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…
Post Office as Road Builder
Washington, Jefferson, and other forward-thinking politicians had wanted to create a system of decent highways to promote settlement as well as postal service and weave the frontier into the fabric of the mother…
U.S. Population in 1860
In the last year of Democrat James Buchanan's one term as president, about 31.4 million people, including slaves, lived in the United States, according to the census of 1860. But only about…
The Oregon Dragoons
And here at Fort Davy Crockett Wislizenus and the two expilgrims cut the trail of the other group of innocents who had started to settle Oregon this year and were…
Mountain Neurosis
Like Narcissa and Eliza the women were casting the lines that emigrant wives were to follow - botanizing, collecting curious pebbles, gaping at the scenery, putting on their nightgowns and…
Panic of 1836
The bitterest money war in American history and the wildest speculation of the nineteenth century had precipitated the first national depression. The final Specie Circular, Andrew Jackson's broadside at the…
Jason Lee and Oregon in 1834
He met the Flatheads and Nez Perces at Ham's Fork. There is no way of knowing whether disgust or despair moved him chiefly, there is no way of knowing how…
Hunting Buffalo
Stewart may have had many motives for coming to the United States, but probably foremost among them was a desire to experience what seems to have been the finest of all sports…
Ranches on the Road to Denver
As important as supplying Denver was satisfying the wants and needs of emigrants. By 1860, there were primitive hotels along the entire route, so that one could journey from Leavenworth to Denver…
Development of the Trail by 1860
By the winter of 1856-57, when Little and Hanks were again briefly carrying the mail in the interval between the abrogation of the McGraw contract and the signing of the…
A Trail is Only a Set of Tracks
A trail is only a set of tracks, a road is a human institution. And it is a fact at first a little disconcerting to realize that what made the…
End of the Handcart Era
So the conclusion must be—and Mormon practise indicates that it was the conclusion of the hierarchy too—that handcarts were a perfectly feasible means of bringing the harvest to the valleys…
Mormon Handcart Casualties
Something more than two hundred of the Willie and Martin companies lay dead between Florence and the valley, sixty-two from the Willie company, and between 135 and 150 from Martin's, besides an unestimated…
Handcart Lumber
Ideally the lumber should have satisfied a wagonmaker's specifications: hickory for axles, elm for hubs, white oak for spokes and rims, ash for shafts and box, and all of it…
Impetus for Mormon Handcart Emigration
Some converts, especially those able to pay their own ship fare, had made a practise of settling temporarily in the eastern or midwestern states, wherever they could find jobs that…