Preferred, p. 87
Twain's Description of Slade
“He was so friendly and so gentle-spoken that I warmed to him in spite of his awful history. It was hardly possible to realize that this pleasant person was the pitiless scourge of the outlaws, the raw-head-and-bloody-bones the nursing mothers of the fountains terrified their children with. And to this day I can remember nothing remarkable about Slade except that his face was rather broad across the cheek bones, and that the cheek bones were low and the lips peculiarly thin and straight.”
Mark Twain, Roughing It, p. 88
Mormon Cholera in 1849
Egan, traveling the south side in the midst of the fuirst great surge of the California gold rush, met company after company hurrying as if trying to outrace the taint of horror and death they carried in their wagons, and a lieutenant at Fort Kearney told him that between Independence and gGrand Island there had already been sixty cholera deaths. But among the Mormon companies who traveled the north bank, only four cholera deaths were reported, and the big company under Smith and Benson had no deaths whatever, from any cause.
The cholera even eased their way, for the Indians had fled from the deadly vicinity of the trail; and confirmed their self-righteousness, for they saw many Gentile graves rifled by the wolves, but not a single Mormon grave that had been touched.
Among the graves of those whose bones lie around bleaching in the sun, their flesh consumed by the ravenous wolves, we recognize the names of several noted mobocrats from the states of Missouri and Illinois … Among others we noticed at the South Pass of the Rocky Mountains, the grave of E. Dodd, of Gallatin, Missouri … The wolves had completely disinterred him. The clothes in which he had been buried lay strewed around. His under jaw bone lay in the grave with the teeth complete, the only remains that were discernible of him. It is believed he was the same Dodd who was a prominent mobocrat and who took an active part in the murder of the Saints at Haun’s Mill, Missouri. If so, it is a righteous retribution. Our God will surely inflict punishment upon the heads of our oppressors in His own due time and way.
Thus the post hoc ergo propter hoc of their tribal sense of wrong. These signs shall follow them that believe.
Wallace Stegner, The Gathering of Zion, p 206
Pawnee Missionaries
The Pawnee came under the influence of the missionary frontier after 1833. The Reverend John Dunbar and Samuel Allis served as mis- sionaries to the Pawnee from 1834 to 1846. Their intentions, explicitly stated to the Pawnee in 1834 were “to tell them about God to teach them our religion and to learn their children to talk on paper like the white man does.” . . .
Stereotypically, they praised the Pawnee for their generosity and no- bility, while at the same time condemning them as savages: “they are a kindhearted liberal people,” wrote Dunbar, “but they are heathen, darkminded heathen.”
David J. Wishart, “The Dispossession of the Pawnee,” p.388
Gwin's Conflict of Interest
The majority of the people of Cal., as I have mentioned in the preceding volume, preferred the central to the southern route for mail transit. The central route was gradually opened, first from Salt lake to the Missouri river, then by wagon from Placerville to Carson valley, and finally to Salt lake, connecting there with the mail to St Joseph. George Chorpenning owned the western division, but his means were limited and the management bad. Broderick endeavored to procure the adoption of the central route by the government in place of the southern or Butterfield route, established in 1857, and thereby incurred the hostility of Gwin and the southern influence. The exposure of Grwin s methods had the effect to cause him to withdraw his opposition to the central route, but he did so then only when he fancied he saw an opportunity to make capital for himself out of it. Senator Hale, of N. H., introduced a bill which could have been passed, which would have given California a daily mail over the central route. But Gwin had several motives for preventing the passage of this bill. One was that he was retained in the interest of the steamship company; another that he would do nothing so pleasing to the republicans as to allow this republican bill to pass, thus overshadowing him; and again, that he reserved to himself the glory of appearing as the author of the contract for a tri-weekly mail over the cen tral route. He introduced another bill to embarrass Hale s, and allowed neither to pass. But this plank, on which he hoped to stand when the next U. S. senator should be chosen in Cal., slipped away from him when, going to Postmaster-general Holt, after the close of the session, that official flatly refused to carry out the terms of the bargain between them. In this manner Cal. was deprived of mail service, except over the Butterfield route, until the secession of the southern states and a change of administration caused the suspension of this line, and the establishment of the central route. Sac. Union, June 15, 26, and July 23 and 28, 1860. Latham offered some amendments to Hale s bill when it was before the senate, but they were defeated with the rest. He presented some figures which are interesting. From Sept. 1858 to and including March 1860, there were 685, 960 letters sent over the Butterfield route, the postage on which was $71,378.63; and over the route via Salt lake 15,725, the postage on which was $865.51. The Butterfield contractors received $600,000 for tri-weekly service. This was one of the profitable contracts given to southern men by the consent of California senators, but the service performed was never complained of. The Pacific Mail Steamship company in 1860 refused to carry express packages containing mail matter, or to carry the newspaper mails, which could not go over land, the object of the refusal being to force congress, with the help of California’s senior senator, to give the mail contract to Vanderbilt s company.
H. H. Bancroft, History of California, Vol. VII, 262, note 19
Commencement of the Utah War
“[T]he Mormon War began formally on the 18th of July [1857] with the departure of the Tenth Infantry Regiment from Fort Leavenworth. A day later Phelps’ battery of four six-pounders and two twelve-pound howitzers followed from a camp nearby, and shortly thereafter the weary Fifth Infantry started for Utah. . . . In general they followed the trail familiar to overland pioneers: west from Fort Leavenworth to the Big Blue, north on this river, ad then northwest on the Little Blue, its tributary. The troops finally came to the wide, shallow, and lethargic Platte, the vital highway to the Rocky Mountain country.”
Norman F. Furniss, The Mormon Conflict, 1850-1859, p. 101
Political Duties of the Army
“While Stationed at Cottonwood Springs, the post commander had some assumed political duties, and among others he had to act as Justice of the Peace. . . .
“Major O’Brien, the Post Commander, was a good lawyer, and had practiced law, and he knew how to get at things quickly, and knew how far he ought to go. . . .
“The commanding General of our military district, Gen. R. B. Mitchell, of whom I have spoken, was a good lawyer himself, and his adjutant was John Pratt, of Boston, a most accomplished gentleman, also a lawyer. The General made headquarters at Fort Kearney instead of Omaha (as his predecessor had done), and he was very anxious that justice should be dispensed through his district, and that civilized methods should prevail. Although there were no civil officers, General Mitchell worked out the whole scheme through military instrumentalities in very good shape. From time to time he instructed his subordinate post commanders how to carry on their civil functions, and protect life and property. He was a great stickler for protecting property, and if some pilgrim stole a saddle or a lariat, it was his theory that the man should be arrested, and punished, even if a soldier had to chase the man for two weeks and it cost the Government $1,000. Hence it was, that our duties were civil as well as military, and we were obliged to briefly report all civil infractions, decisions and punishment.
Eugene Ware, Indian Wars of 1864, p. 168–70
Russell's Whining
Russell expected Majors and Waddell to join him in the venture, although he had not consulted them. When Waddell heard about it he was so infuriated that he wrote Russell a series of blistering letters. In reply Russell said,
“My poor from wife Lexington writes she deep that in is my have was and had that partners reported that distress, reckless I gone Peak pronounce them ruinous … into Pike’s to a extent false I my man and and on caluminators return hold any account will liars who me As has slandered have … able falsely oft repeated, regret I I much am you as as that involved, but cannot and help I sir, I it, may must way can … be out the get best able out to get of I I it my on and do return will try to so.”
Settle and Settle, "Napoleon of the West," Annals of Wyoming Vol. 32, No.1, April 1960, p. 25
Mile 2135: Sportsman's Hall Sportsman’s Hall, CA
“Sportsman’s Hall was California’s only Home Station. It was frequently called the Twelve Mile House and sometimes simply referred to as ‘The Hall.’ It was opened in 1852 by Scotland immigrants John and James Blair. Sportsmans Hall was one of the most popular and most important places on the trail. No other inn approached its size or the quality of its accommodations. . . Originally it was a hotel, restaurant, and a stage stop that could accommodate 500 horses, with extensive corrals. It has burned to the ground and been rebuilt twice. Part of the original structure still exists, and if you look carefully, you will see the beams, hand hewed, that hold the roof up.”
“A number of sources list Sportsman’s Hall as a station, which also appeared on a contract station. Herbert Ralph Cross identifies Sportsman’s Hall as a “rider relay” or home station, fifty-six miles from Sacramento and twelve miles east of Placerville. A California Registered Historical Landmark’s plaque at the site reads:
This was the site of Sportsman’s Hall, also known as the Twelve-Mile House. The hotel operated in the late 1850’s and 1860’s by John and James Blair. A stopping place for stages and teams of the Comstock, it became a relay station of the central overland Pony Express. Here, at 7:40 a.m., April 4, 1860, Pony rider William (Sam) Hamilton, riding in from Placerville, handed the Express mail to Warren Upson who, two minutes later, sped on his way eastward.
“Having been the mainstay of the Indian for generations, the buffalo, at the last of their career, made one outstanding contribution to the white race. Practically speaking, they made emigration possible. It is hard to see how the overland journey could have been successful in the early years without them. In the Platte Valley, just where herds were thickest, there was a stretch of two hundred miles without one stick of timber—no dry grass, no sage, no anything that would serve as fuel except buffalo chips. Often nearly white with years of exposure, dry to handle, and light as feathers, this age-old deposit of the herds burned like charcoal with little blaze and less smoke. It boiled the night guard’s coffee, warmed the baby’s milk, heartened them all with hot meals night and morning. It was of such importance to the domestic economy of the emigrants that the canny mules learned to pull up and stop hopefully at any spot where the droppings were thick, and even the most finicky of the women vied with one another to collect the driest. . . .
[Emigrants], young and old, carried bags and, no matter what else the did on the long day’s walk, they industriously gathered fuel. Never was manna in the wilderness more truly a godsend than this remarkable substitute for wood, which providentially appeared only where wood was not.”
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 91-92
Pony Express in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show
Just as the show always began with “The Star Spangled Banner,” it included prominently the Pony Express. And no one, from penniless orphans in Chicago and London, allowed in free because Buffalo Bill had a good heart, to kings and kaisers and presidents, ever left Buffalo Bill’s Wild West and Congress of Rough Riders of the World without seeing this one irreplaceable fixture of the Old West. The Pony Express was as well known and revered as Buffalo Bill himself, or the legendary Deadwood stagecoach. For decades the program note never varied; it read simply, “Pony Express. A former Pony Post-Rider will show how the letters and telegrams of the Republic were distributed across the immense Continent previous to the building of railways and telegraphs.” It made a powerful impact on the American and European spectator. No one could ever forget it.
Christopher Corbett, Orphans Preferred, p. 7
Trailside Graves
“[E]migrants ‘had a horror of being buried without a coffin,’ but this dismal piece of furniture was too cumbersome to take along ‘just in case.’ While still within reach of timber, along creeks in eastern Kansas, crude coffins could be constructed. Out on the Plains a ‘rude box’ might be made from tail gates or packing boxes, but this source was soon gone, and the departed was fortunate if he was wrapped in so much as a blanket. . . .
The graves were promptly invaded by wild animals. Succeeding emigrants were greeted, not only with scattered bones, buttons, and bits of clothing, but hands, feet, and various other parts of the human anatomy in varying stages of decomposition, with ‘prairie wolves howling over their loathsome repast.’
Horrified by the desecration and havoc wrought by wild animals, the emigrants experimented with methods of protecting the mortal remains, covering and lining the grave where possible with rocks, stone slabs, or timbers. . . .
[G]raves were not always marked. Polly Purcell recalled that Indians robbed emigrant graves. To forestall this practice, efforts were made to conceal graves by driving back and forth over them, in some cases going so far as to replace sod, prickly pear, and other vegetation. . . .In 1849 and later . . . Indians had a healthy respect for epidemics and left the graves to the mournful coyote.”
Merrill J. Mattes, The Great Platte River Road, p. 88-89
Pemmican
Winter was a preserving season for women and to some extent for trappers. For example, it was a good time to make pemmican, the best of all concentrated foods. The ‘winter pemmican’ of the literature, which is sometimes spoken of unfavorably, was made not in winter but following the fall hunt, when the weather was likely to be unsettled and thorough drying difficult, so that the product might turn sour. ‘Summer pemmican,’ the Grade A stuff, was made in late winter and early spring. The meat, almost but not quite exclusively buffalo meat, was first dried in the way always used by trappers and Indians whenever they had a surplus following a hunt. It was cut into slices and strips an inch or so thick, scored crisscross, and spread out on racks of cottonwood poles high enough to keep it from dogs, wolves, and vermin. Not so much the sun as the wind dried it and the process, which winter cold did not affect, took four or five days. It could be shortened to three days if during the first one a slow, smoky fire was maintained under the frame, and such smoking made the product sweeter and tastier. The result was the universal dried meat, jerky or charqui, of the literature, a first-rate food in itself. It was always carried by trapping parties.
Pemmican, however, was in a class by itself. All the gristles and sinews that might be present in jerky were removed and the residue was pounded in a mortar or on a parfleche till it was pulverized. This powder was loosely packed in a parfleche bag, melted fat was poured over it, and the mouth of the bag was sewed up. Thus packed, pemmican would keep for years. It was a splendid high-energy food, a complete diet in itself. It was also a great treat (some cynics dissenting), incomparably richer and more flavorsome than jerky. It could be eaten uncooked or fried, roasted, or boiled, by itself or in combination with anything you had on hand. The luxury article was ‘berry pemmican,’ into which pulverized dried fruits of any available kind had been mixed, most often wild cherries with their stones.
Bernard De Voto, Across the Wide Missouri, p. 163-164
Oxen Pulled Freight Wagons
“[O]xen were strong, inexpensive, and—as one early Santa Fe trader discovered in 1851—served three useful purposes: ‘1st, drawing wagons; the Indians weill not steal them as they would horses and mules; and 3rdly, in case of necessity part of the oxen will answer for provisions.'”
Dan Rottenberg, Death of a Gunfighter, p. 65
First Wagons Across the Sierra Nevada
“The first wagons were probably taken across the Sierra Nevada by the Stevens party of 1843. This expedition is of great importance to trail history, for it definitely pioneered and opened the most difficult stretch of the California Trail.”
[N.B. Moody incorrectly places the Stevens-Moody party in 1843. The party emigrated in 1844. John Unruh, The Plains Across, p. 17]
First Wagons Across the Sierra Nevada
Ants on the Prairie
“[Ant] mounds were like inverted mild pans, six to eight feet across and six inches high, and often hels a fair amount of Indian beads about the size of tiny pebbles ordinarily used in the construction of their underground cities, and much easier to carry.
These anthills were an invaluable asset to the plainsman. I quote an inelegant but informative paragraph from ‘The Overland Stage to California:’ ‘It is a notorious fact that many of the overland stage drivers and stock tenders, between three and four decades ago, were inhabited by a species of vermin known as pediculus vestimenti, but on the plains more vulgarly known as “gray-backs.” During the hot weather of midsummer, when the vermin were rapidly multiplying, it was the custom of the boys at the station to take their underclothing and blankets in the morning, spread them out on an ant-hill, and get them late in the afternoon.’ The ants, it seems, solicitously searched out and killed the last socially unmentionable insect. This polite atention, plus the intense sunning thrown in for good measure, constituted the dry cleaning of the plains.”
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 106
Mile 1804: Robert's Creek
“A long divide, with many ascents and descents, at length placed in front of us a view of the normal ‘distance’—heaps of hills, white as bridal cakes, and, nearer, a sand-like plain, somewhat more yellow than the average of those salt-bottoms: instinct told us that there lay the station-house. From the hills rose the smokes of Indian fires : the lands belong to the Tusawichya, or White-Knives, a band of the Shoshonees under an independent chief. This depression is known to the Yutas as Sheawit, or Willow Creek: the whites call it, from Mr. Bolivar Roberts, the Western agent, ‘Roberts’ Springs Valley.’ It lies 286 miles from Camp Floyd: from this point ‘Simpson’s Eoad’ strikes off to the S.E., and as Mr. Howard Egan’s rule here terminates, it is considered the latter end of Mormondom. Like all the stations to the westward, that is to say, those now before us, it was burned down in the late Indian troubles, and has only been partially rebuilt.”
Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 481
Pony Express Schedule
“On paper, the scheduled time from St. Joseph to Fort Kearney to be thirty-four hours; to Salt Lake, 124 hours, to Sacramento, 234 hours. Including a six-hour railroad trip from there to San francisco, a message telegraphed from New York to St. Joseph could reach San Francisco in 240 hours—that is, exactly ten days later.”
Dan Rottenberg, Death of a Gunfighter, p. 178
Abbrigoins
“They [the Pawnee guides] were not used to hats, and only those having some rank or authority seemed to desire to hold onto them. In addition to this, most of them from time to time took off their blouses and tied them to their saddles, and above their trousers they had on nothing but their naked, sunburned skin. The slang expression for an Indian out there in those days was ‘abbrigoin.’ General Mitchell would watch them skirmishing around and would say, ‘What in [blankety-blank] do you think those abbri-goins are good for anyhow?’ Before we got to Julesburg every Indian had cut the seat out of his cavalry pants, and they were in two sections, held up by an outside belt to the waist. Ever and anon squads of them would take off their two separate trouser-legs and tie them to the saddle, and then the Indian would ride along with nothing on but a breech-clout and moccasins, and he as a soldier was a sight to behold.”
