. . . 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.
