A collection of historical tidbits about the Pony Express taken mostly from books, except as otherwise noted. This slider cycles through all of the Quick Facts in random order. I will be adding to these as I read through more sources. You can pause a slide by hovering your mouse over the Fact. To find Quick Facts on a particular topic, click on the appropriate tag in the sidebar. All Facts connected with places on the trail also appear under the appropriate state in the Route Reports section.
Early Emigrant Messages in St. Joseph
“[Lodisa Frizelle, an emigrant who was supposed to meet her husband] put a letter in the post office for her husband to claim when he should arrive, telling where she might be found. The letter was nailed on the door, and each successive day more letters were nailed on top of it. When Mr. Frizelle finally arrived in St. Joseph there was no one at the post office who knew anything about the mail, and he hunted distractedly through the town, almost from house to house, with out any word of his wife. The next morning in desperation he went to the post office again, saw the collection of epistles nailed to the door, and tore every one off until he came to hers.”
Early Emigrant Messages in St. Joseph
Pony Express in Buffalo Bill's Show
Like every other frontier reeenactment in the Wild West show, the Pony Express was a chapter in the life of its hero and his country. Before audiences of thousands, the horseman—not Cody himself, but another “Former Pony Post” rider—raced “down the the grans stand at a gallop,” writes one ecstatic reviewer, “checked his pony within a length, and almost before it was at a standstill the rider was on the ground, the bag on another pony, and the man galloping off at full speed, in less time than it would take an ordinary man to dismount.” It was a showstopper.
Louis S. Warren, Buffalo Bill's America, p. 3
Mile 1165: Ham’s Fork Pony Express Station
Granger Stage Station State Historic Site/Ham’s Fork Pony Express Station Locale (Granger, Wyo.) was an original stagecoach station built by the Ben Holladay Stage Company in 1862. It later was purchased by Wells Fargo and continued to function as a stage station through the early 1870s. A Pony Express marker commemorates the long-gone Ham’s Fork Pony Express station that stood about a half-mile away, south of the river.
“‘Ole Epliraim’ is the mountain-man’s sobriquet for the grizzly bear.”
Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 192
Sod House
Mud Springs was the next home station on the line-a small house made of sod bricks with a wooden roof; the rider could sleep in a lean-to on the side, provided there were no guests from the stagecoach that shared the stop. Sod was an ecologically correct building material before there was such a thing: thick bales of grass and dirt, cut from the prairie, that provided good insulation created from a renewable resource. The grass had to have fairly thick and deep roots, or the dirt would simply fall away; preferred varieties included buffalo grass, little blue stem, wire grass, prairie cord grass, Indian grass, and wheat grass.
Sod bricks, roughly a foot wide, three feet deep, and four inches high were laid grass down and built up like Legos, alternating the courses for strength; a wall would be two or more feet thick, providing natural insulation against the cold and heat. Doors and windows were framed out with timber pegged into the sod bricks. They were rarely higher than one story. Cedar was the wood of choice for the roof poles and logs, which were then covered with a thinner layer of sod.
The interior could be smoothed over with a sandbased plaster; shelves were added on supports driven into the wall. In most cases the sod houses were seen as temporary structures, useful while you were establishing your farm or business. Once you were doing well enough to afford sawn lumber, you relegated the sod structure to some other use and built a larger house.
Jim DeFelice, West Like Lightning, p. 95
The Coast of Nebraska
“The Platte River dominates Nebraska geography, and its dominant characteristic is its flatness. ‘Nebraska’ is the approximate Omaha Indian equivalent for ‘flat water,’ and the French word ‘Platte’ is synonymous. The earliest explorers and emigrants sometimes used ‘Nebraska’ to refer to the river and not the territory. Thus, ‘Coast of Nebraska’ and ‘Coast of the Platte’ were interchangeable. It is not known who invented the term, but it was used by the explorers John C. Fremont and Howard Stansbury and appears in occasional emigrant journals and in late-period travelogues. It was not widely used, but it expresses beautifully the impact upon the emigrants of this strange river which made possible a road which would take them to the Continental Divide and California. The term is particularly poetic in its imagery, for the vast shimmering flatness of the Platte valley, at the edge of the sand dunes, did have a remarkable resemblance to the seashore of the Atlantic Ocean. It was prophetic that this first exposure to the Platte produced an eerie, unearthly (or at least unfamiliar) atmosphere that created an aura for the remaining journey.”
Merrill J. Mattes, The Great Platte River Road, p. 161
Mile 177: Rock Creek
“A weary drive over a rough and dusty road, through chill night air and clouds of musquetoes, which we were warned would accompany us to the Pacific slope of the Rocky Mountains, placed us about 10 P.M. at Rock, also called Turkey Creek surely a misnomer ; no turkey ever haunted so villainous a spot ! Several passengers began to suffer from fever and nausea; in such travel the second night is usually the crisis, after which a man can endure for an indefinite time.”
Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 30
Post Office as Government Representative
As America’s frontier continually expanded, mail service played a major role in organizing the physical and social landscape, just as it had since colonial days back East. Washington, D.C., was a vague concept for pioneers, farmers, and settlers of small towns and villages, but the local post office, like the church, school, and general store, was a vital part of life. As Postmaster General John Wanamaker said, whether great or small, a post office was “the visible form of the Federal Government to every community and to every citizen. Its hand is the only one that touches the local life, the social interests, and business concerns of every neighborhood.”
Winifred Gallagher, How the Post Office Created America, p. 105
Shoe Mouth Deep
“In the evening it commenced raining very hard and towards night were great indications of an approaching storm. We are now camped on a low piece of ground, as all the bottoms on the Platte river are—being almost on a level with the river. Soon the water began to gather around our camp shoe mouth deep and many places over boot top.”
