“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.”