Eugene Ware, Indian Wars of 1864, p. 257
Cost of Livestock
Draft animals were the single most expensive component of an overland Ford draws on his historical knowledge of the period to point out the economics of buying stock. “In 1847, [when the Mormon pioneers crossed the plains to Utah], horses cost fve times as much as oxen,” he explains. “A team of two horses would have cost $100. A team of two oxen would cost $20 in the early to mid-1840s. A team of two mules, which were much more in demand [by the army], would cost $150 to $125.”
Of course, livestock costs rose and fell with demand. Historian John Unruh reported that the price of a yoke of oxen at Independence jumped from $25 in 184 , when approximately 2,700 people headed west, to $ 5 in 1849, when 25,450 emigrants made the trip. Randolph Marcy, a U.S. Army ofcer and author of The Prairie Traveler, a popular guide to the overland trails, wrote in 1859 that a six-mule team cost around $ 00, whereas four yoke of oxen (the number often recommended in published emigrant guides) could be purchased for about $200. In addition, neck yokes and chain for four yoke of oxen cost only about $25, whereas harnesses for four to six spans (pairs) of mules or horses ran hundreds of dollars. . . .
According to the online historical currency converter MeasuringWorth.com, $200 in 1859 dollars is the approximate equivalent of $5,700 in 2014, and $ 00 would have a value of about $17,100 in today’s dollars.
Dixon Ford and Lee Kreutzer, "Oxen: Engines of the Emigration," Overland Journal, V. 33. No. 1 (2015), p. 16, 18, n. 12
Guard Duty
“Guard duty at night was now [crossing Kansas] a necessity. No one liked it, and very few were efficient, but nevertheless the hours were divided into watches and each able-bodied man took his turn. This was never an idle precaution. Even when the Pawnees were friendliest, they manifested a guileless interest in their white brothers’ horseflesh resulting in an occasional nocturnal raid. At one of these crises the safety of the entire wagon train rested with the guard who was watching the horses, and he—poor man—was only too apt to be a peaceful soul who had never been used to firearms. As uneasy night followed weary day, each unwilling watcher with the grazing horses found himself the only waking soul within speaking distance. Except during the gold-rush years he was practically alone in the limitless prairie night. ‘A few glimmering fires around the camps of distant emigrants, and the almost incessant howl of wolves, were the only things which showed aught living upon the ocean of grass.'”
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 43
Mile 1134: Green River
“The trouble with the Green River Desert was not lack of water. There was plenty, but it was all in the Green River—’by far the most formidable stream to be met on this entire journey,’ said William Johnston, whose company was well in the forefront of the gold rush. He found it in full flood, a rushing torrent three hundred to four hundred feet wide and ten to twenty feet deep. . . .
The traders’ caravans and the early wagon trains skirted the desert proper to the southeast, remaining timidly near the Big Sandy until well within the angle of its confluence with the Green an then striking up the east bank of the great river about twenty miles to a crossing near the mouth of Slate creek. Later companies crossed almost at the mouth of the Big Sandy at what was called the Lombard Ferry. . . .
The Green in the month of June is a rare sample of a watercourse born of perpetual snowbanks. Its swollen current, racing down from icebound peaks and crisp and sparkling upland meadows, arrives in the hot sage flats swiftly but ponderously, and as cold as Greenland’s icy mountains.
It is almost unimaginable, but on this torrential sluice ordinary men, butcher, baker, and candlestick maker, launched their wives and young families in wagon beds. Taking such a liberty with the Green was surely the quintessence of something or other—maybe heroism, maybe just foolhardiness. . . .
Later there were ferries, but the earliest pioneers had to do with substitutes: catamaran rafts, made of braced logs dug out to hold the wagon wheels; ordinary rafts constructed hastily of any small timber available; sheet-iron or wooden boats fitted with wheels and previously driven in the caravan as vehicles.; and, most common, wagon beds caulked tight and with the naked bows stripped of canvas. . . .
And then, in the summer of ’47 came the ubiquitous Mormon and his ferryboats. By ’49 several were needed at the main crossings. It was a money-making venture, but the prices were ordinarily fair, ranging from three to four dollars a wagon.
[N.B. The Big Timber Pony Express Station site lies near Mile 1126 on the Pony Express Bikepacking Route, but is off the route to the southeast. To reach it, it looks like there is a cutoff road at about Mile 1123 that rejoins the Route around Mile 1127.
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 240-241
Mail Subsidizing Stagecoaches
In 1785, barely two years after the Revolution ended, the post made the first of its greatly underappreciated contributions to America’s transportation network by subsidizing stagecoaches to carry the mail, starting on certain major routes. The coaches were slower and much more expensive than the post riders, but they could carry much more mail, particularly the bulky newspapers, and do so more securely and dependably. Moreover, as Congressman Charles Pinckney of South Carolina emphasized, the government’s investment improved both mail service and transportation by encouraging “the establishment of stages to make intercourse between different parts of the Union less difficult and expensive.”
Winifred Gallagher, How the Post Office Created America, p. 49-50
Nez Perces and Missionaries
They are generally well clothed in their stile …. ‘ So every white man who ever wrote about the Nez Perces till it was time to steal their lands. They were superior Indians, they made no trouble, they liked and admired white men.
Their desire for instruction in the mysteries was genuine and paramount, as clean as the desire of these Christians to give them what they wanted. Both desires were simple and altogether hopeless. The heritage of nineteen hundred years of thought and practice was at the disposal of the Christians, proved accurate to the minutest subdivision of a mil scale. The first step, the step on which all subsequent ones depended, was to bring souls to God. Teach the Flatheads and Nez Perces God, Jesus, immortality, primordial guilt, the history of the Jewish monotheists, redemption, transfiguration and crucifixion and resurrection, the majestic poem in which western man has embodied his understanding of how his fate works out. Teach them baptism, repentance, the seeking, the knowledge of God’s presence, the wish for oneness, the sacrament of God’s body and blood, misericordia and magnanimity, the metaphor and symbolism in which western man has expressed his understanding of what life means. That was the step on which all others must be added.
The Indians receiving instruction were men of the age of polished stone. Their minds had a metabolism, a systole and diastole, circuits of afference and efference and affect, which had come down a long evolution quite incomparable to the aggregate which we whites have chosen to call the consciousness of western man. Their poems and metaphors and symbolisms, their myths of awe and wonder and man’s aloneness and the immensity of the universe and the soul groping for meaning in the night watches – had no impress that came down from the herdsmen of Asia Minor through a long refinement to worshipers in fourteenth-century cathedrals and on to John Calvin, whose vicars were now on Green River. When they were told about Jesus they must think of Him as, say, one of the young men who for many tribes come up a vine through the hole in the earth and start looking, through the wars and sorceries of the world, for their father the sun. Grace abounding or the consciousness of God’s presence, or sin, or contrition, or charity, or what you will, could reach them as idea only by reference to concepts which had been painfully integrated in the thinking of a different kind of man, a man whose intelligence had a different content and a different functioning, and at that a savage.
They tried, both Indians and whites. There they stood, the seekers and the bearers of truth. Marcus Whitman, this moment taking his first step down the path whose end he reached on November 29, 1847, has the full charge of irony implicit in the nature of men’s relationships. We must not diminish it by forgetting in the intricacy of Christian thought that what these Indians wanted was the philosopher’s stone, and that what they expected of it was guns and scalping knives and blankets and glass beads and metal tools.
Bernard De Voto, Across the Wide Missouri, p. 232-33
Length of Emigration
Nevertheless, the journey did not take four months, as the guidebooks promised, but eight months, and the emigrants counted themselves lucky to arrive in Oregon in late November [6-8 months].
Lillian Schlissel, Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey, p. 38
Ferrin's Grave
“We then ran down the river valley, which was here about one mile in breadth, in a smooth flooring of clay, sprinkled with water- rolled pebbles, overgrown in parts with willow, wild cherry, buffalo berries, and quaking asp. Macarthy pointed out in the road-side a rough grave, furnished with the normal tomb-stone, two pieces of wagon-board : it was occupied by one Farren, who had fallen by the revolver of the redoubtable Slade. Presently we came to the store of Michael Martin, an honest Creole.”
[Note: Based on Granville Stewart’s description, this would be near the town of Granger, WY, Mile 1165. Based on Burton’s itinerary, it would be near Simpson’s Hollow, Mile 1119]
Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 173
The Nauvoo Legion
“In Missouri, before Joseph Smith had decided that resistance to the Gentiles would only result in massacre of this people, the Saints had formed an irregular army and had fought small engagements with their enemies. once established in Nauvoo, Smith created a more potent militia. . . .Chartered by the Illinois legislature at a time when the state’s political parties sought the votes of the Mormons, the Nauvoo Legion soon became an impressive force of some 5,000 men. Indeed, it grew so formidable that the legislature repealed the charter in 1845, the Gentiles of both parties now fearing that the Saints had more aggressive intentions than mere self-protection. . . .
By April 1849 the new Nauvoo Legion had been officially constituted, and provision made for it in the constitution when later the Mormons established their state of Deseret. By law the Legion included all able-bodied men between the ages of eighteen and forty-five, with a unit called the Junior Rifles for the youth and the Silver Greys for those beyond the maximum age.”
Norman F. Furniss, The Mormon Conflict, 1850-1859, p. 136
First Order of Business
“The first order of business in pursuit of Russell’s dream [the Pony Express] was revamping the stagecoach line’s existing operations. The trusting general superintendent Beverly Williams was replaced by the energetic Ben Ficklin, who was instructed to ‘clean up the line.’ That meant, above all, replacing Jules Beni as stationmaster at Julesburg. But Jules was a proud and volatile man who would not go quietly. The man who dismissed him might be murdered. And even if Jules did accept his dismissal, he essentially owned the town and would remain on the scene as proprietor of his ranch there. He might have to be driven away or even killed.”
Dan Rottenberg, Death of a Gunfighter, p. 160
Paucity of Written Record
For of all the notable episodes in United States history, few have been so scantily annotated as the horseback mail, the trail of which has been indelibly—but only grossly—etched in the panorama of American pioneering. Even the parade of Caesars, or the Gallic Wars, or our own Revolution-all in the days when historical narration lacked the incentive of the common man’s literacy-even these events have been better documented and more accurately interpreted than the relatively recent Pony Express. . . .
Seemingly, few records of the 19-month mail service were then (or now, as a matter of fact) still extant. The living participants, pressed for their recollections, occasionally resorted to colorful embellishment or a self-serving memory. In several instances, the inexorable wear and tear of time caused buncombe to be offered as gospel.
Roy S. Bloss, Pony Express—The Great Gamble, iii-iv
Mountain Fever
“And as [the emigrants] got to thinner air they encountered a new malady, a prostrating seizure of nausea and violent headaches, frequently complicated by still another kind of dysentery. Bryant, who was stricken with it, attributed it to excessive drinking of milk from cows which had been made unhealthy by overwork and had drunk alkali water and eaten noxious weeds. But it was really “mountain fever,” a process of adjustment to diminished oxygen which most people repeat today when they go to high altitudes.”
Bernard De Voto, The Year of Decision, 1846, p. 161
Annulment of Chorpenning's Contract
On May 11, 1860, the postmaster general annulled George Chorpenning’s contract for carrying the mail from Salt Lake City to the west coast, and awarded it to the Central Overland California Pike’s Peak Express Company. This put the company into the stagecoach, express, and mail business for the territory from the Missouri River to California over the Central Route and in a position to compete with the Overland Mail Company.
Raymond W. Settle, "The Pony Express, Heroic Effort—Tragic End," Utah Historical Quarterly, Vol. 27 n.2, p. 107
Mile 1109: Big Sandy
“Between mountain and desert the emigrants found the Big Sandy, lovely dependable stream that it was, and went hunting for rabbits and sage hen and big plump gooseberries for pies. The ford was at modern Farson just above the junction of the Little Sandy. . . .
The Big Sandy was, of itself, clear and wholesome, but during rush years was fouled by the rotting flesh of animals that died trying to fill their baggy hides with green willow from the banks. . . .
Just where the Fort Bridger road swung over to touch the Big Sandy for the second time, the emigrants of the fifties found a fork in the trail. By turning right they might travel Kinney’s Cutoff, favored above the Sublette Cutoff because of its commendable manner of arriving at water every fifteen or twenty miles. At the fork was a trading post of logs elegantly roofed with poles and brush, and from there to the Green River was sixteen miles of dry and lusterless desert growth.”
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 237-238
Daily Stage and Pony Express Goes Federal
On July 1st [1861] the changeover was official. The country’s first daily overland stage service commenced from either end of the long route to the west. And the Pony Express, for the first time,\ became a subsidized postal operation.
Roy S. Bloss, Pony Express—The Great Gamble, 128
Train Numbers
In our train there are a wagon-master, an assistant, two extras, to help in different places, or take the place of sick or injured, and twenty-six drivers—thirty in all. There are three hundred and twelve oxen, besides some spare ones, often broken down. There are twenty-six wagons, divided into two wings —the right and left. As the leading teams have advantages, these wings alternate in starting. . . .
“The men are portioned off in four messes of six or seven, the cooks not having to guard or herd at night, or at the noon halts. The men are divided in five guards, so their watches will vary from before to after midnight, as their turns come, though sometimes they stand all night. The last, though making the duty rarer, was a great hardship, when after a hard day’s work we went supperless to an all night’s guard, after driving the cattle into the river to drink. . . .
“The wagons are narrow tired, weigh eighteen hundred pounds, and carry fiftyfour hundred. They are covered with double sheets and provided with chain-locks.
“Our train, when in close order, was a half mile long, but it often reached from one to three miles.
Thaddeus S. Kenderdine, A California Tramp and Later Footprints, p. 33-34
Oxen in a Freight Train
“We aimed to get two good Missouri oxen for wheelers and leaders, size being required for the former and intelligence for the latter. The next grade were the ‘pointers,’ which were hooked next the tongue. Between these and the leaders were the ‘swing,’ composed of the ‘scallawags’ —the weak, lazy and unbroken. To show how few stood the twelve hundred miles journey, I will state that but two of my twelve got through, the rest having died or given out from time to time. They were replaced by others from returning trains, or by the best in what we called our ” calf yard,” or loose cattle. This was a corruption of the Spanish word caballada, although the ‘Pikers’ did not know it, and, in fact, did not bother themselves about its origin, as ” calf yard ” seemed the natural term for a troop of oxen.”
Thaddeus S. Kenderdine, A California Tramp and Later Footprints, p. 34-35
Chorpenning's New Route
“By December 1858, [Chorpenning] removed his stock and coaches to the new road. Passengers who came through spoke in high terms of the road, believing that soon the line would be running between California and Salt Lake City in a week’s time without any difficulty. Chorpenning still had difficulties during the winter months. But when snow blocked the path of the horse coaches, the mail was transferred to horseback or even to the backs of men on snowshoes to see that it was delivered on time.”
Anthony Godfrey, Historic Research Study Pony Express National Historic Trail, p. 18
Oregon Territorial Government
“In the summer of 1848, amid a popular outcry about Indian attacks, Congress created the Oregon Territory, the first territorial government west of the Rockies, and appropriated the funds to build army forts to protect the pioneers.”
Rinker Buck, The Oregon Trail, p. 412
Holladay & Russell
Obviously, he [William Finney] was a man of resourceful initiative. How much easier it would have been, in the face of the frightful Pah-Ute attacks, to close up shop and await the outcome of the fighting. He must have had to swallow a choking lump of company and personal pride to wire Sacramento for public financial aid. Not that he was unaccustomed to a shortage of money. Earlier, when his operating funds had given out, he had gone to Ben Holladay in San Francisco and persuaded him to accept drafts for operating capital. Holladay was there on the persuasion of Finney’s boss in an entirely different venture. Finney probably called on him at the Sacramento and Leidesdorff Street office of Holladay & Russell, brokers of “riding, work and pack” mules for travelers to the Washoe mines.
Roy S. Bloss, Pony Express—The Great Gamble, 93
Inspiration for the Pony Express
Historians of the Pony Express usually invoke ancient Roman and Greek mail couriers or the mounted messengers of Genghis Khan in China in establishing the tradition and pedigree of the cross-country mail service, the practice of delivering mail using a fast relay system of riders.
But the custom of using a mounted courier in the American West was not inspired by such ancient tales. In colonial times, mail had been moved in such fashion in New England. Even the expression “pony express” was common long before Russell, Majors & Waddell launched its cross-country venture. The nineteenth-century American writer and early Californian Joaquin Miller left this account of the days of the forty-niners and early mail delivery:
“The Pony Express was a great feature in the gold mines of California long before anyone ever thought of putting it on the plains. Every creek, camp or “city” had its Pony Express which ran to and from the nearest office. At Yreka we had the Humbug Creek Express, the Deadwood Camp Express, the Greenhorn, and so on. . . .”