John Wood, Journal of John Wood, p. 12 (June 4, 1850)
Jules Stretch
“On the morning of July 24th we started over the ridge to the north. It was a long, tedious climb up to the top of the plateau, but the scene behind us was beautiful. We could see up and down the valley of the Lodgepole for many miles, until the rotundity of the earth hid the view. There was not a tree or a bush in sight. The valley was as smooth and polished as if it had been sand-papered and varnished. There was not a riding-switch that could be cut between us and Julesburg. It was simply an undulating expanse of short, struggling grass. Before we started out in the morning we gave our horses all the water they would drink, for it was said to be fully thirty-two miles across the ridge from water to water. This was the short line which Jules had laid out, so as to change the route and bring the pilgrim travel past his ranch. This particular strip of road was called ‘Jules Stretch. ‘ The road became considerably rocky as we ascended.”
[N.B. Jules Stretch runs between Sidney, NE and Julesburg, CO]
Eugene Ware, Indian Wars of 1864, p. 263-64
Mile 1502: Willow Springs Station
“Early in June [1860] Elijah N. Wilson set out from Schell Creek to make his regular run to Deep Creek [Ibapah]. When he reached his destination he found that the rider who was to take the mochilla on was not there. Pushing on to Willow Spring he learned that the man had been killed on his run. Since his horse was worn out he had to, stop and let him rest a while.
“About four o’clock in the afternoon seven Indians rode in to demand that Peter Neece, the station keeper, give them something to eat. Neece offered them a twenty-four pound sack of flour, which was indignantly refused. They wanted a sack each instead. At that he tossed the flour back into the station and ordered them to clear out. He would give them nothing. This so angered them that as they passed the corral they filled an old, lame cow with arrows. Seeing this act of wanton cruelty Neece drew his revolver and killed two of them.
“Knowing that about thirty of them were camped not far off, and that an attack would almost certainly be made, they loaded all the empty guns they had and prepared to defend themselves. Just before dark they saw a cloud of dust in the distance which advertised the fact that the Indians were coming. Adopting the strategy of lying down upon the ground in the sagebrush they waited.
“Soon the Indians arrived and were greeted by gunfire from outside the station. This so confused them that they milled about in more or less confusion. Some of them attempted to return the fire by aiming at the gun flashes. This however, was not effective, for each time one of the defenders fired he instantly leaped to one side. Many years later Wilson said that although he had two revolvers he did little except jump from spot to spot. Finally he landed in a small ravine where he remained until the Indians rode off in disgust. When he joined his companions they praised him for his part in the affair but he would have none of it. Credit for the victory, he said, belonged entirely to them.”
Settle and Settle, Saddles and Spurs, p. 157
Mile 939: Clayton's Slough
West of Rock Avenue on the Oregon Trail in what’s now central Wyoming, emigrants came to an odorous, swampy place where their livestock often got stuck in the mud and risked poisoning if they drank the alkaline water.
William Clayton, diarist for the first Mormon pioneer company in 1847 and author of a guidebook to the trail published a year later, called it Alkali Swamp; other travelers called it Alkali Spring. A more recent historian in Casper, Wyo., the late Lee Underbrink, amused by the disgust Clayton’s journal expressed for the site, dubbed it Clayton’s Slough.
Clayton’s Slough in emigrant trail days often trapped livestock and sometimes poisoned them. In wet times, above, and drier, below, it is still noticeable today on Natrona County 319 between Rock Avenue and Willow Spring. The posts are pilings from an earlier bridge. Wyoming SHPO.“It is strong of salt or rather saleratus and smells extremely filthy,” Clayton wrote June 19, 1847, of one of the two small streams that join at the place. “Its banks are so perfectly soft that a horse or ox cannot go down to drink without sinking immediately nearly overhead, in thick, filthy mud, and is one of the most horrid, swampy, stinking places I ever saw.”
So miry was the place that men, mules and oxen often got badly stuck.
August 13, 1843, was very hot, diarist Theodore Talbot wrote, and one man, leading a horse and mule and spying the little stream, turned off to give them a drink.
“We had hardly reached it,” wrote Talbot, “when he suddenly found the ground giving way under him, alarmed at so unusual an occurrence which appeared nothing less than a special and pressing invite to the company of his very Satanic Majesty, he retraced his steps pretty nimbly, once more reaching Terra Firma safe and sound.”
Not so the horse, Old John, nor Jane the big-headed mule, Talbot wrote. “On looking round he could see but the nose of the one, and the head of the other floating round in a sort of white, semi-fluid lake.” The man called for help, other men brought ropes and after much pulling and hauling, with some of the men partly sinking in as well, “forth came the two animals, looking exceedingly miserable and covered with a white coat, which grew hard very rapidly in the air. This little incident, together with [Thomas] Fitzpatrick’s heartfelt regrets that the trio, mule, horse and man, alike worthless, hadn’t gone to _____ in a family party, afforded much amusement to the rest of the men, at Sam Neal’s expense.”
On current maps the little creek of alkali water coming from the northwest is named Poison Spring Creek. Ironically, this is the creek that Clayton says was of “not very bad water,” while the much smaller stream, now unnamed, coming from the southwest, was much more alkali, so much so that according to Clayton, “the cattle wouldn’t drink it.”
Any parties unlucky enough to camp at the spot had to post guard at night to keep the animals away from the muck.
