Deficit of the Leavenworth Pikes Peak Company
From the very beginning of the Leavenworth & Pike's Peak Express Company, Majors and Waddell watched it with forebodings of disaster. In this they were justified, for after about nine months of…
Russell Purchases Hockaday’s Mail Route
While the stage line was being gotten into operation Russell branched out in a new direction to assume another heavy liability. On May 11, 1859, he bought the contract of J. M.…
Russell and Jones Stage Line
While Waddell was writing critical letters in the spring of 1859, Russell and Jones were moving swiftly to get their stage line into operation. In doing so they relied principally upon credit.…
Larimer, Russell, and Denver Stagecoach
One Sunday afternoon General William Larimer, professional promoter and town organizer, called upon Russell to seek advice on plains travel. He was organizing a party of prospectors and meant to lay out a…
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…
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…
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…
Russell’s Pike’s Peak Venture
As one cons the history of Russell and Waddell and the record of their vast undertakings he is impressed again and again by the fact that many of their decisions,…
Russell’s Stagecoach Company’s Debt
No amount of positive publicity, however, resolved the unpaid debts the L & PPE continued to incur. Although the line ran a regular schedule, operating costs exceeded passenger fare receipts…
Russell’s Stagecoach Moves to the Platte Route
On May 11, 1859, not even one month after the L & PPE coaches started running, Jones, Russell & Company purchased the United States mail contract from John M. Hockaday…
Russell’s Smoky Hill Route
The route began at Leavenworth, Kansas Territory, followed the Republican and Solomon Rivers staying between the Platte Route and the Smoky Hill Route then converged with the Smoky Hill Route…
Russell’s Stagecoach to Denver
The rumored and realized riches from the Rocky Mountains not only piqued the interests of gold seekers, but it captivated entrepreneurs foreseeing goods and services necessary for the emigrants' livelihood.…
Shandidran
"Though we all rose up early, packed, and were ready to proceed, there was an unusual vis inerlice on the part of the driver: Indians were about; the mules, of course, had…
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…
Stagecoaches on Sled Runners
"During the previous winter [1860] the company tried sled runners, the Leavenworth Conservative of February 8 asserting: 'The Pike's Peak Express Company made the lost trip from Denver to Leavenworth on runners…