The inspiration for Russell, Majors & Waddell’s daring risk of crosscountry horsemanship was a feat that would have been familiar in the American West of the mid-nineteenth century. Horsemen knew it on the Plaza in Santa Fe and they knew it, too, on the edge of the Missorui frontier. It was a series of heroic one-man cross-country rides made in the early 1850s by Francis Xavier Aubery, a contemporary of Kit Carson’s in Santa Fe. Aubery, described by Frank A. Root and William E. Connelley in The Overland Stage to California as “a man of pluck and indomitable energy and perseverance,” was a nearmythic figure in the American West at the time. Root and Connelley’s 1901 assessment of Aubery’s horsemanship concluded that “not one man in 100,000 had the physical endurance to perform the seemingly important task.”
Using a relay of horses, Aubery at first made the run from Santa Fe to Independence in two weeks. It was a trip that oxen hauling freight normally did in two to three months. Aubery, who was built like a jockey, then shaved that time to eight days. He arrived in Independence so exhausted that he could not dismount from his horse. But Aubery was not satisfied with this personal best. His next trip, which would set horsemen talking across the Great American Desert, was completed in only five days and thirteen horus.
The odd legacy of Aubery (he made his famous five-day ride for a thousand-dollar bet and was later stabbed to death in a bar fight in New Mexico) is sketchy, but Majors recalled in his autobiography the French-Canadian trader’s feats of horsemanship. Changing mounts every one hundred to two hundred miles, Aubery crossed the eight hundred dangerous miles that separated the old Spanish city from Independence in an unheard-of time. It nearly killed him, and he slept for twenty hours after making the run. But it made a powerful impression on Majors.
Christopher Corbett, Orphans Preferred, p. 25-26
Frémont on Gavilan
“At the beginning of March, Fremont was continuing his northward progress toward Oregon by moving west over the Santa Cruz Mountains and south toward Monterey. In violation of his agreement and in defiance of the authorities. They now took action. On March 5, at the Hartnell ranch near Salinas, an officer of the California militia rode into his camp and gave him letters from the prefect and the comandante. Both directed him to take his force out of the department at once. The hero worked on a hair trigger. He ordered the lieutenant out of camp with a red-fire message for his superiors, moved hastily into the hills, set up a breastwork of logs on tlie top of Gavilan Peak, nailed Old Glory to a pole, and prepared to b~ sacrificed. “If we are unjustly attacked,” he wrote to Larkin, “we will fight to extremity and .refuse quarter, trusting our country to avenge our death. . . . If we are hemmed in and assaulted here, we will die, every man of us, under the flag of our country.” … He had been told to get out, on the ground that he had broken faith with the officials, lied about his instructions and intentions, broken the law, defied the courts, and condoned the misbehavior of his men. There had been no thought of killing him.
Nobody was ready to confer martyrdom on him, and though his mountain men were hot for a go with the greasers he got nothing for his brave words except an artist’s pleasure in the style. Consul Larkin found so little intelligence in his actions that he supposed Fremont could not have understood the official orders and wrote explaining them – meanwhile asking Don Jose Castro not to get rough but to talk things over with the hero in simple language. Also, seeing his patient intrigue alt but ruined by this dramaturgy, he hastily asked for a man-of-war at Monterey, to persuade alt parties to dampen their powder. As for Don Jose, he mustered what militia he could, circularized an already agitated countryside with proclamations, and paraded his forces under the spyglasses trained on them from Gavilan Peak. That was the traditional way of using force in California.
It worked. In his lofty fortress Fremont reverberated with the most dramatic emotions but his position was impossible in both law and tactics, as he realized when the McGuffey phase had passed. He was here without the slightest authority of his government, which could only disavow him, and the Californians had ordered him out on sufficient grounds and altogether within their rights. They were unlikely to attack him on the Gavilan and, if they had attacked, his mountain men could have shot them to pieces. But they must eventually have starved him out and then ridden him down with the long lances that were to win them San Pascual. However stirring his compositions and however humiliating the retreat, no great deed was possible and he had to get out. After three days of Hollywood fantasy, his flagpole fell down and he told his men that this showed they had done enough for honor. He moved out, most slow and dignified.”
Bernard De Voto, The Year of Decision, 1846, p. 111-112
75 Ponies
“It took Seventy-five ponies to make the first trip from Missouri to California. The riders of these ponies had ‘shoved a continent behind their hooves,’ and many people recognized this important fact. The crowds cheered ‘Long live the Pony!’ till their throats were sore. When the speeches ended, the bonfires were extinguished, the bells stopped ringing, and the last waltzes were danced, it remained to be seen whether the Pony Express would be a triumph or a failure.”
Anthony Godfrey, Historic Research Study Pony Express National Historic Trail, p. 56
Delicacies on the Trail
“Though supplementary to breadstuff and bacon, some other articles of food were considered essential: salt, sugar, coffee, and dried fruit. In addition, each family was likely to carry along something in the way of special delicacies—tea, maple sugar, vinegar, pickles, smoked beef. . . .
Though these backwoods people had no knowledge of scientific dietetics, they had folkways which served them well. Aside from actual near-starvation, there seems to have been no dietary trouble in these early years. There is no mention of scurvy. Toward the end of the journey, after the delicacies had been exhausted, the diet was monotonous, and perhaps this is the reason, some emigrants arrived in California with a longing for pickles.”
George R. Stewart, The California Trail, p. 120-121
First Run over the Sierra Nevada
“Critics of the central overland route predicted that weather conditions (especially winter conditions) along the route would cause delays for the C.O.C. & P.P. Express Co. Perhaps to avoid an unsettling beginning to their new enterprise, Russell, Majors, and Waddell decided to the start the Pony Express in the springtime. Despite the springtime start, the first rider from Sacramento to St. Joseph encountered four-foot-deep snow in crossing the Sierra Nevada, and it looked as though adverse weather conditions would defeat the C.O.C. & P.P. Express Co. from the outset. Fortunately for the rider, a narrow mule-path created by pack-trains on their way from California to the Washoe mines opened the way for him. The rider was delayed by only a few hours, indicating to many that the Pony Express could conquer the critics of the central overland route.”
Anthony Godfrey, Historic Research Study Pony Express National Historic Trail, p. 67
Sweet Morpheus
“We started and travelled 10 miles and comped very late; here we found no wood to cook with, so we ate a few crackers, and resigned ourselves to the arms of sweet morpheus. This night was awful dark and cloudy, and the guards had to feel their way around the carrell. I was on guard, this night, and about 2 o’clock a Platte Bottom thunder-storm came up, and quick as thought, it commenced thundering, lightning and pouring down oceans of rain on us.”
John Wood, Journal of John Wood, p. 11 (June 2, 1850)
Wood for Julesburg
“We were told that we would have to stay at Julesburg over the winter, and that some arrangement would have to be made for winter quarters. The first thing we had to do was to get some wood for cooking. We had been using ‘bull-chips,’ and the boys had not had much cooked food. Captain O’Brien directed me to take the company wagons and an escort, and go for wood. There were no cedar canyons, and no trees anywhere in the neighborhood of Julesburg. The nearest point at which there was anything like a tree was over at Ash Hollow, and that was a day’s march to the northeast, on the North Platte. . . .
“By telegraph we got a lot of cedar poles cut down at Cottonwood Canyon, and the post wagons there brought us up a lot under escort. There was nothing growing along the Platte of much consequence. The statement used to be that one could not get a riding-switch for seventy miles on each side of Julesburg along the Platte. It was thirty miles south of Julesburg to what was called the White Man’s Fork of the Republican River, but it was seventy miles, nearly, to the Republican River. Pioneers had said that there was nothing on White Man’s Fork and nothing until we went seventy miles to the Republican, and there only cottonwoods.”
Eugene Ware, Indian Wars of 1864, p. 318-19, 328
Montana Vigilantes
Now the Vigilantes—and Slade was one of them—struck. They struck by night, fastening a piece of paper bearing the cryptic 3-7-77 to the cabin doors of those given last warning to leave Montana, dragging from theor beds those to die.
Dabney Otis Collins, The Hanging of Bad Jack Slade, 44-45
Cow Column
“The ‘cow column,’ the first migration to Oregon, consisting of near 1,000 persons, passed by [Fort Laramie] in 1843. Thereafter, the white-topped emigrant wagons became a familiar sight in May and June of each year.”
Merrill J. Mattes, The Great Platte River Road, p. 484
Forks of the Platte
“The Platte River divides at N. lat. 40 05′ 05″, and W. long. (G.) 101 21′ 24″. The northern, by virtue of dimensions, claims to be the main stream. The southern, which is also called in obsolete maps Padouca, from the Pawnee name for the iatans, whom the Spaniards term Comanches, averages 600 yards, about 100 less than its rival in breadth, and, according to the prairie people, affords the best drinking.”
Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 60-61
Lodissa Frizell's Last Entry
“‘We are hardly half way. I felt tired and weary. O the luxury of a house, a house! I felt what some one expressed who had traveled this long & tedious journey that, “it tries the soul.” I would have given all my interest in California, to have been seated around my own fireside surrounded by friend & relation. That this journey is tiresome, no one will doubt, that it is perilous, the death of many testify and the heart has a thousand misgivings and the mind is tortured with anxiety, & often as I passed the fresh made graves, I have glanced at the sideboards of the waggon [sic], not knowing how soon it might serve as a coffin for some of us; but thanks for the kind care of Providence we were favored more than some others.'”
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 235
Mountain Grasses
“The mountain region westward of the sage and saleratus desert, extending between the 105th and 111th meridian (G.) a little more than 400 miles will in time become sparsely peopled. Though in many parts arid and sterile, dreary and desolate, the long bunch grass (Festuca), the short curly buffalo grass (Sisleria dactyloides), the mesquit grass (Stipa spata), and the Gramma, or rather, as it should be called, ‘Gamma’ grass (Chondrosium fcenum) which clothe the slopes west of Fort Laramie, will enable it to rear an abundance of stock.”
Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 7
The Posing of Contrary Biased Opinions
For the posing of contrary biased opinions does not necessarily result in truth, not does the citing of a charge with its counter-charge, or a pious delusion with the facts that debunk it.
Wallace Stegner, The Gathering of Zion, p 313
Alexander Majors's Bibles
“Speaking of this thorough plainsman [Alexander Majors] reminds me of the lack of religion among some of the boys. Mr. Major[s] was always interested in the moral elevation of the men who worked for him, and sometimes before a train left the Missouri River he would present each man with a neat pocket Testament, the leaves of which, being about the right size out of which to make cigarettes, were used for the same instead of being read.”
— Darley, Reverend G .M., “The End Gate of the Mess Wagon,” The Trail: A Magazine for Colorado, Volumes 1, No. 1 (1908) : 18-19
Alexander Majors's Bibles
Folsom Becomes the Western Terminus
“In July [1860], the railroad was completed to Folsom, California. It then became the western terminus for the mail & Pony Express. Mail could be taken by train [to or from Sacramento and San Francisco].”
William E. Hill, The Pony Express: Yesterday and Today, p. 67
The Need for Freight Wagons
“Moreover, no goods were manufactured west of the Mississippi; everything used there had to be shipped from the East. The manufacturing states east of the Mississippi routinely moved goods along navigable rivers, barge canals, and, increasingly, railroads; yet none of these conveniences existed west of the Mississippi. In that whole western expanse, only the Missouri River could be used by steamboats for any great distance, and the Missouri was hazardous as well as indirect. From St. Louis its path meandered 3,175 miles far to the northwest, so that even steamboats capable of braving its unpredictable shallows to its distant headwaters at Fort benton still found themselves at least 1,000 miles north of California or New Mexico or Salt Lake. In effect only one means existed for moving bulk supplies and heave machinery across the Great American desert: the freight wagon.”
Dan Rottenberg, Death of a Gunfighter, p.63
Mile 27: Valley Home
“The next settlement, Valley Home, was reached at 6 P.M. Here the long wave of the ocean land broke into shorter seas, and for the first time that day we saw stones, locally called rocks (a Western term embracing every thing between a pebble and a boulder), the produce of nullahs and ravines.”
Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 19
A Downgrade, a Flying Coach
“And it was comfort in those succeeding days to sit up and contemplate the majestic panorama of mountains and valleys spread out below us and eat ham and hard boiled while our spiritual natures revelled alternately in rainbows, thunderstorms, and peerless sunsets. Nothing helps scenery like ham and eggs. Ham and eggs, and after these a pipe—an old, rank, delicious pipe—ham and eggs and scenery, a ‘down grade,’ a flying coach, a fragrant pipe and a contented heart—these make happiness. It is what all the ages have struggled for.”
Mark Twain, Roughing It, p. 140-141
Mile 1741: Diamond Springs Station
The station site and the Pony Express Monument are in separate locations.
The site is at https://goo.gl/maps/6ecT5eFvKsvLdtXM9. In satellite view, it appears there is a cutoff from the XP Trail just before the trail turns south to Thompson Ranch (at the west end of Telegraph canyon).
According to the US Topo map, the monument is located by the Thompson Ranch approximately at the POI water icon. (“There is a brass Pony Express centennial plaque mounted in a stone and concrete monument near the ranch house just one mile south of the actual station site.”)
One author (Hill, p.222) states (without citation) that Diamond Springs served as a gathering place during the Pauite War.
Now, suppose you have three teams of horned steers, all yoked up and pulling your wagon along the Oregon Trail. Ford will point out that you still don’t necessarily have oxen. A true ox, he explains, is a steer (or cow or bull) “with an education.” The “ox degree” is conferred when the animal reaches full maturity at age four and is trained well enough to be called “handy.” “Now, handy means they’ll go anywhere you want,” Ford continues. “They’ll back up, they’ll go right, they’ll go left, they’ll spin back to the right, which is ‘back gee,’ and they’ll spin back to the left, which is ‘back haw.’”
Dixon Ford and Lee Kreutzer, "Oxen: Engines of the Emigration," Overland Journal, V. 33. No. 1 (2015), p. 10
Whisky
“He [the stagecoach driver] can do nothing without whisky, which he loves to call tarantula juice, strychnine, red-eye, corn juice, Jersey lightning, leg-stretcher, ‘tangleleg,’ (for instance, ‘whisky is now tested by the distance a man can walk after tasting it. The new liquor called ‘Tangle-leg’ is said to be made of diluted alcohol, nitric acid, pepper, and tobacco, and will upset a man at a distance of 400 yards from the demijohn.’), and many other hard and grotesque name; he chews tobacco like a horse; he becomes heavier ‘on the shoulder’ or ‘ on the shyoot,’ as, with the course of empire, he makes his way westward; and he frequently indulges in a “spree,” which in these lands means four acts of drinking-bout, with a fifth of rough-andtumble. Briefly, he is a post-wagon driver exaggerated.”
Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 24
Border Ruffians
“So I journeyed on, getting over about thirty-five miles a day on an average, and nothing worth recording occurred till Independence, an important town and Indian trading-post on the frontier of Missouri, was reached. There I found the place crowded with Missourians and a goodly sprinkling of men from the Southern States, all full of excitement over the burning question whether the Territory of Kansas, recently opened up for settlement, should be Slave or Free.
The Free State party in the North, managed and worked from Faneuil Hall, Boston, had been sending up men and arms, and had occupied positions defended by light artillery. The Missourians were crossing the river, and volunteers from all the Southern States were marching up to the conflict, which might break out at any moment.
In this scene of seething unrest and wild passion, a stranger was naturally regarded with suspicion until he declared his sympathies. Mine were strongly on the side of the South, and, as soon as I made this known, I was heartily welcomed amongst the ” Border Ruffians,” as the pro-Slavery party was nicknamed by the Free Staters.”
R.H. Williams, With the Border Ruffians, p. 74
Mile 1573: Spring Valley Station
“The keeper of . . . Spring Valley was Constant Dubail, a Frenchman. It was here that Elijah N. Wilson was wounded in the head by an arrow. . . .
“In September [1860] Elijah N. Wilson was sent along the line from Schell Creek to Antelope station with a number of horses. He made the trip safely, delivered his charges, and started back the next day. When he reached Spring Valley station he found two young men who invited him to stay for dinner.
“Wilson accepted the invitation and turned his horse loose, thinking it would go to the stable in the corral. Instead it joined some others which were grazing behind the station. A short time later they saw Indians driving all of the horses across a meadow toward a cedar grove a short distance away. They ran after the thieves on foot, but the animals entered the trees before they could be overtaken. As he ran, Wilson fired his revolver, but without effect. Having outdistanced his companions he entered the cedars ahead of them.
“As he ran around a large one, an arrow struck him in the forehead about two inches above the left eye and lodged there. He fell to the ground unconscious. The young men came up and did what they could for him. When they tried to pull the arrow out the shaft came loose leaving the point stuck in his forehead. The Indians got away with all the horses.