“The grass was tolerable but we had to keep a guard with the mules all the time to keep them from swamping in the spouty places,” James Pritchard wrote on June 13, 1849. “A man would sink to his neck instantly. Several of the men fell in during the night. I saw 5 head of Oxen sunk down to their hornes, and their owners had to extricate them by attaching ropes to their heads & pulling them out.
Some men and livestock did drink the water, as they had just come more than 20 miles from the last good water at the North Platte, and were very thirsty.
During the peak years of the California gold rush, 1849-1852, the water seems to have become entirely unfit for use. Emigrant accounts testify to the dozens of dead and dying animals around the slough and all along the road the next four miles to good water at Willow Spring—and beyond.
“All along the road lay ox after oxen dead,” wrote Patrick McLeod June 26, 1849. “Within a few miles of the spring lay dead 4 yoke of oxen killed by lightning. They lay as they stood in the yokes– two by two– twas a sorrowful sight.”
Eleven days later, emigrant Charles Darwin—no known relation to the famous naturalist—reported he “saw in one place where a whole team of eight had fallen in the yoke & died in their tracks,” apparently the same ones McLeod had seen earlier. But they were by no means the only ones. “Dead oxen marked all the road & no mile but offended the nostril with its effluvia. At one of those springs being very thirsty I was strongly tempted to drink but [it] seemed prudent to enquire of some wagon camped there who told me it was poison,” Darwin wrote.
The swamp itself is apparently much diminished since trail days. It is now partially filled in by road construction, and it’s likely that the two streams converging to form the swamp run far less water than they did during the trail era. An earlier road crossed directly over the slough where a few bridge pilings are still visible now.
“[F]or more than a century now, most western towns have maintained ‘public corrals’ with good access to highways, so that the ranchers can turn their horses loose in a safe place and then camp in their trailers or find a nearby motel for themselves. Today, many of these public corrals also serve as rodeo grounds. Before that, they were Pony Express stables, stagecoach stops, and military bivouacs. Along the Oregon Trail, many of these public spaces began their existence as overnight camping spots for wagon trains.”
Rinker Buck, The Oregon Trail, p. 346
First Mormon Mail Contract
The first government mail service between Independence, Missouri, and Salt Lake City was supplied by Samuel Woodson, who 1850 took the contract for four years. But well before that there had been a private Mormon service whose carriers were Porter Rockwell, Almon Babbitt, and others, and when Woodson after a little more than a year had to have help, Feramorz Little took over the route from Salt Lake City to Fort Laramie for the last two years and eleven months of Woodson’s contract. From August 1, 1851 to April, 1853, Little and his helpers Eph Hanks and C. F. Decker rode that lonely and dangerous five hundred miles of mountains with no station and no change of animals except at Fort Bridger and, toward the end of their contract, at Devil’s Gate.
The plan was to meet the carrier from Independence at Fort Laramie, as near as possible to the fifteenth of each month, to exchange mail sacks, and to ride back at once. It was a route, like any mail route, but it meant a thousand-mile round-trip every thirty days. Often they picked up travelers who for safety’s sake wanted to ride with them, sometimes they were held up as much as three weeks by snow, once or twice they barely got through alive, several times they had encounters with the Crows, who were accustomed to “pick” small parties anywhere between Fort Laramie and Devil’s Gate.
Wallace Stegner, The Gathering of Zion, p 293-94
Abandonded Gear by the 49ers
More significant than anything that happened to the Mormon companies on the road in 1849 was the news that came back from the valley with Almon Babbitt early in September. The Gentile trains boiling toward the gold fields had not only suffered sever from cholera and measles, especially during the first half of their journey, but they had been reckless of their animals and equipment all the way, and they suffered the consequences after they left the easy Platte valley and came into the mountains. Babbitt reported that the gold seekers, convinced that warnings against salerarus water beyond Last Crossing were a “Mormon humbug” had suffered crippling losses of animals, and that the stretch between Last Crossing and Independence Rock was all but impossible to travel through because of the stench from the 2,000 dead oxen along it. And there was more than ox carcasses along the road. Furniture, clothing, food, tools, wagons, had to be thrown away or abandoned as the animals gave out and men converted in desperation to packhorse or shank’s mare. The profitable pastime of scavenging the trail, sometimes as far east as Fort Laramie, got its start among the Saints during this year. But they hardly had to scavenge the trail, for hundreds of California pilgrims limped into the Salt Lake Valley in a state of collapse, and most of them either sold off belongings to lighten their loads across the desert, or converted wagon outfits into packtrains for the last leg, or bought food and livestock to replace what they had lost. The Saints so enjoyed the experience of skinning the Gentiles that they were in danger of trading away too much of their hard-won grain crop and bringing another lean winter on themselves. Apart from that danger, the whole summer was a great profitable picnic. A man might get three or four good heavy wagons for one light one, six or eight worn oxen or mules for a single team of fresh ones, and after three or four weeks in the valley pastures the worn-out ones would be freshened up for another profitable trade. Cloth, clothing, tools, everything that great expectation had loaded up for California fell into Mormon hands at half its wholesale cost in the States, and in a single season corrected the condition of painful shortage in which the Saints had been living.
Wallace Stegner, The Gathering of Zion, p 206-207
Telling Time by Moons
“The time of these conventions was generally set by a formula; the Indians could not go by the days of the month, so the date was fixed for a certain number of moons ahead, and the time set was ‘when the moon is straight up at sunset. ‘ When the moon was overhead at sunset it gave time for the pow-wow, and then the Indians had a full moon in which they could ride night and day going home.”
