News in 17 Days
The two papers combined their resources to maintain correspondents in the more important cities of the East who were to wire important news to the telegraph point farthest west on the overland…
California Petition for a Wagon Road
The agitation worked itself in the formidable wagon road movement which, in 1856, culminated in a monster petition signed by 75,000 Californians who wanted a wagon road constructed over, and an overland mail placed…
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…
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…
Grey-backs
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…
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…