“Being certain Wilson would die the young men rolled him into the shade of the cedar and set out for the next station on foot. On the following day they came back with some men to bury him. Finding him still alive they carried him into the station and a messenger was sent to Ruby Valley, a full days ride each way, for a doctor. Upon his arrival he removed the arrow point but there was little else he could do. He cold the young men to keep a wet rag on the wound and went back. For six days Wilson lay fighting for his life with only such rude nursing as his friends could give him.
“No doubt he would have died had not Howard Egan come along, possibly on his way back to Sale Lake City. The Division Superintendent took one look at him, then sent a rider post haste to Ruby Valley to bring the doctor back. For twelve days longer Wilson lay in a stupor, hovering between life and death. Then to everyone’s delight he began to mend. In a short time he was able to ride again. The wound left such an unsightly scar upon his forehead chat ever after he wore his hat outdoors and indoors to hide it.”
[Note: The Pony Express National Historical Study, and all reports based on it, state that Elijah N. “Uncle Nick” Wilson died as a result of his wound.]
Settle and Settle, Saddles and Spurs, p. 141, 158-159
Mile 228: Kiowa Station
“Near Kiowa Station the nature of the terrain changed. The hitherto smooth slopes broke into rain-gutted saddles and deep-washed gullies. The wagons had steered a dizzy course like a line of ants disturbed.”
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner,p. 75
Post Rider Description
One job description for the position ordered that “in the selection of riders you must always take persons of integrity, sound health, firmness, perseverance and high ambition, and pride of character. Among these a preference is due to young men, the less the size the better.” One such was James S. Totten, fourteen, who took the job when General David Sutton, his grandfather and guardian, died and left him penniless. The plucky, jockey-weight boy supported himself on his weekly route’s eight-dollar monthly salary and later become a prominent local politician.
Winifred Gallagher, How the Post Office Created America, p. 55
Old Isis Bargee
“At Saint Joseph (Mo.), better known by the somewhat irreverent abbreviation of St. Jo, I was introduced to Mr. Alexander Majors, formerly one of the contractors for supplying the army in Utah a veteran mountaineer, familiar with life on the prairies. His meritorious efforts to reform the morals of the land have not yet put forth even the bud of promise. He forbade his drivers and employees to drink, gamble, curse, and travel on Sundays; he desired them to peruse Bibles distributed to them gratis; and though he refrained from a lengthy proclamation commanding his lieges to be good boys and girls, he did not the less expect it of them. Results : I scarcely ever saw a sober driver; as for profanity the Western equivalent for hard swearing they would make the blush of shame crimson the cheek of the old Isis bargee; and, rare exceptions to the rule of the United States, they are not to be deterred from evil talking even by the dread presence of a ‘lady.'”
[“Old Isis bargee” = Thames river pilot, Isis being an alternate name for the Thames]
Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 5
Cook's Accomplishment
[Cook by 1779] forever destroyed two shining myths, erasing the Southern Continent and the Northwest Passage from the map of human ignorance. He added great stores of knowledge to the intellectual estate of mankind. Not the least item among them were the calculations that made him the first man who had ever known for certain how wide North America is.
Bernard De Voto, The Course of Empire, p. 283-84
Mormons as Principal Settlers of the West
They built a commonwealth, or as they would have put it, a Kingdom. But the story of their migration is more than the story of the founding of Utah. In their hegira they opened up southern Iowa from Locust Creek to the Missouri, made the first roads, built the first bridges, established the first communities. They transformed Introduction: The Way to the Kingdom 7 the Missouri at Council Bluffs from a trading post and an Indian agency into an outpost of civilization, founded settlements on both sides of the river and made Winter Quarters (now Florence, a suburb of Omaha) and later Kanesville (now Council Bluffs) into outfitting points that rivaled Independence, Westport, and St. Joseph. They defined the road up the north side of the Platte that is now the route of both U.S. 30 and the Union Pacific Railroad. Their guide books and !rail markers, their bridges and ferries, though made for the Saints scheduled to come later, served also for the Gentiles: according to Irene Paden in The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, a third of the California and Oregon travel from 1849 on followed the Mormon Trail.
That is to say, the Mormons were one of the principal forces in the settlement of the West.
Wallace Stegner, The Gathering of Zion, p 6-7
Long Knife
“The interpreter told me that the Indian’s name was O-way-see’-cha, accent on the third syllable. This word means in the Sioux dialect ‘bad wound,’ ‘see-cha” meaning bad. The Sioux, like the French, put their adjectives after the noun. Wahsee-cha means ‘medicine bad,’ i. e., white-man. I was told that he acquired his name from a fight with the Pawnee Indians down north of Fort Kearney several years before; that he was so badly wounded that they carried him off on an Indian litter between two ponies; and he finally recovered to be as well as ever ; and then, Indian fashion he took a new name. He greeted me with an expression which the interpreter said meant that I was ‘his longknife .son'”
Eugene Ware, Indian Wars of 1864, p. 143-44
Free to Own Another Man
The Emancipation Proclamation appears to have been the catalyst that launched the unfortunate slave on a journey to his doom. That spring, according to Owens’ letter, the slave’s master, afraid he would lose his slaves as a result of the war, but ignoring the federal prohibition against slavery in the territories, took his valuable human property and joined the Great Migration. The little party departed for the frontier with the belief that way out West a man could still be free to own another man without government interference.
Todd Guenther, “‘Could These Bones Be From a Negro?’” Overland Journal 19, no. 2 (Summer 2001), 48
Jules Stretch
This stretch of the road, from Julesburg to “French Louie’s” [Pole Creek Station] was known as the “Jules Stretch.” The stretch of road going from the Pole Creek crossing and “French Louie’s” northward, to the next Pony Express Station, Mud Springs, and was known as the “Thirty Mile Stretch.”
Loren Avey, The Pole Creek Crossing, p. 24
The Pacific Republic
One way, however, in which secession sentiment found expression at the opening of the war was in the advocacy of a Pacific Republic. The “copperheads” (Northern men with Southern principles) especially favored the formation of a new government on the Pacific Coast. Governor Weber was not opposed to the idea. In fact, he said: “If the wild spirit of fanaticism which now pervades the land should destroy the magnificent confederacy-which God forbid-she (California) will not go with the south or north, but here upon the shores of the Pacific, found a mighty republic, which may in the end prove the greatest of all.”
Imogene Spaulding, "The Attitude of California to the Civil War," Annual Publication of the Historical Society of Southern California , 1912-1913, Vol. 9, No. 1/2 (1912-1913), pp. 108
Fort Laramie
Miller felt the release that all travelers felt here. The fort was oasis, hermitage, hostelry, coolness and greenness after a weary land. And Fontenelle had a consummate refreshment for his guests, crocks of milk. And now Miller acquires primary importance for history. This was the original Fort Laramie which had been christened Fort William, as the Fort Laramie that succeeded it was christened FortJohn. We saw its sill laid bySublette’s men in 1834. Miller reaches it in 1837. Three years later Lancaster P. Lupton, who already had a post on the South Platte, built another one on the North Platte about a mile and a half from Fort Laramie. This is the ‘Fort Platte’ of the literature, a commodious and strongly built establishment that later passed to another Opposition firm, Sybille, Adams, and Company, and later still to Pratte, Cabanne and Company, also in opposition. The building of Fort Platte stimulated the Company to rebuild Fort Laramie, whose timbers were beginning to decay. It did so in 1841, moving to a new site farther up Laramie Creek. 14 They built the new post of adobe. Miller’s sketches therefore show the original fort at its original site. They are the only known pictures that do, though as a note points out Elliott Coues says that he has seen a sketch which he does not further identify. And Miller’s notebook entries are an addition to the small number of first-hand descriptions.
Bernard De Voto, Across the Wide Missouri, p. 319
Sabbath Day
Another thing he insisted upon was resting on the Sabbath day, not only because to do so was Divinely commanded, but because his trains made better time in the long run than those which traveled seven days a week without rest. The bullwhackers liked it too.
Settle and Settle, "Napoleon of the West," Annals of Wyoming Vol. 32, No.1, April 1960, p. 12-13
Steamship Policy
In 1847, Congress authorized the secretary of the Navy to contract for additional steamship mail service. One route ran from New York to Charleston, Savannah, New Orleans, and Havana; another from Havana to the Isthmus of Panama, then up the Pacific coast to California and Oregon; and still another—the most important—between New York and Liverpool. By 1853, Congress tried to soothe a South disgruntled by the stimulus to the North’s shipping industry and trade with a steamship line from New Orleans to Tampico and Veracruz in Mexico. . . .
By the time the initial subsidies were halted, in 1859, America’s international mail service was much faster, and its foreign trade had also greatly increased. This growth resumed just after the Civil War, when Congress authorized the postmaster general to contract with steamship owners to transport the mail from the East Coast through various ports to Brazil, and from San Francisco to Japan, China, and Hawaii.
Winifred Gallagher, How the Post Office Created America, p. 172-73
First Mormon Immigrants from England
With that energetically pushed exodus, the first phase of the Gathering was over, the Nauvoo refugees finally gathered in. And as early as September 3, 1850, as if to prefigure the future, there had arrived in the valley a train composed of thirty-one wagons of English converts led by Abraham Smoot. They brought Captain Pitt’s Brass Band to the mouth of Emigration Canyon for that one, and fired off the artillery, and held a feast and a dance. For these were European paupers, the so-called “Poor Company,” the first of the English poor to be brought to Zion under the protection of the Perpetual Emigrating Fund. Not many like them would follow until the Pottawattamie lands were cleared, but after 1852 most of the companies that traveled the Mormon Trail would not be American frontier farmers with pioneering skills in their hands and muscles, but English millhands and miners, Corn Law paupers, incipient Chartists, Scandinavian farmers, German servant girls—the industrially dispossessed, the chronically unemployed, the widowed, the orphaned, those for whom Zion in the tops of the mountains was a far golden word, a pillar of fire or cloud, a star shining in the West. More than ever, because of their weakness and inexperience, they had to be brought across an ocean and a continent not by their own spontaneous efforts, but by the systematic effort of experts.
Wallace Stegner, The Gathering of Zion, p 211
Mile 16: Troy
“Passing through a few wretched shanties called Troy—last insult to the memory of hapless Pergamus—and Syracuse (here we are in the third, or classic stage of United States nomenclature), we made, at 3 P.M., Cold Springs, the junction of the Leavenworth route. Having taken the northern road to avoid rough ground and bad bridges, we arrived about two hours behind time.”
Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 18
The Loose Herd
“In addition to wagons, teams, and necessary harness, the journey demanded much else . . . Extra cattle were usually driven along in a ‘loose herd,’ for spares and for a supply of fresh meat. Herders then had to be assigned, one man to thirty cattle. Herding was trying and disliked work. The cattle frequently strayed and occasionally stampeded, and always they had to be guarded against the Indians. Some people judged a loose herd to be more nuisance than it was worth.”
George R. Stewart, The California Trail, p. 117
Sage Brush
“It is an imposing monarch of the forest in exquisite miniature, is the ‘sage-brush.’ Its foliage is a grayish green, and gives that tint to desert and mountain. It smells like our domestic sage, and ‘sage-tea’ made from it tastes like the sage tea which all boys are so well acquainted with. The sagebrush is a singularly hardy plant, and grows right in the midst of deep sand, and among barren rocks, where nothing else in the vegetable world would try to grow, except ‘bunchgrass.’ The sage-bushes grow from three to six or seven feet apart, all over the mountains and deserts of the Far West, clear to the borders of California. There is not a tree of any kind in the deserts, for hundreds of miles—there is no vegetation at all in a regular desert, except the sage-brush and its cousin the ‘greasewood,’ which is so much like the sagebrush that the difference amounts to little. Camp-fires and hot suppers in the deserts would be impossible but for the friendly sage-brush. Its trunk is as large as a boy’s wrist (and from that up to a man’s arm), and its crooked branches are half as large as its trunk—all good, sound, hard wood, very like oak.”
Mark Twain, Roughing It, p. 33-34
Paying Tributes
“As at St. Joe and in the west bottoms the emigrants had been pestered by ‘dirty looking redskins’ looking for handouts. These were the more shiftless members of the Kickapoo, Sac and Fox tribes who had been settled on the west bank of the Missouri River in the early 1840s. West of Mosquito Creek these tribesmen had more clothing and fewer lice, and their begging assumed more sophisticated forms, of which Lucius Fairchild’s experience was typical: ‘We met two Indians one a Sac and the other a Fox both chiefs with a paper from the Indian Agent saying that these Indians complained of the emigrants burning timber and requested all to pay them something so we gave them half a dollar which satisfied them.’ In 1852 several indignant travelers mentioned the levying of tribute at the rate of 25¢ per team just to cross the reservation.’The tariff,’ wrote Jay Green, ‘Idid refuse to pay as I thought it a skeem of speculation got up by the Indian Agent.'”
Merrill J. Mattes, The Great Platte River Road, p. 144-145
Alexander and the Soda Springs Route
“We now moved camp every day or two on account of grass.
In about two weeks Colonel Alexander1 came up with one thousand soldiers, but with no orders. The Mormons burned the grass ahead of us for several miles. After the teams had all arrived, Colonel Alexander concluded, as the Mormons had Echo Canyon route so well fortified, he would have to take the Soda Springs route, down Bear River and in by the northern settlements. So he ordered us to move up to Soda Springs, eighty miles north. . . .
We moved on, and in a few days reached Soda Springs. It was now quite cold, and we had some snow before reaching the Springs. In a day or two after eight or ten inches of snow fell and it was very cold weather.
After we had been there about a week an express messenger from Colonel Albert Sydney Johnston came riding into camp with orders for us to move back to the crossing on Ham’s Fork, and stay there till he arrived. We started back. It was very cold and our cattle were weak. We could make but eight or ten miles a day. We left some of our poorest cattle at each camp, they not being able to travel.
We arrived at the crossing in eight days. Two days afterwards Colonel Johnston came in with his men. Some of them rode out to old Fort Bridger, and, after looking it over, came back and ordered us to move on to Bridger, and they would go into winter quarters there. . . .
A company of Dragoons came up to camp before we started. This made about two thousand five hundred men-soldiers and teamsters.
It was a bitter cold day that we started. The train was six miles long. The last of the train did not leave camp till noon, and it was dark when they got into camp that night. It was a very cold night and the herders could not stay with the cattle. In the morning we found we had lost one hundred and sixty head which had strayed off in the storm, and sixty head of government mules had died in camp. This weakened our teams so that we could move only a part of our train at a time, many of the cattle left being too weak to work. We were six days getting this train twenty-six miles to Ford Bridger.”
William Clark, "A Trip Across the Plains in 1857," Iowa Journal of History and Politics, 20 (1922), p. 194-195
Mail Contracts and the Mormon War
[William M.F.] Magraw lost his contract [to provide mail service between Salt Lake City and Independence] in 1856 for unsatisfactory service and was succeeded by a Mormon, Hiram Kimball, the new low bidder. Brigham Young then took over Kimball’s contract, planing a great Mormon commercial enterprise which would carry not only the mails but all goods between the Missouri River and Utah. . . . [T]he contract was summarily annulled in June of 1857, on the pretext that Kimball was late in fulfilling its terms. The charge was true but only because winter blizzards had, as usual, delayed the mails. . . . Magraw’s unhappiness at losing his contract, and Mormon unhappiness at losing theirs, were contributory causes to the ensuing ‘war’ of 1857-58.”
John D. Unruh, Jr., The Plains Across, p. 241
The Mormon "Halfway House"
“Year by year the number and variety of available goods and services [in Salt Lake City] increased. . . .By 1852 . . . travelers could patronize several eating houses and hotels. In 1853 yjr United States Hotel owners advertised the only bar in the city . . . By 1856 clothiers, weavers, druggists, sign painters, saddlers, and operators of vegetable markets were also actively engaged in trade . . .
The total effect of all this was significant. To be able to interrupt the once-formidable overland journey for an extended sojourn in a large city where an emigrant could feast on memorable cuisine, board in a bona fide hotel, have a likeness made to send back to relatives, have his hair cut, his watch repaired, and even eyeglasses prescribed must have altered the atitudes with which travelers faced the overland journey.”
John D. Unruh, Jr., The Plains Across, p. 310-311
Risk from Indians in 1846
“The risks were now that stragglers might be killed for their arms and equipment, that venturesome young bucks might raid the horse herd for glory, or that the antic Indian humor might stampede the oxen. Indians did not covet the ungainly tamed buffalo that drew the white-tops, but it was fun to see them run, especially with some arrows sticking in them.”
Bernard De Voto, The Year of Decision, 1846, p. 157
Purpose of the Postal System
“The postal system was founded, and form many years was conducted, upon the principle that it should be self-supporting. However, in the fifties there were many Congressmen who did not subscribe to this doctrine. They did not look upon the Post Office Department as a mere business undertaking which must needs be self-supporting. To them the postal service, especially in its western lines, was and should be, primarily a pioneer of civilization; marking the trails and keeping them open to travel, encouraging settlement, and acting as the precursor of the railroad.”