Eugene Ware, Indian Wars of 1864, p. 204
Pony Express Rider Character
Despite occasional refuge in hyperbole, it is easily discerned that even routine life in the saddle was poorly calculated to attract applicants from the skittish or faint-hearted, or from the pampered sons of gentle birth. Wherever restless men pushed the frontier beyond the borders of established society, the vanguard was liberally comprised of uneducated, roughhewn individualists, misfit escapees from the monotony of civilization and malcontents turned adventurers. Bankers, lawyers, financiers, conservative men of mark and substance, were in small minority among the explorers of the wilderness. The demand from the unknown, uncharted West was for muscled stamina in men who had little to risk, and to whom chance and fate were synonyms of excitement and opportunity.
Which is not to gainsay the clever prowess and dauntless bravery of the Pony Express rider. The American hero, for good or bad, is made of wonderful physical stuff, and with this commodity the valiant mail courier was richly endowed. So, if we find him departing the straight and narrow, neglecting the tenets of his employer, or, as Burton put it, “enjoying the mental refreshment of abundant bad language,” he is not discarding the badge of heroism, only demonstrating the capacity of character.
Roy S. Bloss, Pony Express—The Great Gamble, 101-102
Pony Express Schedule
“On paper, the scheduled time from St. Joseph to Fort Kearney to be thirty-four hours; to Salt Lake, 124 hours, to Sacramento, 234 hours. Including a six-hour railroad trip from there to San francisco, a message telegraphed from New York to St. Joseph could reach San Francisco in 240 hours—that is, exactly ten days later.”
Dan Rottenberg, Death of a Gunfighter, p. 178
Concavity of the Plains
“It is a fact observed by all the travelers on the High Plains that because of the extremely level surface one gets the impression of being in a concavity; it is uphill every way one looks.”
Walter Prescott Webb, The Great Plains, p. 105, n. 1
Purpose of Pony Express
In the spring of 1860, W. H. Russell established his Pony Express in order to demonstrate once for all the superiority of the South Pass route.
Curtis Nettles, "The Overland Mail Issue During the 1850s," The Missouri Historical Review, XVIII, no. 4 (1924), 532
Butterfield Contract Satisfactory for Russell
Russell’s feeling of satisfaction with the contract was fully justified. In the first place, he and his partners, Majors and Waddell, would receive $220,000.00 a year more for operating over approximately half the route from the Missouri River to Salt Lake City than they were then receiving for covering the whole line to Placerville, California.
Raymond W. Settle, "The Pony Express, Heroic Effort—Tragic End," Utah Historical Quarterly, Vol. 27 n.2, p. 114
Stage Line and Settlement
“In founding the [Leavenworth & Pike’s Peak Express] stage line, locating home stations, and opening regular traffic between the Missouri River and the Rocky Mountains, Jones and Russell made an incalculable contribution toward settlement of the wide plains along the route. As had always been the case with the westward creeping frontier, once reasonably dependable transportation was assured, either overland or by water, the people flocked into the area and established new homes. Settlers followed coaches and freight wagons out across Kansas, along the Platte River and its South Fork, down to Denver, and from there out into the mountains to scores of towns and ranches. All of them at first dependent on the Leavenworth & Pike’s Peak Express Company to keep them in contact with the older sections of the country back East. The proprietors were therefore colonizers although they would have been the last to make that claim for themselves.”
Settle and Settle, Empire on Wheels, p. 47
Mile 1565: Rock Springs
“Another station, Rock Springs was added on the shortcut or summer express route. It cut over the southern tip of the Antelope Mountains with the intent of reducing distance and time. Nothing remains of Rock Springs or Spring Valley Station.”
William E. Hill, The Pony Express Trail: Yesterday and Today, p. 214
Cattle for Utah
“Here William McCarthy, a brother of Frank McCarthy, our assistant boss, met us. He had been sent out by Majors, Russel & Waddell in charge of a herd of eight hundred beef cattle to drive them to Salt Lake. He had eight men, and a team and wagon to haul their supplies. “
William Clark, "A Trip Across the Plains in 1857," Iowa Journal of History and Politics, 20 (1922), p. 184
Mormon Handcart Migration
“‘We cannot afford to purchase wagons and teams as in times past, I am consequently thrown back to my old plan—to make hand-carts, and let the emigration foot it, and draw upon them the necessary supplies . . . ‘ Brigham Young wrote [late in 1855].”
Will Bagley, South Pass: Gateway to a Continent, Location 2768 [Kindle Edition]
Sage Brush Camp Fire
“When a party camps, the first thing to be done is to cut sage-brush; and in a few minutes there is an opulent pile of it ready for use. A hole a foot wide, two feet deep, and two feet long, is dug, and sage-brush chopped up and burned in it till it is full to the brim with glowing coals. Then the cooking begins, and there is no smoke, and consequently no swearing. Such a fire will keep all night, with very little replenishing; and it makes a very sociable camp-fire, and one around which the most impossible reminiscences sound plausible, instructive, and profoundly entertaining.”
Mark Twain, Roughing It, p. 34
Mile 890: Billboard on the Emigrant Trail
“[In 1847] at Deer Creek, you saw a billboard! Of course, it was a poor thing compared those magnificent ones now lining our highways over the mountains and across the deserts, giving our city-dwelling drivers a feeling of comfort and security. Still, great oaks can only grow from little acorns, and this beginning at Deer Creek stood thus:
Notice
The the ferry 28 ms the ferry
good and safe, maned by experienced
men, black smithing, horse and ox
shoing done al so a wheel right
This was the Mormon ferry, near the site of present Casper, Wyoming, established by order of Brigham Young on June 18, thus to turn an honest penny for the benefit of the Saints.