LeRoy Hafen, The Overland Mail: 1849–1869, p. 129
Mile 151: Hollenberg Pony Express Station State Historic Site
“The Hollenberg Pony Express Station State Historic Site has been painstakingly restored and is open for visits from March 14th – October 13th.
Be sure to make a quick stop and take a walk inside. It’s a pretty incredible experience so early on the trail.”
“Western merchants were happy to pay ten dollars per hundred pounds, and each wagon could carry a five-thousand-pound load . . . In some cases the cost of shipping an item exceeded the value of the item itself.”
Dan Rottenberg, Death of a Gunfighter, p. 63-64
Mile 1502: Willow Springs Station
“A great deal of controversy has arisen over the location of the Willow Springs Station. Descriptions given by Nick Wilson (an Express rider) and Sir Richard Burton do not describe the location of the place now claimed to be the station site. A foundation, identified tentatively by the authors as dating to the proper period and similar to the structure depicted in the sketch from an 1868 photograph, has been found at the spot where an 1882 survey plat locates the Willow Springs Stable. This structure, located on the Dorcey Sabey property, is approximately 100 feet northeast of F. J. Kearney’s boarding house. This facility is about 3/4 mile east of the structure popularly known as the station house. Further archaeological investigations are necessary to establish the true location of the station.”
In mid-march, 1860, Jules Beni shot Jack Slade, superintendent of the division, in Julesburg and left him for dead.
“Now, less than three weeks before the scheduled opening of the Pony Express, the new relay system would be put to the test under emergency conditions. Rider J.K Ellis was saddled up and dispatched to Fort Laramie, 175 miles to the northwest, in the hope that a relay horse would await him at each of the stations planted at ten-mile intervals. Fort Laramie represented the nearest legal authority; more important at this moment, it housed a military surgeon who held the only chance to save Slade’s life. . . .
J.K. Ellis made the 175-mile ride to Fort Laramie to fetch a surgeon in eighteen hours. ‘I believe,’ he later remarkes, ‘it breaks the record for a straightaway ride by a single individual.'”
Dan Rottenberg, Death of a Gunfighter, p. 184
Missionaries to Oregon in 1836
South Pass, July 4, 1836. The annual pack train of the American Fur Company, commanded by Thomas Fitzpatrick; a considerable outfit, seventy-odd engages, upwards of four hundred horses and mules. Fitzpatrick’s adjutant is Black Harris, the specialist in solitary and winter travel. Harris rides at the end of the Company train to keep an eye on the technique of the march and to enforce trail discipline. A Company cart (a ‘charette’ as in Miller’s drawings) is going through the Pass this year – and with it a light wagon which will presently establish itself in American history forever. At the head of the train Fitzpatrick is the familiar figure of the partisan, thin-faced, gaunt, eyes sweeping the land, Hawken rifle unslung and held across the saddle. He looks in fact like a Ranney painting of the next decade or a Tait lithograph of the following one. Beside him on a superb black horse rides his hawk-nosed, mustached friend of three years’ standing now, Captain William Drummond Stewart. . . .
Fitzpatrick and Stewart and the unexplained Sillem in the lead, an outrider or two on each flank, three-quarters of a mile of diabolism and dust, then the Company cart and Black Harris with a headful of trail cunning.
But behind Harris the momentous thing: a light four-wheeled wagon without springs, fourteen horses and six mules, fifteen head of beef and milch cattle – and the missionary party. The new missionary party that was a revolution. Marcus Whitman and the two Nez Perce boys who had gone East with him last year and a third one inexplicably found at Liberty. A dubious hired hand named (or spelled) Dulin and a nineteen-year-old youth named Miles Goodyear who was hellbent to be a mountain man – and soon made the grade. Also William H. Gray, a ‘mechanic’ of attested piety and proved malice whom the American Board had added to the party for no sound reason. Also the Reverend Henry Hart Spalding. Also, and here was the difference, Mr. Spalding’s wife, Eliza, and the wife whom Marcus Whitman had married during the winter.
Bernard De Voto, Across the Wide Missouri, p. 245-46
Fort Bridger to Camp Floyd
“[In 1858] General Johnson first ordered [Captain Simpson of the topographical engineering corps] to ascertain the feasibility of opening a wagon road between Camp Floyd and Fort Bridger by way of the Timpanogos River. Eight years earlier Stansbury had suggested this route as desirable though he had not traversed it; Beckwith explored parts of the valley in making his railroad survey four years earlier . . .
With [Captain Simpson] on his inspection tour was a representative of Russell, Majors & Waddell who was to determine if the company’s freight trains headed for Camp Floyd should be directed to the new road. . . .
[Simpson] reported to General Johnson that his road was not nearly so rough as the usual emigrant, mail, and freight route up Echo Canyon and that more grass and water were available . . . All government trains began traveling over the route immediately, and Russell, Majors & Waddell discovered that its trains routed this way from Fort Bridger to Camp Floyd arrived more quickly than those traveling the old road.”
W. Turrentine Jackson, Wagon Roads West, p. 146-148 (and p. 351, n. 25)
Million Dollar Mail Contract
“During the Congressional short session of 1860-61, advocates of the Central route renewed their efforts for an adequately subsidized mail service on their favorite line. They at last succeeded and the law of March 2, 1861, provided for a daily overland mail on the Central route and a semi-weekly Pony Express, the compensation for the joint undertaking to be $1,000,000 per annum.”
“[The secession of of seven states] perhaps helped Congress to decide the features embodied in the above law, but the Civil War was not responsible for the establishment of the daily overland mail on the Central route. As noted above, Hale’s bill in 1860 provided for such a daily service. The defeat of all overland mail legislation during the first session only stimulated greater effort in the next.
The feature of this legislation of March2, 1861, that was affected, if not produced by the secession and its probable consequences, was the provision for the transfer of the Butterfield line to the Central route.”
LeRoy Hafen, The Overland Mail: 1849–1869, p. 188-189 and 213-214
Platte Valley
“The valley of the Platte from Fort Kearney to the South Crossing has an average width of six or eight miles, closed in N. and S. by low bluffs from 200 to 300 feet high; while the river divides the level between pretty evenly, having itself a width of little less than a mile. Cedar-wood is sprinkled thinly over the bluffs, and now and then (but rarely), you may find a copse on the river-side, half impervious through the tangled masses of the wild vine; their grapes, though small and acid, are wholesome and refreshing, and an excellent remedy for either hunger or thirst.”
William Chandless, Chandless, W. (1857). A Visit to Salt Lake, p. 66
Placerville Becomes the Western Terminus
“On July 1 [1861], Placerville became the western terminus for the Pony Express.”
William E. Hill, The Pony Express: Yesterday and Today, p. 71
The Plains as an Obstacle
“If it is borne in mind that the objective of most of these exploring parties was the Pacific coast or the Rocky Mountains, it is easy to understand how the Plains themselves, with their aridity and their nomadic Indians, assumed at once the character of an obstacle blocking the path of the explorer intent on what lay beyond.”
Walter Prescott Webb, The Great Plains, p. 141
Creeks
“To the chronically thirsty emigrant the most important landmarks were the creeks. Hills and dusty plains, they took in their daily march and forgot if they could. But a creek was a different matter whose delights were only partly counterbalanced by the tragic fact that the barrel containing the luster tea had got loose during the crossing and heaven only knew how much was broken, and that the wall-eyed mule had stepped into the Dutch oven with disastrous results to everything concerned. Indeed fatal accidents often occurred from less contributing causes than that, and very frequently they happened at the crossings. No—they never forgot the creeks.”
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 29
Russell Admits the Firm is Weak
Russell’s “great faith” in winning the coveted mail contract was obviously from a more modest viewpoint than as the reigning lord of the Central. A few days after Godard Bailey broke confidence and shattered his world of financial sophistry, he [Russell] conceded to Waddell that a through mail line to the Pacific Coast was beyond the company’s means—”the whole line will require too much additional capital and we have it not.” Such a doleful admission of failure! So that flamboyant gesture, the great wager that sent scores of young lads racing across the prairies, had come to naught. What now was he thinking of the gloried Pony Express? How ironical that his pains to prove the Central Route feasible should benefit an arch rival!
Roy S. Bloss, Pony Express—The Great Gamble, 125
Little Blue River
“The main approach to the Great Platte River Road was along the Little Blue River, which had everything the emigrants needed—wood, water, and a valley going in the right direction. . . .
During the California Gold Rush this route was strictly primitive; there was no significant settlement or habitation of any kind until 1859. In that year events dictated the need for stations to serve freighters, stagecoach passengers, and Pony Express riders.”
Merrill J. Mattes, The Great Platte River Road, p. 150-151
Oregon Trail in 1839
“Each spring [after 1836] an increasing number of small emigrant wagon trains plodded westward from Independence, over the route which had become known as the Oregon Trail. As each train passed, the roughest stretches along the trail were improved; chutes cut into gulch banks, boulders rolled aside, wider openings slashed slashed through woods and thickets, and the roadway along steep hillsides leveled enough so that wagons would not tip over. By 1839, a very passable wagon route exrended from Independence to the present site of Portland.”
Ralph Moody, The Old Trails West, p. 260
Great American Desert
“These frequently mentioned fears of overland travel derived in large measure from the commonly accepted geographic concept of the so-called ‘GreatAmerican Desert,’ an area thought to extend westward from approximately the hundredth meridian to the Rocky Mountains. Until the beginning of the Civil War virtually all maps of these regions in school textbooks and governmental reports were labeled the ‘Great American Desert.’ . . . Prompted largely by reports of the western expeditions of Lieutenant Zebulon Pike and Major Stephen L. Long, the myth of the American desert persevered in some quarters until almost 1880, when it was finally replaced with another concept similarly overdrawn—the myth that the western plain was a garden, a veritable agrarian utopia.”
John D. Unruh, Jr., The Plains Across, p. 30
The Platte River
“The Platte, in trail days, was tremendously wide and shallow. It was of a temperament entirely different from the tossing flood of the Missouri, the deep and steady Kansas, of the beautiful, benevolent Blue. The Platte itself made excellent going but, beyond the unalterable fact that it was wet, seldom helped anyone else on his way. It furnished no shade. Its water was poor to taste and too dirty to wash in. Its bed was quicksand—not violent in action, but of an insidious sucking variety that tugged at the boots of those who dared to wade, pulled at the lunging horses and slowly dragged down any wagon unfortunate enough to stall in midcurrent. Its silvery, shallow waters flowed with deceptive swiftness along the hardly noticeable declivity of its course, spreading over an incredible breadth of territory. Some of the emigrants credited it with a width of two miles as it neared the Missouri. One, who saw it in extreme flood, believed it to be three. It existed for and with itself. That stage drivers said that it didn’t even overflow, to enrich the valley, but merely saturated its quicksand banks so that they rose with the current and retained the flood waters within its channel. Emigrants who saw its ‘mad, majestic course’ in flood said it looked higher than the road.
It could not be ferried for lack of depth. It was difficult to bridge beyond any means available to the emigrants, and it was dangerous to ford. Its shining waters carried such a burden of suspended earth that the disgusted travelers accused it of flowing bottom-side up, and a child, once swallowed in its swift and turgid flood, was lost to sight even though the water might be shallow enough for rescue.”
Irene Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, 83
Mile 1925: Edwards Creek Station
“Party and train decamped at 1 P.M., and continue northwardly up valley. After proceeding 11 miles [from Smith Creek] come to rapid stream of pure water [Edwards Creek], 2 feet wide, deep, flowing from the Se-day-e Range [Desatoya mountains]. On this we encamp. Willows fringe it, and grass is to be found higher up in the cañon. I call the stream after one of my assistants, Mr. Edward Jagiello, a Polish gentleman; his surname being difficult of pronunciation, I have preferred his Christian name as the appellation.… Opposite our camp, in the range of mountains lying to the west of us, is a deep pass, in which can be plainly seen an extensive bottom of grass, and a creek running down from it into the valley in which we have been traveling. This creek, and the valley [Edwards Creek Valley] into which it flows, I propose calling after Major Frederick Dodge, the Indian agent of the Pi-Utes and Washos, who was so courteous to my party, and myself, at Genoa.”
[Edward Jagiello—meteorological assistant, chronometer keeper on the Simpson Expedition. Petersen, A Route for the Overland Stage, p. 11]
Petersen, A Route for the Overland Stage, p. 135
Mormons as the Most Successful Pioneers
So there are more than theological reasons for remembering the Mormon pioneers. They were the most systematic, organized, disciplined, and successful pioneers in our history; and their advantage over the random individualists who preceded them and paralleled them and followed them up the valley of the Platte came directly from their “un-American” social and religious organization. Where Oregon emigrants and argonauts bound for the gold fields lost practically all their social cohesion en route, the Mormons moved like the Host of Israel they thought themselves. Far from loosening their social organization, the trail perfected it. As communities on the march they proved extraordinarily adaptable. When driven out of Nauvoo, they converted their fixed property, insofar as they could, into the instruments of mobility, especially livestock, and became for the time herders and shepherds, teamsters and frontiersmen, instead of artisans and townsmen and farmers. When their villages on wheels reached the valley of their destination, the Saints were able to revert at once, because they were town-and-temple builders and because they had their families with them, to the stable agrarian life in which most of them had grown up.
Wallace Stegner, The Gathering of Zion, p 6
Stagecoach Drivers
“Shortly after the Captain Reassumed Command of the Post, he and I were invited to the stage station, one day, for dinner. There was a long table with about ten on each side. They were the drivers of the stage line, about as rough and jolly a lot of men as I ever saw. They were talking about the Indian scare, and the probabilities of an Indian outbreak, and how General P. Edward Connor was coming through from Salt Lake to take charge. And the whole dinner was a loud and uproarious occasion. The profanity was pyrotechnic.”
Eugene Ware, Indian Wars of 1864>/em>, p. 397
Mile 1140: Green River
“The Green River is the Rio Verde of the Spaniards, who named it from its timbered shores and grassy islets: it is called by the Yuta Indians Piya Ogwe, or the Great Water; by the other tribes Sitskidiagi, or ‘Prairie-grouse River.’ It was nearly at its lowest when we saw it; the breadth was not more than 330 feet. In the flood-time it widens to 800 feet, and the depth increases from three to six. During the inundation season a ferry is necessary, and when transit is certain the owner sometimes nets $500 a week, which is not unfrequently squandered in a day. The banks are in places thirty feet high, and the bottom may average three miles from side to side. It is a swift-flowing stream, running as if it had no time to lose, and truly it has a long way to go. Its length, volume, and direction entitle it to the honor of being called the head water of the great Rio Colorado, or Colored River, a larger and more important stream than even the Columbia.”
Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 171
Mile 1835: Dry Creek Monuments Pony Express plaque
There are two monuments near the site of Dry Creek Station:
In addition, various authors state that there are station ruins and a gravestone nearby. I wasn’t able to find them on my scouting trip, but maybe it just takes a little more effort:
“The building ruins are overgrown by sagebrush. The grave of Applegate and Roiser is on the crest of the hill nearby.”
Hill, The Pony Express Trail: Yesterday and Today, p. 224.
Central Overland Trail marker
A few rock foundations, overgrown with sagebrush, mark the mound above the creek where the station was situated. A rock monument built by the Damele’s in 1960 bearing a brass commemorative plate, distributed as part of the Pony Express Centennial in 1960, sits near the station site. . . . Remains of the Overland Stage Station, a stone structure, sit just off the main gravel road before it turns to go up to the ranch.
Ever since 1879, when William Cody first published his life story, this childhood saga has been a favorite of the American public. The Wild West show reprised it over and over again, the high-speed Pony Express scene in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West inscribing an almost indelible bond between young America and the child Will Cody. The pony was featured in the show’s debut in 1883, and audiences from Omaha to New York, Sarasota to Paris, thrilled to the display every year thereafter until the show ended in 1916.
Louis S. Warren, Buffalo Bill's America, p. 5
Mile 1850: Simpson Park Station
“At Simpson’s Park [on May 20, 1860], James Alcott was killed, the station burned, and the stock driven off during the Pah Ute War. Two Indians were employed here to herd the stock. Another of the employees was Giovanni Brutisch.”
============
“When [William H.] Streeper reached Simpson’s Park he found the station burned, the stock gone, and the keeper, James Alcott dead. Hurrying on he met the east bound mule mail carrier who upon learning what had happened at Simpson’s Park, refused to go any further. Instead, he turned back with Streeper to Smith’s Creek.”
Settle and Settle, Saddles and Spurs, p. 142, 155
Wagon Road to California
“[S]ome [rumors] that there was a movement afoot [in California] for outright secession and forming a separate nation.There was no possibility of breaking the transcontinental railway deadlock, but in December, 1855, California’s Senator Weller took advantage of the rumors to secure a temporary alternative. He introduced a bill authorizing construction of two bridged and fortified wagon roads to California; one from Independence, Missouri, to San Francisco by way of South Pass, Salt Lake City, and the Humboldt River; the other from El Paso to Los Angeles over the Gila Trail.”
Ralph Moody, The Old Trails West, p. 95
Russell's Guilt
“[Godard Bailey, a clerk in the Interior Department, whose wife was related to Secretary of War Floyd] confessed [to Russell] that the bonds he had given Russell belonged to the Indian Trust Fund of the Department of the Interior of which he was merely a custodian . . . In plain, everyday terms, Bailey was an embezzler in the amount of $150,000. . . .
One who has followed Russell’s unique, colorful and sometimes brilliant business career from the beginning regrets to face the remainder of the story concerning the bond transactions. Next day Bailey . . . delivered $387,000 worth of Missouri, South Carolina, and Florida Trust Fund bonds to Russell . . . By this act Russell fully shared Bailey’s guilt. Whether he was morally guilty in the first instance might be debatable, but certainly not in the second. By his own frank, straightforward confession he convicts himself of receiving and using for his own purposes property he knew was stolen.”
Settle and Settle, Empire on Wheels, p. 98-100
Miles Wide and Inches Deep
“The Platte resembled no river any of the emigrants had ever seen before, contradicting their idea of a ‘normal’ stream. It was miles wide and inches deep; thanks to Indian-set prairie fires and grazing buffalo, no timber grew on its banks; and it seemed to flow almost higher than the surrounding country . . . ‘The river is a perfect curiosity, it is so different from any of our streams that it is hard to realize that a river should be running so near the top of the ground without any timber, and no bank at all.”
Merrill J. Mattes, The Great Platte River Road, p. 163
Wild Sage
“This hideous growth, which is to weary our eyes as far as central valleys of the Sierra Nevada, will require a few words of notice.
The artemisia, absinthe, or wild sage differs much from the panacea concerning which the Salernitan school rhymed: “Cur moriatur homo cui Salvia crescit in horto.” [“Why should a man die whilst sage grows in his garden?”] Yet it fills the air with a smell that caricatures the odor of the garden-plant, causing the traveler to look round in astonishment; and when used for cooking it taints the food with a taste between camphor and turpentine. It is of two kinds. The smaller or white species (A. filifolia) rarely grows higher than a foot. Its fetor is less rank, and at times of scarcity it forms tolerable fodder for animals. The Western men have made of it, as of the “red root,” a tea, which must be pronounced decidedly inferior to corn coffee. The Indians smoke it, but they are not particular about what they inhale: like that perverse p—n of Ludlow, who smoked the bell-ropes rather than not smoke at all, or like school-boys who break themselves in upon ratan, they use even the larger sage as well as a variety of other graveolent growths.
The second kind (A. tridentatd) is to the family of shrubs what the prairie cedar is to the trees a gnarled, crooked, rough-barked deformity. It has no pretensions to beauty except in earliest youth, and in the dewy hours when the breeze turns up its leaves that glitter like silver in the sun; and its constant presence in the worst and most desert tracts teaches one to regard it, like the mangrove in Asia and Africa, with aversion. In size it greatly varies ; in some places it is but little larger than the white species; near the Red Buttes its woody stem often attains the height of a man and the thickness of his waist. As many as fifty rings have been counted in one wood, which, according to the normal calculation, would bring its age up to half a century. After its first year, stock will eat it only when threatened with starvation. It has, however, its use; the traveler, despite its ugliness, hails the appearance of its stiff, wiry clumps at the evening halt: it is easily uprooted, and by virtue of its essential oil it makes a hot and lasting fire, and ashes over. According to Colonel Fremont, ‘it has a small fly accompanying it through every change of elevation and latitude.’ The same eminent authority also suggests that the respiration of air so highly impregnated with aromatic plants may partly account for the favorable effect of the climate upon consumption.”
Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 53-54
Langford Hastings
“This Hastings was a Fremont in miniature. He is an elusive soul, not much can be said about him with certainty. A young man on the make, he was at this moment engaged in a grandiose and still wholly theoretical real-estate enterprise on the golden shore, and he was the local agent of a bigger one managed from Washington which was a kind of gaudy bet on an insider’s guess that there would be war. But he also had speculations – or visions – more gaudily ambitious. He may have meditated another overlordship on the frontier of empire, like the one which Sutter had actually established at New Helvetia. He may have seen himself – he would only have been one of a good many- as a kind of Sam Houston, president of another Lone Star Republic. He may have intended to utilize the opportunities provided for a smart man with nerve – precisely as Fremont did. Rumors connected him.._ loosely – with the Mormons ,md, on grounds that are apparently more substantial, with one of the current revolutionary intrigues. Whatever was in his mind, he did not have quite enough stuff, Put him down as a smart young man who wrote a book – it is not a unique phenomenon in literature – without knowing what he was talking about. As the first head of the California Chamber of Commerce, the first Booster on the golden shore. He went from his home town, Mount Vernon, Ohio, to Oregon in 1842 with Elijah White’s famous caravan. He found no opening for his talents in that sober commonwealth and moved on to California. He liked what he saw, he perceived there were opportunities for smart men, so he wrote a prospectus and took it east in 1844. It was published at Cincinnati in 1845 and Hastings went back to California. Jim Clyman heard of him just when the Bowens and the Smiths and the Does were reading it. And while they were reading it Mr. Hastings formed a new design, one which shifted him from merely mischievous advertising to really dangerous activity. As, farther along, we shall see.”
Bernard De Voto, The Year of Decision, 1846, p. 45
Magraw's Philippic Against the Mormons
“When Buchanan requested his cabinet officers to gather correspondence justifying his policy toward Utah, the Secretary old State, old Lewis Cass, could locate only one document in his files, but it was a dandy. It came from W. M. F. Magraw, whose hatred of the Mormons had been heightened by loss of his mail contract to Hiram Kimball. At considerable length Magraw charged the Saints with crimes against the laws of the nation and humanity. According to his letter the Church had destroyed all non-Mormon courts in the Territory, thus leaving the Gentiles to the mercy of ‘a so-styled ecclesiastical organization, as despotic and damnable, as any ever to exist in any country.’ The result was violence and murder by ‘an organized band of bravos and assassins;’ ‘indiscriminate bloodshed, robbery and rapine’ at midnight or in full daylight.’ . . .
Like many anti-Mormons in these years, Magraw possessed an inenviable character. After the mail contract had been taken from him, he became superintendent of a crew constructing a federal road across the Plains, and while serving in that capacity he was guilty of shady practices, if not outright theft of government property.”
Norman F. Furniss, The Mormon Conflict, 1850-1859, p. 63-64, and p. 265 n. 5
Russell, Majors & Waddell's Complaint to Congress
“When in 1860 members of the firm Russell, Majors & Waddell came to meditate on their experience in the Mormon War, they were to consider themselves victims of their own generosity and the army’s eminent folly. In that year they presented a claim to the United States Congress for certain sums which they felt the Government in all fairness owed them. When they had been required by the War Department in 1857 to transport an unexpectedly large amount of supplies to Utah on very short notice, they had not demanded a new contract. Instead, they had accepted the promise of the Assistant Quartermaster at Fort Leavenworth that Congress would reward the contractors with a fair profit, or at the very least would protect them from financial loss. Subsequent events proved the worthlessness of this of this guarantee. Furthermore, the contractors complained that their trains could have reached Utah unharmed by the Mormons if the army had not interfered with their normally rapid rate of of travel by forcing them to move with elements of the expedition. Even worse, Van Vliet had ordered the trains in advance of the main army to halt at the Green River, where they were compelled to sit in idleness until the Mormons pounced on them.
What most enraged the managers of the company, however, was the fact that three of their trains had been destroyed almost within sight of the army and after two of its senior officers had received ample warning of impending trouble.”
Norman F. Furniss, The Mormon Conflict, 1850-1859, p. 110
First Settlement West of the Alleghenies
Two years later [1774], following hard upon the “Intolerable Acts” that undertook to punish an already rebellious Massachusetts, the policy thus formulated became law in the Quebec Act. . . . Ratifying the Proclamation of 1763, it decreed the persistence of Yesterday in an era already warm with Tomorrow’s sun. It committed the British Empire to the support of furs as opposed to land, it triply sealed the West to settlement and to speculation, and it legislated mercantilism as the reef on which colonial expansion would be shattered. Great Britain undertook to confine the colonies east of the mountains. That was precisely the policy that had forced Great Britain to erase the French Empire from the map of North America.
The Quebec Act was a decree that the motion of the stars should cease. In its final form it passed the Lords in June 1774. In that same month a Pennsylvanian named James Harrod at the head of thirty men went up the Kentucky River, crossed over toward the head of Salt River, and began to build the stockade and cabins of the first settlement west of the mountains. The ghost of La Salle need no longer revisit the glimpses of the moon: the people who were to fulfill his imperial dream had reached the Great Valley. All the way across the continent there would be an advance screen of long hunters and mountain men, but the wealth the Americans were to create would not come from furs. These were settlers, farmers, builders of communities. Throughout the war that now broke out they kept following where Harrod (and Henderson, Boone, and Logan) had led. The war splashed their wilderness stations with their blood but they kept coming, mostly to Kentucky, and at least twenty-five thousand of them were settled west of the mountains when it ended.
Bernard De Voto, The Course of Empire, p. 264
Wyoming Wind
“Wind—tyrant king of Wyoming. Wind-driven sand blasts the paint off buildings and gnaws out the softer layers of wood between the harder growth rings. For most houses on the exposed plains, a sheltering band of trees planted on the west side is as essential as a roof. Without the trees, you could lose the roof. Or your mind. The wind sculpts the trees into misshapen weathervanes, streaming east. Wyoming highway rest areas have wind shelters made of two high brick walls that join at a V, like a ship’s prow. The V points west as predictably as a compass points north. The Wyoming tourist board is in denial. Come tourists, enjoy a picnic in our lovely highway rest areas. Just bring along some bolts to fasten your sandwiches to the table. Fifty-pound sandbags weight the bottoms of the rest-area trash cans. Without them, the big steel cans bounce away like Styrofoam cups. Forlorn cows endure a lifetime of wind, joylessly converting the sparse grass of the plains into meat until slaughter brings relief. Legends tell of people driven to murderous insanity by the wind.”
Keith Heyer Meldahl, Hard Road West, p. 104
Council Bluffs—Omaha
“[E]arly in 1846, the advance guard of Mormon refugees from Illinois straggled down Indian Creek and Mosquito Creek into the Missouri River bottom below the old jesuit mission and knocked together the first log cabins, which they dubbed Millersville or Miller’s Hollow. By June several thousand of the Saints were camped here. Anxious to get beyond the reach of the unsympathetic Gentiles by circumventing the law against settling on Indian lands, Brigham Young made a deal with the Omaha to protect them against the Pawnee and promptly ferried his sizable flock across the Missouri. He erected a log and dugout village where his people died like flies during the following winter, but which, in 1847, became the base for his triumphant journey to the great Salt Lake. This so-called Winter Quarters, sacred in Mormon history, later became the townsite of Florence, now annexed to Omaha.
The Mormon occupation of Winter Quarters was illegal, for settlers were forbidden on Indian lands. Brigham Young was induced by Thomas H. Harvey, Superintendent of Indian Affairs. to evacuate his site . . . [T]he 1848 season was devoted to the evacuation of Winter Quarters. In May and June . . . Young and his apostles led nearly 2,500 people and nearly 1,000 wagons to the new Zion in Utah. The remainder, mainly the poor who had no outfits, were shuttled back across the Missouri and downstream once more to Miller’s Hollow, where they populated a town which they called Kanesville in honor of Tomas Leper Kane, a Gentile friend. . . .
In 153 the Mormons made their final official exodus from Iowa, and in one great spasm over 3,000 of the faithful migrated to Salt Lake, abandoning Kanesville. The empty houses and barns were soon appropriated by Gentiles who decided to linger before going to California; and from this time on the name Kanesville rapidly gave way to Council Bluffs, although it would remain a few more years.”
Merrill J. Mattes, The Great Platte River Road, p. 121-126
Trailside Graves
“A grave placed below on a small circular rising ground at a bend of Echo Canon struck me perhaps more: wistfully one reads these records of the dead; one may people the castles on the cliffs with aerial warriors from faery land, but human sympathies, and something more than idle curiosities, group around these lonely tombs. Here, for instance, is one but a week old, that tells us the emigrant train was just so far ahead of us. The name is Cadoret, a Frenchman, I suppose; my companion reads with interest the name of his countryman, and tells me it is a Breton name; we both wonder why he joined the Mormons, and came hither.
“Side by side is another grave: read that slab; “aged 76 :” were there no graves in Egypt, that the old man came out to perish in the wilderness? Was it zeal for a faith adopted late in life, or the intenser thirst for-the gold of California, that brought him to the mouth of Echo Canon, and to the side of the rapid Weber, and within a day’s walk of the valley in the mountains?
“Look at this one more: Bewick might have chosen it as the subject of a vignette; the slab of wood is neatly carved, and tells us a woman was buried here; her place of birth, her age, and whose wife she was, we can read; but the ground was soft and the grave shallow, and the wolves have torn up the body—perhaps before the first night’s dew settled on the tombstone, or the cheek of the mourner was dry. But we have stayed too long; the waggons are almost out of sight, and the Frenchman, satiated with the beauty of the red cliffs, is eager to drive on the straggling invalids of our herd.”
William Chandless, Chandless, W. (1857). A Visit to Salt Lake, p. 123-124
Brigham Young Express Company
“[A]s early as February [1856] meetings were held in the Salt Lake City Tabernacle for the purpose of organizing a company to transport mail and freight. In one meeting Brigham Young offered to take stock in the concern and equip three hundred miles of the line himself. Others became interested and Brigham Young Express Company was launched. One important item in the plan was to form settlements along the line where reserve animals could be kept, and weary travelers could rest if they wished to do so. To the Mormons these stations would have been of incalculable benefit, for the tide of immigration to Salt Lake Valley was running high at that time. Plans for all these things were pushed with vigor until the severe winter of 1856 compelled a halt to the work. It was begun again in 1857 but was terminated by the forwarding of United States troops to Utah.”
Settle and Settle, Empire on Wheels, p. 72
Mile 438: Cottonwood Springs Station
“Usually known as Cottonwood Springs, which by 1863 had a very favorable reputation as a ‘home station,’ and was also a very good camping place for freighters, because of the abundance of cedar.-Ibid., p. 208. This ‘Cottonwood Station is not to be confused with the “Cottonwood Station” in Washington county, Kansas. (See Footnote 803.)”
George Root, "Pike's Peak Express Companies," Part III, Kansas Historical Quarterly, Vol. 13, No. 8 (1944) p. 522, note 307
Finest Natural Wagon Roads
“Even though the rivers of the high plains did not provide the westering Americans with navigable waterways, the valleys of two of these rivers did provide the world’s finest natural wagon roads. Along a great section of the valley of the Arkansas River ran the Santa Fe Trail, and a branch that led to Denver, Colorado. Along the Platte ran the Overland Trail, also called the Oregon Trail, the California Trail, and the Mormon Trail.”
Henry Pickering Walker, The Wagonmasters (1966), p. 18
Pony Express and the St. Joe Road
“The main emigrant road meandered west about 150 miles, back and forth across present U.S. 36 from St. Joseph to Marysville, Kansas (which route is not to be confused with the later Pony Express route, joining the Fort Leavenworth Road, further south).”
Merrill J. Mattes, The Great Platte River Road, p. 142-143
Post Should Support Itself
The “restrictionists,” who included Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton as well as postmasters, who were paid from commissions on mail volume, believed, as Franklin had, that the post should support itself and even, like Britain’s, turn a profit for the government. From their perspective, the system should remain concentrated along the cost-effective East Coast, where both the population and profitable business and commercial correspondence were centered. The restrictionists also insisted that newspapers that paid no postage could hardly be considered legitimate mail worth delivering. Taking the opposing view, Rush, Washington, and their fellow “antirestrictionists” argued that the post was no mere moneymaker for the Treasury but what Rush described as “the true non-electric wire of government,” which should circulate papers for free whether the service paid for itself or not—a startling notion indeed.
In the end, the act embraced the Platonic ideal of a post that if not profitable should at least be self-supporting-a fateful decision that marked it as the rare federal agency that was expected to sustain itself on its revenue. . . .
The legislators came up with a radical Robin Hood-style scheme to finance their ambitious new post. Revenue from populous areas, where the volume of lucrative letters was highest and service the most cost-effective, would cover the expense of supplying newspapers throughout the whole country, including the least profitable rural regions. Mailing a single-page letter would cost between six and twenty-five cents, depending on the distance traveled, but a big broadsheet could travel for one hundred miles for a mere penny, and any distance for a penny and a half. (Two years later, “periodicals,” such as pamphlets and magazines, were also admitted to the mail, for slightly higher postage.) Most letters were sent by businessmen along the settled northeastern corridor, so Americans in the rustic South and on the expanding western frontier particularly benefited from this policy.