[N.B. Deer Creek Station later became a home station for the Pony Express. It is located in present-day Glenrock, WO, at about Mile 890 on the Pony Express Bikepacking Route]
George R. Stewart, The California Trail, p. 187-88
Soda Springs
“Lydia Waters came equipped with lemon extract and sugar and had an epicurean morning among the springs while her company lay over to recruit. She broke off some of the spongy yellowish deposit and took it with her. At first, she said, it had a color and texture like jelly cake; but in a week or so it turned pure white. Others, not prepared for the novelty of soda water, wondered how liquid could boil and not be hot. The very early wagon trains used it successfully in place of yeast.”
[N.B. Soda Springs is a landmark on the Oregon Trail, after the point where the Pony Express route separates and heads south toward Utah.]
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 274-275
Rock Creek Station
“The overland road entered Nebraska at the dividing line between Gage and Jefferson counties, one-time land of the Otoes, self-styled ‘brothers of the whites.’ We kept about two miles north of the river, stopping now and then to explore some exceptionally deep wheel ruts, when some two miles north of Endicott, came to Rock Creek and the site of the Rock Creek Station.
Here we took a referee’s time out for consideration of a famous quarrel and to look curiously at the setting of a historic gunfight between Dave McCanles, owner of the log station building leased to the stage company, and handsome Wild Bill Hickock.”
[N.B. Ms. Paden also talks about inscriptions by Frémont and Reed (Donner party) among others in a nearby sandstone shelf. The rangers at Rock Creek Station provided this info: “Unfortunately the sandstone ledge was undercut into the creek in the 1970s and was removed around 1984. The original location is on private property and not accessible to the public. Fortunately, there is a brass casting of the carving just outside the Visitor Center at Rock Creek Station State Historical Park.”]
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 69
Governor Lillburn Boggs
“A note on Missouri, to introduce two persons of our drama. It was Lillburn W. Boggs who, as governor of the state, had loosed six thousand militia on the Mormons when, in 1838, Carroll and Davies Counties flared with precisely the same mob violence we have seen at Nauvoo. The Gentiles were howling that the Mormons must be expelled, the Mormons howling that the Lord had loosed His people to vengeance. There were night riding, burnings, floggings, lonely murder, and occasional attacks in force. Finally Governor Boggs directed the general of his militia, “The Mormons must be treated as enemies and must be exterminated or driven from the State if necessary for the public peace – their outrages are beyond description.” That was the “Extermination Order” of October, ’38, and the Mormons have not forgotten it to this day, quite rightly. So in 1842 O. P. Rockwell, one of the Sons of Dan – the “Destroying Angels” of ten-cent fiction), crept up to a window in Boggs’s house and shot him – not quite fatally. Under the charter granted Nauvoo by an Illinois legislature eager for Mormon votes neither Rockwell nor the prophet who had inspired the assault could be held to answer for it – and that immunity helped to keep alive in Missouri the hatred that had been lighted by the guerrilla wars. . . . Boggs was a person moving west in ’46, appropriately. He had moved from Kentucky to St. Louis. There he married a sister of the broth’ers Bent who maintained far up the Arkansas a trading post that was one of the most famous and influential institutions of the mountain trade. He moved again, to the far frontier of Missouri, and set up in business at Independence, outfitting Santa Fe traders and venturers to the mountains. At this far outpost town, which lived on the traffic of the wilderness, his wife died. He married Panthea, a granddaughter of Daniel Boone. She and three of her brothers ( their father was also an outfitter at Independence) went with him when he pulled up stakes for California.”
Bernard De Voto, The Year of Decision, 1846, p. 85-86
America's Unpreparedness for the Mexican War
“The President and the nation had a war now, and neither was up to it. This book is to touch briefly on certain campaigns and their backgrounds which are related to our central purpose, but it has space to treat the war only in general terms.
The conquest of a foreign nation was the biggest enterprise on which, up to then, the American people had ever embarked. The war required a large-scale organization and an integrated effort for which no experience had fitted the Americans and which were, as a matter of fact, beyond their current ability. Since Mexico was what it was there was never any danger that the United States would lose the war. But it must infallibly have lost the war if it had been waged against a power of industrial, military, or financial resources even remotely comparable to ours. Our industrial and financial systems were flourishing but wholly unprepared for such a strain as they must now bear, our military system was the worst possible, and our system of government, as events were quickly to make clear, had reached a crisis in which its interior conflicts were making it impotent.
One way to win the war would have been to confide its manage. ment to a board of specialists, chosen for their effectiveness in management and without reference to their politics. Such a conception was altogether alien to the 184o’s, to the stage of American party government then evolved, and in general to the nineteenth century. Feebly approximated in the government of A. Lincoln by 1863, after blood and despair (never approximated in the government of Jefferson Davis), it had to wait for 1917 and Woodrow Wilson. Besides, in 1846, there was , not in America the kind of management required. Neither public nor private enterprise had ever undertaken such a job, and the wonder is not that it was done so badly but that it was done so well. While our narrative centers on other things, the reader should hazard some guess about the resources and organizations required to equip, transport, supply, and maintain blockading fleets in foreign waters and armies not only itivading Mexico from three directions at distances of several thousand miles but also, in several columns, traversing the wilderness of the Great Desert. He should think in round numbers of the components of such an effort- hundreds of ships, tens of thousands of wagons, hundreds of thousands of draft animals and beef cattle, ordnance, small arms, haversacks, hospital supplies, food, blankets, all the goods that make a war. That they were supplied at all is the amazing fact, the demonstration that in the last handful of years the developing industrial system had grown altogether beyond what was currently understood about it. Time after time the extemporized organizations broke down. No army was ever as well equipped or as well supplied as its necessities demanded. Lacks and weaknesses which might have meant defeat if our enemy had not been Mexico repeatedly showed themselves. Millions of dollars were wasted, months were lost, vast if indeterminable hardships that might have been averted were inflicted on troops and citizenry. As always, the republic paid more in suffering and death than it ought to have paid. And yet, for all the ignorance, ineptitude, and delay that stopped the fighting for months at a time, bored and finally frightened the nation, and made the leaders both heartsick and suspicious, a kind of efficiency at last prevailed – and the first modern or industrial war somehow found a pattern and succeeded. As a rehearsal for a deadlier one to come.”