Winifred Gallagher, How the Post Office Created America, p. 38-39
Mormon Mail and YX Express
“Another significant prelude to hostilities concerned the carrying of the mails between Utah and the States, a vital matter to a people situated far from the frontier. . . . The Mormons had been displeased with the operation of the [lowest bidder] system, for the mails had often arrived late or had even been lost during the journey. Efficiency had not improved after 1854, when W. M F. Magraw received the new four-year contract, and so unsatisfactory was his work that the Government after two years cancelled his contract.
This event gave the Mormons a chance to remedy the situation: if they could obtain the new contract, they might assure them selves of better service. . . . Hiram Kimball submitted a bid, ostensibly on behalf of himself alone; but when the Church learned that Kimball’s estimate . . . had won governmental approval, it proceeded enthusiastically to support the new project. . . .
Brigham Young’s ambitions, however, had by now outgrown such a modest venture. He dreamed instead of a great, Church-controlled company carrying not only the mail but all goods between Utah and the States. . . .[H]e took over Kimball’s contract and soon had created the ‘Brigham Young Express and Carrying Company’ to accomplish his purposes.
With some of the expenses defrayed by Church funds and the rest borne by private subscription, the great undertaking began. . . .Then, before the ‘Y. X. Carrying Company,’ as it was called, could start its operations, Hiram Kimball received a letter from the second assistant Postmaster in Washington, dated June 10, 1857, anouncing the cancellation of his contract. The great transportation scheme had crashed to the ground.
Norman F. Furniss, The Mormon Conflict, 1850-1859, p. 51-52
Mile 582: Pole Creek Station No. 2
“Site unidentified, vicinity of Lodgepole, Nebraska. The route was along Lodgepole Creek, future route of the Union Pacific Railroad into Cheyenne.”
[N.B. This location is not on the Pony Express Bikepacking Route. To get here, you’d have to turn west on Road 10 at Mile 566, then north on Road 149 (which becomes Highway 17 F). The marker is located 1 mile south of Lodgepole on Highway 17F between Lodgepole and I-80. According to one source, “Pole Creek No. 2 Station also known as the “Texas” Pony Express Station was not one of the original station sites. This station was put into service in July 1861 when a new mail contract called for twice a week Pony Express and a near daily stagecoach going both east and west. The original stations, were too far apart for the use of a stagecoach and thus the ‘Hughes Ranch’ in the Chappell area and ‘Texas’ sites were added.”]
Merrill J. Mattes, The Great Platte River Road, p. 471
Mile 917: Fort Caspar
“Considered historically, the year 1858 is the beginning of the end of the picturesque extravaganza at the [North Platte] river crossing. First a prosaic military encampment, known as Mormon Ferry Post, appears in the picture. Then, in the winter of 1858-59, a bridge presents itself apologetically for our consideration. . . .
The first name, Mormon Ferry Post, was supplanted naturally enough by Platte Bridge Station; but its final appellation, Fort Caspar, was bestowed after the heroic death of Lieutenant Caspar Collins, and is the one which proudly comes down through history.”
[N.B. The Fort Caspar site is just to the south of the Pony Express Bikepacking Route and Mile 917]
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 198
Pony Express Map
“W. R. Hoonell of Kansas City constructed probably the best ‘Map of the Pony Express Route,’ and also wrote a short account which is published in The Kansas Historical Quarterly, v. V, pp. 68-71.”
George Root, "Pike's Peak Express Companies," Part IV, Kansas Historical Quarterly, Vol. 14, No. 1 (1944) p. 54, n. 360
Mile 937: Horse/Greasewood/Sage Creek
Horse/Greasewood/Sage Creek was a Pony Express and stagecoach stop. This is also where the Martin handcart company, struggling west through early blizzards, first met rescue wagons from Salt Lake City.
Today William B. Waddell, William H. Russell, and Alexander Majors are best known, not for their great fleets of lumbering prairie schooners drawn by thousands of oxen across the vast Great Plains to military posts in New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah, or for the swift Concord stage coaches plying between the Missouri river and Denver, Salt Lake City, and the West Coast, but for having conceived, organized, financed, and operated the incredible Pony Express. Waddell and Majors did not want it, and Russell himself apologized to them for having inaugurated it. It cost Russell, Majors & Waddell at least $500,000, ran only about 18 months and failed to achieve the purpose for which it was organized. And yet despite these somber facts the thrilling story of that fabulous organization long ago became one of the most treasured items in American folklore. Almost every public, college, and university library has at least one book on it, and it is included in the approved reading lists for public schools. More than a dozenvolumes devoted exclusively to it have been issued since the first one appeared in 1908. Two of these were released late in 1959, and others have appeared in 1960. In addition it has appeared in pamphlet form, as chapters in books on other subjects, and in magazines and newspapers hundreds of times. As the story is told and retold by historians and writers public interest in it continues to mount. . . .
The 2,000-mile, nonstop relay line of men and horses founded and operated by Russell, Majors & Waddell was unique in the history of communication. In detail of organization, method and efficiency of operation, and speed of transmission it had no pred-ecessor and no successor. Not even the famed messenger service inaugurated by Genghis Khan is to be compared with it.
Red Buttes Crossing/Bessemer Bend (south of Casper) is one of the places where travelers forded the North Platte River— then 300 yards wide—for the last time and started the push toward the Sweetwater River. This crossing was used mostly in the early years of the emigration. After 1847, ferries were available between Casper and Glenrock (Deer Creek). The Red Buttes Pony Express station and an Overland Stage station also were located in this vicinity. Wayside exhibits at this BLM site tell the story. While visiting the crossing, look toward the east to see the Red Buttes, the noted emigrant-era landmark that gave the crossing its name.
[NB. This station os near Bessemer Bend, off hwy 220. The XP Bikepacking Route sticks to Emigrnt Trail/Poison Spider road a few miles to the west.]
Mile 1304: East Canyon/Dixie Hollow/Dixie Creek/Bauchmanns/ Snyder's Mill Station
“Ten and one-half miles from Weber via Bachelors Canyon [blocked by private land] or about 13 and one-half miles from Weber via Henefer.
“East Canyon Station, currently inundated by the East Canyon Reservoir, is located in Section 10. Often referred to as Snyder’s Mill this error may be derived from information gleaned from Captain Albert Tracy’s Journal. It was at Snyder’s house, in Section 19, along the road from Parley’s Canyon that Tracy stayed the night. Further confusion occurs since Snyder’s Settlement (Snyderville) and Snyder’s Sawmill are shown as located in Section 31, about 3 miles south of Snyder’s House. Samuel Snyder had settled at this location in 1853.
“Following its use as a mail station, travelers and sheepherders utilized the area and the neglected buildings. A sheep corral and grave mark the site. . . .
“Facing down East Canyon, the Mormons built a fortification about four and one half miles south of East Canyon Station. The structure was built for a holding action against Johnston’s Army. A site just to the north of here has been called Bauchmanns, but evidently this site is also in error. The pioneers traveled south of Bauchmanns about two and one half miles and turned northwest up Camp Creek or what is now called Little Emigration Canyon. By the time of the Express, a shorter road had been constructed up Monument Creek, or as it is now called, Dutch Hollow. Traces of this road are still visible on the ground.”
[Note: The road up Monument Creek is now Highway 65. The XP Bikepacking Trail follows the Emigrant Trail to Mormon Flat, then up Little Emigrant Canyon. The turnoff is just after the station.]
“’From 1812 to 1848 travel up the Platte was only minimal to moderate, historian Merrill J. Mattes observed, ‘with a grand total of around 5,000 to Salt Lake, 10,000 to Oregon, and 2,000 to California.’ Between 1849 and 1852, about 120,000 people—mostly men—would flock to the gold fields over the California Trail, while some 35,000 more men, women, and children would cross South Pass on their way to Oregon or the Great Basin.”
Will Bagley, South Pass: Gateway to a Continent, Location 2167 [Kindle Edition]
Black's Fork
“Emerging from the river plain we entered upon another mauvaise terre, with knobs and elevations of clay and green gault, striped and banded with lines of stone and pebbles: it was a barren, desolate spot, the divide between the Green River and its western influent, the shallow and somewhat sluggish Black’s Fork. The name is derived from an old trader: it is called by the Snakes Ongo Ogwe Pa, or ‘Pine-tree Stream;’ it rises in the Bear-River Mountains, drains the swamps and lakelets on the way, and bifurcates in its upper bed, forming two principal branches, Ham’s Fork and Muddy Fork.”
Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 174
Little Blue Valley
“For years Marysville, Kansas, marked the end of the truly settled country; but the Little Blue Valley, so, charming and so fertile, sheltered a sort of border zone of ranches lying beyond the pale of civilization. It began to be inhabited in the fifties and became more populous as the staging industry formed a life line to hold it to Missouri, but it paid a dreadful price in ‘64 when the Indians rose against the white settlers in one terrific onslaught, hoping to drive them out forever.”
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner,p. 68
Branding Steer
“Then, after applying a solution of salt and water, he was left to recover as best he could. The brand would remain in evidence more than a year unless the steer was captured by cattle thieves, who possessed a secret for growing the hair again in six months. When the branding was completed, each man was given twelve steers to break to yoke, and it was three long weeks before we were in shape to proceed on our long Western tramp.”
Charles E. Young, Dangers of the Trail, p.27
Doby Town in 1863
“‘There were no streets, and people built their houses wherever preference or caprice dictated. The townspeople were mostly frontiersmen who settled there for the sole purpose of . . . preying upon those who travelled the Oregon Trail. The population consisted chiefly of men; about two dozen permanent inhabitants, mostly gamblers and saloon-keepers, some loafers . . . and a few women of well-known reputation.
When immigrants put their herds out to graze these fellows would sneak them away at night and run them off a few miles around a bend in the river, reporting that the Indians had taken them. . . . In a conveniently short time a suitable reward was offered, the vagrant would go out and bring in the stock, deliver it to the owner, and get from the latter a liberal reward in cash and gratitude.'”
Merrill J. Mattes, The Great Platte River Road, p. 220-221
Army Subcontracts Freighting
Probably at the suggestion of Q. M. Capt. L. C. Easton of Fort Leavenworth, the experiment of contract freighting of military supplies was made in 1848. On May 17 he signed a contract with James Brown of Pettis county, Missouri, for the transportation of 200,000 pounds of government stores to Santa Fe, N. M., for 11% cents per pound. So anxious was the government to try the experiment that Quartermaster Easton sold him the wagons in which to haul the goods on credit.The experiment was as closely watched by the civilian freighters of western Missouri as it was by the quartermaster at Fort Leavenworth and War Department officials in Washington. When Brown returned in the fall after a highly successful, uneventful trip a ripple of excitement ran through freighting circles. All of them hoped that a new source of comfortable profit had been uncovered.
Encouraged by Brown’s successful venture, the authorities in Washington instructed the quartermaster at Fort Leavenworth to continue the experiment in 1849, probably calling for bids. Having become convinced good money was to be made in freighting government supplies to military posts in the West and Southwest, Russell and James Brown formed a partnership that year, called Brown & Russell, and contracted to deliver an unspecified amount of stores in Santa Fe for $9.88 per 100 pounds. Their surety bond of $150,000 was signed by John S. Jones, William B. Waddell, Robert B. Bradford, and others. The firm of Bullard & Russell, again in partnership with E. C. McCarty in 1849 sent a train loaded with merchant’s goods to the same destination. Both undertakings were completely successful.
” . . . our fires henceforth during several weeks were entirely of buffalo-chips, which are thickly strewn over any pasture on which you care to camp, and in a quarter of an hour with an old coffee-sack one could gather up enough for a cooking; when dry they make admirable fuel, indeed, for baking, preferable to wood, as they keep up a more even heat. At first the idea and the smell were a little unpleasant, but very soon one was only too glad to put a slice of buffalo-steak to broil on the coals, and it tasted none the worse for a sprinkling of the ashes—rather hard though upon the buffalo, that he should supply the very fuel for himself to be cooked upon.”
William Chandless, Chandless, W. (1857). A Visit to Salt Lake, p. 65
Black Population in the West
Exactly how many blacks traversed the continent is unclear, but they were only a tiny fraction of the entire emigration. In 1860, California’s population was 379,994, of which 200,335 traveled overland. There is no record revealing how many of the mere 4,086 blacks enumerated there made the journey by land or sea. One hundred twenty-eight blacks lived in Oregon, thirty-nine in Washington, and fifty-nine in Utah.
Todd Guenther, “‘Could These Bones Be From a Negro?’” Overland Journal 19, no. 2 (Summer 2001), 46
Ethics in Writing About American Indians
Different schools of thought like the Germ theory and Turner thesis have encouraged historians to ignore the original inhabitants of the entire western hemisphere. Why did this happen, if a scholar’s professional responsibility is to be objective in researching historical topics? These approaches described the “white experience,” as if Indians did not exist. To write a history of the Anglo- American experience is not wrong, but to claim that it represents the entire history of the American experience is a gross mistake.
Donald L. Fixico, "Ethics and Responsibilities in Writing American Indian History," American Indian Quarterly , Winter, 1996, Vol. 20, No. 1, Special Issue: Writing about (Writing about) American Indians (Winter, 1996), p. 30
Mountain Men Entrepreneurs
“The success of the overland emigrations was due in large measure to their timely coincidence with the decline of the Rocky Mountain fur trade. Many seasoned western mountaineers, no longer needed for such outmoded ventures as the rendezvous system, were attracted by the related activity of furnishing supportive services to greenhorn overland travelers. Throughout the 1840s and 1850s emigrants benefitted immensely from trading posts adjacent to the trails and from the geographic knowledge and trail savvy of mountain men. . . .[M]ost of the canny entrpreneurs who anticipated the profit potential in catering to the many needs of overland travelers were former mountaineers.”
John D. Unruh, Jr., The Plains Across, p. 244
Extortionated
“A middle-aged woman from Dover was a curious free-spoken person for a ‘saint,’ and almost put our men to the blush; for a very trifling gratuity she would have (and perhaps did) acted as the procuress of the girls of her people. On common-place subjects she talked sensibly; told me from having delayed so long at Atchison they were already short of provisions, and got only one pound of bacon a week each (perhaps including all the children); complained bitterly that the settler would not sell her any butter, he would keep it all for the ‘captain’s lady’ (the captain of the United States’ troops)—that in a free country !—besides, he had ‘extortionated’ her for other trifles; but—and this she told with immense gusto—she had sold his wife some worsted stockings, and put just as much extra on the price of them.”
William Chandless, Chandless, W. (1857). A Visit to Salt Lake, p. 38-39
Fugitive Slave Law in California
Just after the State was admitted into the Union, a fugitive slave law was passed authorizing the extradition of slaves brought into the State voluntarily by their masters. Also, the legislature of 1852 enacted a law against negroes (which the legislatures of 1853, 1854, and 1855 re-enacted), the intention being to “legalize the kidnapping of free negroes, as well as the arrest of fugitives.” The Supreme Court in California in 1852 said that slavery was still a legal institution, i. e., that slaves brought to California before 1849 were still slaves when California was admitted to the Union. (In this “Andy Slave Case” decision of 1852, Judge Murray enunciated the same doctrine relating to the status of an African that Chief Justice Taney afterwards set forth In the Dred Scott decision.) But in 1859, a case was decided reversing the former decision, and stating that only travelers or temporary visitors could lawfully hold slaves in California. Laws and judicial decisions, however, were not sufficient to prevent either the introduction or continuance of the institution ; and they did not by any means abate the aggressive sentiment of the active and able pro-slavery minority in California, which dominated the politics of the State for the first decade of its existence, and which preached the delusive doctrine of Popular Sovereignty whenever opportunity offered.
(In the Charleston Democratic Convention in April, 1860, California and Oregon were the only free States that voted for the majority report (on the platform) in which this doctrine was enunciated: "Congress has no power to abolish slavery In the Territories. . . . The Territorial Legislature has no power to abolish slavery in any Territory, nor to prohibit the introduction of slaves therein, nor any power to exclude slavery therefrom, nor any power to destroy or impair the right of property In slaves by any legislation whatever.)
Imogene Spaulding, "The Attitude of California to the Civil War," Annual Publication of the Historical Society of Southern California , 1912-1913, Vol. 9, No. 1/2 (1912-1913), pp. 106 and notes 2, 3
The Big Blue
“It was at the Big Blue, about ten days out of St. Joe, that the emigrants felt the first flick of the Elephant’s tail. Here was a chance to repair and to reorganize, but here also, where the St. Joe and Fort Leavenworth caravans converged, rode three sinister Horsemen—death by epidemic, death by drowning, and violence at the hands of the Pawnee. At low water the Blue was fordable, but in the emigrant season it was more often on the rampage, and the blockaded trains accumulated into a sizable city of tents and wagons, ‘like the descent of locusts in Egypt,’ without a trace of sanitation. Cholers and other ailments such as measles and smallpox felled the emigrants like a giant scythe, and both banks of the Blue became a cemetary. Uncounted deaths also resulted accidental drownings; but the Pawnee menace at this point was over-advertised.”