Bernard De Voto, The Year of Decision, 1846, p. 203-204
Buffalo Chips
” . . . our fires henceforth during several weeks were entirely of buffalo-chips, which are thickly strewn over any pasture on which you care to camp, and in a quarter of an hour with an old coffee-sack one could gather up enough for a cooking; when dry they make admirable fuel, indeed, for baking, preferable to wood, as they keep up a more even heat. At first the idea and the smell were a little unpleasant, but very soon one was only too glad to put a slice of buffalo-steak to broil on the coals, and it tasted none the worse for a sprinkling of the ashes—rather hard though upon the buffalo, that he should supply the very fuel for himself to be cooked upon.”
William Chandless, Chandless, W. (1857). A Visit to Salt Lake, p. 65
Platte Valley
“The wind seemed to blow constantly from the time that we left Fort Kearney. The road was a broad, smooth, beaten track, fully three hundred feet wide, swept clean by the wind, and along the sides for some distance the grass was pretty well eaten out. . . .
“There was some very good grass down near the river. Mr. French had been keeping everybody off from grazing on it, and endeavored to keep us off, but it was Government land, and we were in the service of the Government, and we did not recognize bis sovereignty over the broad country. Mr. French became very boisterous, and we had some words with him. Afterwards we were told that he was a Confederate deserter from a Southern regiment, and was not very fond of blue uniforms, and felt inclined to be as disagreeable as possible.”
Eugene Ware, Indian Wars of 1864, p. 54-55
1849 Stage to California
“At least one Independence firm, Hansford and Peacock, and one St. Louis firm, Turner and Allen, planned passenger trains to California in 1849. . . .Whether Hansford and Peacock’s train ever departed is not known, but Turner and Allen’s venture received such an enthusiastic response that two California-bound trains were dispatched, even though only one had been initially advertised. . . .
[E]ager forty-niners willingly paid the 200-dollar fee. For this they were promised a ride to California in spring wagons carrying six passengers each, food rations for the entire trip, and the transportation of 160 pounds of baggage. . . . Further, while the trip was optimistically projected for sixty days, enough provisions would be carried for a hundred days . . .
The experiment had been an interesting one, but the surviving passengers, especially from the first train, were in anything but a friendly mood after their agonizing trip mercifully ended in long-awaited California. . . .When D.T. McCollum finally reached Sacramento, he calculated that 159 days had passed since the sixty-day train had left Independence.”
John D. Unruh, Jr., The Plains Across, p. 101-102
Butterfield Contract
Nine proposals for the contract were received by Postmaster General Aaron V. Brown. Being a southerner from Tennessee, he placed the hand of favor on the bid submitted by John Butterfield for a southern route from St. Louis, via El Paso; in fact, practically dictated to the politically wise contractor this “voluntary” choice of route. Butterfield’s firm, the Overland Mail Company, was the creation of the country’s four leading express companies-Adams, American, National and Wells Fargo. They held hopes of breaking the grip of the steamship lines on the bulk of passenger and mail traffic to the Paci.fie Coast.
Roy S. Bloss, Pony Express—The Great Gamble, 11
Dearth of Material on Pony Express
What if you wanted to know more about those Pony Express adventures? The problem was there was not much to read on the subject other than Buffalo Bill’s autobiography and show programs. The freighting firm of Russell, Majors, and Waddell created the Pony Express to carry mail between Saint Joseph, Missouri, and Sacramento, California, in 1860. The service was wildly popular, especially in California, where it was memorialized in heroic tributes even as it began.
But it lasted only eighteen months. When it ended, in 1861, the Civil War had erupted. The epic clash of North and South at Shiloh, Gettysburg, and the Wilderness absorbed the energies of almost every American historian for the next three decades. Few attempted unpacking the West until the 1880s. Nobody wrote a book-length history of the Pony Express until after 1900.
Note 10 (p. 552):
The first history of the Pony Express was Frank A. Root and William Elsey Connelley, The Overland Stage to California (1901; rprt. Columbus, OH: Long’s College Book Co., 1950); followed soon after by William Lightfoot Visscher, A Thrilling and Truthful History of the Pony Express, or Blazing the Westward Way (1908; rprt. Chicago: Charles T. Powner, 1946), and Glenn D. Bradley, The Story of the Pony Express (Chicago: A. C. McClurg, 1913).
Louis S. Warren, Buffalo Bill's America, p. 5-6, and 552, n. 10
Hell on Women and Horses
“It was in the West, in consequence, that women had the greatest status.”‘ Both Smith and Bird have borrowed their views from Arthur Calhoun, with whose opinions, in matters of American family history, one has always to contend.
The frontier helped to liberalize the American family . . .Women stood by their husbands’ side and fought for life and little ones against human and other foes. Ladies whose husbands lost everything threw aside ease and luxury and fared boldly into the far West where they endured without complaint toils, danger, sickness and loneliness. Reciprocity in the marriage relation was the logical consequence where woman bore a man’s share in the struggle for existence.