Merrill J. Mattes, The Great Platte River Road, p. 147
Pony Express Rider's Tales
Unverifiable boasts are rampant in the oral tales—it seems like no rider ever spoke about his experience without claiming he rode the longest stretch or did it in the quickest time. (Length and endurance seem to be favored over speed as achievements.) But there’s something about the Pony that pushed self-stroking into overdrive.
Jim DeFelice, West Like Lightning, p. 49-50, 255
Disease and Death
“While the journey up the Platte River Road may have been a joy and tonic for some, far too often it was an ordeal in which, after running the gauntlet of hardships, there arose the sinister threat of disease and death. . . . Again assuming a grand total migration of 350,000 this averages one death for every seventeen persons who started. . . .
the normal precaution was to take along a medicine chest with an assortment of home remedies for everything from baldness to the bubonic plague. Elizabeth Greer’s inventory included ‘a box of physicing pills, a box of castor oil, a quart of best rum, and a vial of peppermint essence.’ The latter ingredient, combined with a glass of brandy, would, according to John King, cure most ills. Catherine Haun’s portable apothecary shop included quinine for malaria, hartshorn for snakebite, citric acid for scurvy and blueness, and opium and whisky for almost everything else. Laudanum, morphine, calomel, and tincture of camphor were other potent drugs frequently resorted to. Among name brands mentioned are Ayer’s Pain Killer, Dover’s Powders, and Jayne’s Caminative Balsam.”
Merrill J. Mattes, The Great Platte River Road, p. 81
Beecher's Bible
” . . . stuffed into my bag as many of the former as I could, including some simple medicines, a “Deane and Adams [revolver],” and a Bible—not a ‘Beecher’s Bible’ (i. e. Sharp’s rifle), as the collocation might suggest . . .”
William Chandless, Chandless, W. (1857). A Visit to Salt Lake, p. 7
Mile 1312: Big Mountain
“Big Mountain lies eighteen miles from the city. The top is a narrow crest, suddenly forming an acute based upon an obtuse angle. From that eyrie, 8000 feet above sea level, the weary pilgrim first sights his shrine, the object of his long wanderings, hardships, and perils, the Happy Valley of the Great Salt Lake. The western horizon, when visible, is bounded by a broken wall of light blue mountain, the Oquirrh, whose northernmost bluff buttresses the southern end of the lake, and whose eastern flank sinks in steps and terraces into a river basin, yellow with the sunlit golden corn, and somewhat pink with its carpeting of heath-like moss.”
Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 190-191
Mile 753: Fort Laramie Milestone
“Fort Laramie marked the end of the High Plains, the beginning of the long upgrade haul to the Rocky Mountains. It was the end of the line for the sick, the tired, the downhearted. Tempers, frayed by weeks of mud, dust, sunglare, and Indian alarms, snapped. . . .
Fort Laramie was about an even one-third of the 2,000 mile distance from St. Joe to Sacramento—665 miles according to J.H.Clark, and during the 37 days it took him to travel this he tabulated also 248 graves and 35 abandoned wagons. . . .
While California gold was (hopefully) at the end of the continental rainbow, it could only be reached step by painful step, and Fort Laramie was the most important mile-stone to date. If you made it to Fort Laramie you were already entitled to spit in the Elephant’s eye; to reach Laramie was like crossing the equator on an ocean voyage. Accordingly, you approached the fabled spot with some ceremony.”
Merrill J. Mattes, The Great Platte River Road, p. 492, 502, 504
A freight train consisting of eight wagons loaded with hardware for Denver, was attacked Sunday morning, August 7, 1864, by a party of Cheyenne and Arapahoe Indians. Five men were killed instantly, a sixth was mortally wounded, and the wagons were burned. (Brown, 2007) The bodies and smoking wagons were found by two young couples out for a Sunday morning ride from Thirty-Two Mile Creek station and on Monday morning Overland Stage Line employees from the station arrived. The wounded teamster was able to give a few details of the attack before he died. The men were buried beside the trails 140 yards south of the OCTA marker. This is the only known burial site of white men who met death in Adams County due to hostile Indian activity. The Nova-Color OCTA marker was installed in 1996 on the south side of the road at the edge of a broad and deep ditch. Franzwa’s Maps of the Oregon Trail shows ruts southeast of the markers, but with the installation of a center pivot irrigation system several years ago, they are no longer visible. The next image shows the flat marker indicating the burial site.
The spot where Woodruff’s carriage paused is now marked by Mahonri Young’s fine monument, erected in the centennial year;the highest achievement of Mormon art commemorates the high moment of the Mormon hegira. It is popularly called the “This is the Place” monument, because Brother Brigham is supposed to have said, after remaining a moment lost in a vision, “It is enough. This is the right place, drive on.” It is a great statement, one that gathers up in a phrase history and hope and fulfillment, and it is now an ineradicable part of the Mormon myth. But as Dale Morgani pointed out, the phrase was not part of the original record. It does not seem to have been coined until the fiftieth anniversary of the Church, thirty-three years after the Mormon leader was brought to the brink of the valley. Woodruff’s journal, written at the time of the arrival, reports that Brigham “expressed his full satisfaction in the appearance of the valley as a resting-place for the Saints, and was amply repaid for his journey”; and Brigham’s own journal for that day says only that they had to cross Emigration Creek eighteen times before emerging from the canyon and joining the main camp at 2:00 P.M.
Wallace Stegner, The Gathering of Zion, p 168
Pony Express Stations
From St. Joseph to Fort Kearny, Fort Bridger to Rush Valley, and from Carson City to Sacramento, most of the stations were located in fairly good country and were reasonably comfortable. All others were situated in deserts where conditions were unbelievably harsh and difficult. Some of these were constructed of adobe bricks in the middle of endless, dreary wastes, and others of loose stones in isolated, treeless canyons and unnamed hills. Still others were mere holes dug in the hillside with crude additions in front.
All of them, except those most favorably located, had dirt floors; window glass was unknown; the beds were pole bunks built against the walls, and the furniture consisted of boxes, benches, or anything else the ingenuity of the occupants could contrive. Most of them had water nearby, such as it was, and the stable for horses was only a few feet distant from the quarters of the men.
The food provided the stations was not of a quality designed to tickle the palate of an epicurean. It consisted of cured meats, mostly bacon, dried fruits, beans, bread baked upon the spot, molasses, pickles, corn meal when it could be had, and coffee. Fresh meat was a rarity, even in regions where wild animals were numerous, because nobody had time to hunt. Sometimes the wagon trains, which appeared about once a month with supplies, brought along a few delicacies, but these were never plentiful. Those trains also hauled hay and grain for the horses, and space, was always at a premium. Nobody thought of stinting them, no matter what the cost might be, or how short rations for the men were.
Settle and /Settle, Saddles and Spurs, 116-117
Traffic on the Platte River Route
“Intermingled with the westering cavalcade of the Great Migration was the shuttle-weave of stagecoaches, freighting trains, mail wagons, fur trade caravans. U.S. Army troops, supply trains, and dispatch riders. There were also occasionally large numbers of cattle and sheep, herded westward to Utah or California markets, and sometimes a horse herd from California to Missouri.
As to emigrant outfits, there were some strange contraptions among the orthodox covered wagons and infrequent packers. Not uncommon on the north side, or Council Bluffs Road, were the Mormon handcart expeditions. . . . In contrast . . . some affluent emigrants [were noted] traveling up the California Road in horse-drawn carriages . . . Perhaps the strangest spectacle in all the procession was the funeral cortege, led by William Keil, that went all the way from Missouri to Oregon with a casket in which were embalmed the mortal remains of his son Willie.”
Merrill J. Mattes, The Great Platte River Road, p. 43-44
Stegner's Stance on Mormonism
Since the stance from which I have written will surely strike some as being just as biased as anything in the library of Mormonism and anti-Mormonism, I may as well define it. I write as a non-Mormon but not a Mormon-hater. Except as it affected the actions of the people I write of, I do not deal with the Mormon faith: I do not believe it, but I do not quarrel with it either. For the Church organization, historically and in modern times, I have a high respect. Of the hierarchy, historically and in modern times, I am somewhat suspicious, in the way I am suspicious of any very large and very powerful commercial and industrial corporation. For the everyday virtues of the Mormons as a people I have a warm admiration, and hundreds of individual Mormons have been my good friends for forty years. If I have a home town, a place where a part of my heart is, it is Salt Lake City, and the part of western history that seems most personal and real to me is Mormon history. Nevertheless, I write as an outsider, and I make no attempt to whitewash the Mormon tribal crimes, which were as grievous as their wrongs.
Wallace Stegner, The Gathering of Zion, p 311-12
Growth of California
California’s white population climbed from about 2,00 in 1848 to 100,000 by 1858. The tiny village of San Francisco, which had 200 residents in 18461 became the official port of entry, and by 1852 it was a boomtown of 36,000.
Winifred Gallagher, How the Post Office Created America, p. 120
Mormon Trail through the Wasach
“The Mormons were the first after the Donner party to take the [Hastings] cutoff route from Fort Bridger, but their experiences were quite different. Beyond the Weber River Canyon they found that the panicked Donner party had hacked its way blindly. Camp was pitched, and a thorough survey of the mountains made, in which the route that is now Highway 30S was discovered. The entire battalion set to work, and within less than a week had opened a clear passage to Salt Lake.”
Ralph Moody, The Old Trails West, p. 286
Buffalo
“The morning brought with it no joy. We had arrived at the westernmost limit of the ‘gigantic Leicestershire’ to which buffalo at this season extend, and could hope to see no trace of them between Cotton-wood Station and the Pacific. I can not, therefore, speak ex cathedra concerning this, the noblest ‘venerie'” of the West: almost every one who has crossed the prairies, except myself, can. Captain Stansbury will enlighten the sportsman upon the approved method of bryttling the beasts, and elucidate the mysteries of the ‘game-beef,’ marrow-bone and depuis, tongue and tender-loin, bass and hump, hump-rib and liver, which latter, by-the-by, is not unfrequently eaten raw, with a sprinkling of gall (‘Prairie bitters’ made of a pint of water and a quarter of a gill of buffalo gall are considered an elixir vita by old voyageurs), by the white hunter emulating his wild rival, as does the European in Abyssinia.”
Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 50
Basin and Range
“The termination Farallon Plate subduction probably made the Basin and Range.
As North America closed like a sliding trapdoor over the Farallon plate, the plate did not go quietly into the mantle night. It raged and raged, first searing vast tracts of the West with fiery volcanic clouds and then stretching the crust to make the Basin and Range. The plate’s death throes began about 43 million years ago, as it started to peel away fromthe base of the North American Plate to end the flat subduction episode that hoisted the Foreland Ranges. Restoring itself to normal subduction mode, the Farallon Plate began once again to crank out magma. The result was a maelstrom of volcanism that would rival even that of the later calderas of the Snake River Plain-to-Yellowstone tract. Between 43 and 21 million years ago, calderas opened fire all across what would become the Basin and Range. Incandescent clouds of volcanic ash incinerated the landscape—and every living thing on it—time and again before settling, crackling hot, to weld into layers of volcanic tuff. You can see these tuff layers today stacked up hundreds of feet thick throughout the ranges of the Basin and Range, painting the mountainsides with lovely bands of pink, ochre, and gold.”
Keith Heyer Meldahl, Hard Road West, p. 201
Cost of Wagons for the Mormon Conflict
Wagons, oxen, and equipment were bought wherever they could be found, but prices were hiked 25% or more. When the job was done they had about 1,100 wagons, 15,000 oxen, and some 1,400 new employees. The investment for this undertaking was somewhere near $750,000.00.
Settle and Settle, "Napoleon of the West," Annals of Wyoming Vol. 32, No.1, April 1960, p. 19
1923 Pony Express Celebration Plans
On the first day the sixty riders for the new Pony Express will start on their journey to California, following as nearly as possible the original route; on successive days in the order of their handicaps will go a railroad train, tractors, automobiles and airships, all timed to arrive in San Francisco on Admission Day, September 9th.
Louise Platt Hauck, "The Pony Express Celebration," the Missouri Historical Review, Vol. 27, no. 4 July 1923, p. 435
Cholera in 1835
At Bellevue there was an inexplicable delay in getting the train ready. Then there was a further delay and when the impatient watchers on the Green finally met their companions they learned that there had come close to being no caravan at all this year. For while Fontenelle’s men lingered at Bellevue they began to fall sick with Asiatic cholera.
This was the cholera’s third year in the United States. And this, the first outbreak of cholera in North America, was part of the pandemic which began, so far as modern scholarship knows, in India in 1816. It was mankind’s worst epidemic since the Parable of the Samaritan (7835) 219 Black Death; it may have been worse than the Black Death. It burned slowly in native India for seven years but reached the Ganges delta in 1826. In three more years it came to the Caspian Sea and by 1830 it was flaming across Russia and the Near East. The next year it was at Mecca, whence the pilgrims, dying by the thousand, carried it into the southern Mohammedan lands. ‘The years 1831 and 1832 were terrible years throughout Europe. From the Caspian Sea the pestilence crossed by boat and caravan to the Black Sea and ascended the Danube into southern and central Europe . . . traveled along roads to the headwaters of the streams of the Baltic drainage area … it accompanied all human travel.’ 1 England first felt it in the summer of 1831 and the next year it was all over the British Isles.
Wretched Irishmen packed in the holds of emigrant ships brought it to Canada early in 1832. They and their hosts died like flies. It traveled up the St. Lawrence and came to the United States down Lake Champlain and by canal boat to Albany. From Albany it traveled down the Hudson to New York, reaching the city in a dead heat with other cases that came directly across the Atlantic. Meanwhile it traveled westward by the Ohio River and the Erie Canal. (We noted that in the fall of 1832 Maximilian stopped at New Harmony in fear of cholera and perhaps acquired a light case.) It traveled down the Great Lakef and all but wiped out the unfortunate detachment of soldiers whom Winfield Scott was taking to subdue Black Hawk. That was the year when John Wyeth, coming back broke from his uncomfortable trip to the mountains, reached the panic-stricken city of New Orleans, hired out as a gravedigger at two dollars a day, helped fill excavations with the dead, and finally caught the disease himself but survived. New Orleans suffered dreadfully in 1832 but had another ghastly outbreak in 1833, and in that latter year Missouri, Kentucky, and in fact all the interior valley experienced the same horrors that the seaboard had seen the year before. (Hope of avoiding the cholera determined Captain Stewart’s route to St. Louis.) That year saw the end of the American epidemic as such but the disease smouldered in many places, to break out viciously in some of them every year and eventually in 1849 to sweep much of the country again and to find an excellent forcing bed in the gold rush.
In 1833 the disease went up the Missouri as far as Fort Union, though it lost some of its virulence on the way. Thereafter there were pockets of it along the Mississippi. One of these was St. Louis, where a few cases begot the usual terror every year. Baring an occassional steamboat case on the way to Independence, however, it goes no farther west. But now, on Just 10, 1835, at bellvue the first victim in Fontanelle’s party showed the familiar symptoms. The disease strikes like a thinderclap and sometimes runs its course in a few hours. Diarrhoea and vomiting are severe from the beginning and soon become violent. Prostration is complete. The severe fluid loss, which may produce blood loss as well, shrinks and wrinkles the patient’s skin. His face grows hollow, his nose sharpens, he begins to turn blue. He is at an extreme of agony. In a few hours, or, at most, a few days, he dies or rounds the turn and begins to mend.
Bernard De Voto, Across the Wide Missouri, p. 219-220
This section of the trail falls between branches of Thirty-Two Mile Creek and is very smooth. The inscription on the granite stone reads, “Oregon Trail Marked by the State of Nebraska 1912.” Scout troop 192 helped erect this marker.
Just west of Kenesaw the trail jogged sharply west and then north to avoid a lagoon that is hardly visible today. John Klusman, while taking a break from planting in May, 2008, explained that the land had been leveled and drained in such a way that the lagoon that had previously been so prominent was no longer visible. The writer jogged this section of the trail in the late 1970s and recalls a large lagoon that obviously would have caused the wagons to detour. The goal was to get to Ft. Kearny with as little wear and tear on stock and equipment as possible; they were not going to get bogged down in a lagoon to save a mile. This marker was erected by the State of Nebraska in 1914.
A freight train consisting of eight wagons loaded with hardware for Denver, was attacked Sunday morning, August 7, 1864, by a party of Cheyenne and Arapahoe Indians. Five men were killed instantly, a sixth was mortally wounded, and the wagons were burned. (Brown, 2007) The bodies and smoking wagons were found by two young couples out for a Sunday morning ride from Thirty-Two Mile Creek station and on Monday morning Overland Stage Line employees from the station arrived. The wounded teamster was able to give a few details of the attack before he died. The men were buried beside the trails 140 yards south of the OCTA marker. This is the only known burial site of white men who met death in Adams County due to hostile Indian activity. The Nova-Color OCTA marker was installed in 1996 on the south side of the road at the edge of a broad and deep ditch. Franzwa’s Maps of the Oregon Trail shows ruts southeast of the markers, but with the installation of a center pivot irrigation system several years ago, they are no longer visible. The next image shows the flat marker indicating the burial site.