This was hardly the assessment of contemporaries. Emigrant women, in their own evaluation, came much closer to the of the frontier aphorism; “This country is all right for mendogs, but it’s hell on women and horses.” Perhaps not everyone joined in that consensus, but male and female opinion on the question of the status of women conjoined in curious but revealing manner.”
John Mack Faragher, Women & Men on the Overland Trail, p. 184
Persian Angareion
While Xerxes was doing thus, he sent a messenger to the Persians, to announce the calamity which had come upon them. Now there is nothing mortal which accomplishes a journey with more speed than these messengers, so skilfully has this been invented by the Persians: for they say that according to the number of the days of which the entire journey consists, so many horses and men are set at intervals, each man and horse appointed for a day’s journey. These neither snow nor rain nor heat nor darkness of night prevents from accomplishing each one the task proposed to him, with the very utmost speed. The first then rides and delivers the message with which he is charged to the second, and the second to the third; and after that it goes through them handed from one to the other, as in the torch-race among the Hellenes, which they perform for Hephaistos. This kind of running of their horses the Persians call angareion.
=========
Herodotus, in about 440 BC, describes the Persian messenger system which had been perfected by Darius I about half a century earlier (5th Century B.C.E.):
“The riders were exclusively in the service of the Great King and the network allowed for messages to be transported from Susa to Sardis (2699 km) in nine days; the journey took ninety days on foot. (Kia, Mehrdad (2016). The Persian Empire: A Historical Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO. p. 127.)(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angarium)
Macaulay, G. C.trans. 1914, Herodotus, The Histories, Book 8, Chapter 98
Jim Clyman on Hastings' Cutoff
“The wagon train grew quiet but this one fire was kept blazing – a carmine splash against the blue-velvet night, the desert stars near above it, the white bow of a wagon top behind, and, farther away, the singing of drunken Missourians at the fort and the screaming of drunken Sioux. [Jim] Clyman talked on. He knew Hastings’ plans, he knew what Hastings would tell these innocents near South Pass. And he had just crossed – with Hastings – from the bend of the Humboldt to Fort Bridger by way of the Salt Desert, Great Salt Lake, and the Wasatch Mountains. A Sioux yipped, the barking of coyotes ringed the sleeping caravan, and Jim told his listeners: take the familiar trail, the regular, established trail by way of Soda Springs and Fort Halt. Do not try a cutoff, do not try anything but the known, proved way. “It is barely possible to get through [before the snows] if you follow it-and it may be impossible if you don’t.” Shock and alarm struck the travelers and made them angry, who were still far short of South Pass, whose minds could map that weary angle from Fort Bridger to Fort Hall and back again to the Humboldt. Tense and bellicose, Reed spoke up (Jim records his words), “There is a nigher route, and it is no use to take so much of a roundabout course.” Reference to Lansford Hastings’ book, Jacob Donner’s copy bought at Springfield, back in the States, now scanned by firelight at Fort Bernard, a well-thumbed passage marked with lines. The Emigrants’ Guide to Oregon and California, page 137: “The most direct route, for the California emigrants, would be to leave the Oregon route, about two hundred miles east from Fort Hall; thence bearing west southwest to the Salt Lake; and then continuing down to the bay of San Francisco. ” Proved. And someone would spit into the fire.
(When Lansford Hastings wrote that passage he had never seen the Humboldt, or Great Salt Lake, or the Wasatch Mountains, or the Salt Desert; neither he nor anyone else had ever taken the trail here blithely imagined by a real-estate man who wanted to be President or mortgagee of California.)
Yes. But Jim has just traveled that route, and if they would save their skins, they will not take it, they will go by way of Fort Hall. “I . . . told him about the great desert and the roughness of the Sierras, and that a straight route might turn out to be impracticable.” Told him about the glare of the salt plain under sun and without water. Told him about the Diggers lurking outside the camps to kill the stock. Told him about the chaos of the Wasatch canyons which Jim Clyman and Lansford Hastings, who were on horseback and had no wagons and so no need of a road, had barely got through.”
Bernard De Voto, The Year of Decision, 1846, p. 184-185
Papers Stealing News Stories
One of the greatest problems of the Bulletin and associated newspapers at this time was how to prevent the less prosperous and less enterprising papers from stealing their costly news dispatches. The pony express was forced to charge a high price for its service. The Bulletin stated that its pony dispatches telegraphed in from Carson City on May 7 and 8, 1860, cost “not less than $250, a comparatively high price for a frontier newspaper of only 6,000 to 7 ,ooo daily circulation to pay for its wire news alone. The great bulk of its news, of course, was gathered locally or came by overland mail. The smaller San Francisco papers were unable to maintain the same news facilities as the Bulletin and the Alta California and quite often lifted dispatches from those papers without even bothering to give credit.
John Denton Carter, "Before the Telegraph: The News Service of the San Francisco Bulletin, 1855-1861," Pacific Historical Review 11, No. 3 (Sep., 1942): 316
Nez Perces and Missionaries
They are generally well clothed in their stile …. ‘ So every white man who ever wrote about the Nez Perces till it was time to steal their lands. They were superior Indians, they made no trouble, they liked and admired white men.
Their desire for instruction in the mysteries was genuine and paramount, as clean as the desire of these Christians to give them what they wanted. Both desires were simple and altogether hopeless. The heritage of nineteen hundred years of thought and practice was at the disposal of the Christians, proved accurate to the minutest subdivision of a mil scale. The first step, the step on which all subsequent ones depended, was to bring souls to God. Teach the Flatheads and Nez Perces God, Jesus, immortality, primordial guilt, the history of the Jewish monotheists, redemption, transfiguration and crucifixion and resurrection, the majestic poem in which western man has embodied his understanding of how his fate works out. Teach them baptism, repentance, the seeking, the knowledge of God’s presence, the wish for oneness, the sacrament of God’s body and blood, misericordia and magnanimity, the metaphor and symbolism in which western man has expressed his understanding of what life means. That was the step on which all others must be added.
The Indians receiving instruction were men of the age of polished stone. Their minds had a metabolism, a systole and diastole, circuits of afference and efference and affect, which had come down a long evolution quite incomparable to the aggregate which we whites have chosen to call the consciousness of western man. Their poems and metaphors and symbolisms, their myths of awe and wonder and man’s aloneness and the immensity of the universe and the soul groping for meaning in the night watches – had no impress that came down from the herdsmen of Asia Minor through a long refinement to worshipers in fourteenth-century cathedrals and on to John Calvin, whose vicars were now on Green River. When they were told about Jesus they must think of Him as, say, one of the young men who for many tribes come up a vine through the hole in the earth and start looking, through the wars and sorceries of the world, for their father the sun. Grace abounding or the consciousness of God’s presence, or sin, or contrition, or charity, or what you will, could reach them as idea only by reference to concepts which had been painfully integrated in the thinking of a different kind of man, a man whose intelligence had a different content and a different functioning, and at that a savage.
They tried, both Indians and whites. There they stood, the seekers and the bearers of truth. Marcus Whitman, this moment taking his first step down the path whose end he reached on November 29, 1847, has the full charge of irony implicit in the nature of men’s relationships. We must not diminish it by forgetting in the intricacy of Christian thought that what these Indians wanted was the philosopher’s stone, and that what they expected of it was guns and scalping knives and blankets and glass beads and metal tools.
Bernard De Voto, Across the Wide Missouri, p. 232-33
Buffalo Grass
“The Wind had very much Freshened, and as we got down into the valley, which was here two or three miles wide on each wide of the stream, Captain O’Brien started to light a cigar. This was a great feat for anyone to do, in such a wind, on horseback. But the Captain from his former service in the army claimed that he could light a cigar in a tornado. The Captain did light a cigar and threw the match away, which he thought had gone out. In a flash a blaze started up in a northerly course toward the river. The grass was fine and silky; the ‘prairie-grass ‘ had not got in that country at that time, and there was only short, matted buffalo-grass.”
Eugene Ware, Indian Wars of 1864, p. 59
Virginia Slade
“Whatever her past, she was by unanimous account the most handsome woman in all the northern Rocky Mountain camps; she was tall, taller than the roly-poly Slade, ‘Junoesque,’ according to all descriptions, which means that she probably weighed a solid, busty 160 pounds or so, had ‘flashing black eyes” and deep-dark hair, and usually dressed her hair in ringlets, framing her arrogant face.
Virginia Rowe Towle, Vigilante Woman," p. 124
Mountains and Desert
“Mr. Street’s contract was a vast work, every way one looked at it; and yet to comprehend what the vague words ‘eight hundred miles of rugged mountains and dismal deserts’ mean, one must go over the ground in person—pen and ink descriptions cannot convey the dreary reality to the reader.”
Mark Twain, Roughing It, p. 114
Pony Express and the Central Route
Keetley’s letter [in Visscher’s book] is so full of confusion and obvious mistakes that it would be easy to dismiss it completely. Colonel Visscher, as was his editorial practice, printed the entire letter without comment. He had come of age when journalists were paid by the column inch, and Keetley had written a nice long letter. Visscher tossed it into what the National Geographic later called “the buck-a-roo stew” that was to be the story of the Pony Express. It would be easy to ignore Keetley’s letter but for this observation:
The Pony Express was never started with a view to making it a paying investment. It was a put-up job to change the then Overland mail route which was running through Arizona on the southern route, changed to run by way of Denver and Salt Lake City, where Ben Holladay had a stage line running tri-weekly to Denver and weekly to Salt Lake. The object of the Pony Express was to show the authorities in Washington that by way of Denver and Salt Lake to Sacramento was the shortest route, and the job worked successfully, and Ben Holladay secured the mail contract from the Missouri River to Salt Lake, and the old southern route people took it from Salt Lake City to Sacramento. As soon as this was accomplished and the contract awarded, the pony was taken off, it having fulfilled its mission. Perhaps the war also had much to do with changing the route at the time.
Christopher Corbett, Orphans Preferred, p. 185
Mile 1432: Simpson Springs Simpson Springs, UT
“Simpson’s Springs, which was named after explorer Captain James H. Simpson. Excellent water made this location a great spot for a Pony Express Station. The current station building at the site is a replica built in 1975 by the Future Farmers of America.”
[Addendum: “Simpson’s Springs Pony Express Station is lonely. Located on BLM land in western Utah you have to want to come here. There is a small, rustic BLM campground nearby, but what’s most abundant is solitude.” –Posted on the Pony Express National Historic Trail Facebook page, 3/27/18]
[Addendum 2: “Simpson Springs bears the name of explorer Captain James H. Simpson, a Camp Floyd topographical engineer, who stopped here in 1858 while laying out an overland mail route between Salt Lake City and California. The availability of excellent water made Simpson Springs one of the most prominent stations in the West Desert.” Pony Express National Historic Trail Facebook page, 2/21/20]
“It was here [Big Sandy Station, Farson, WY], in 1847, that mountain man Jim Bridger gave Brigham Young advice on leading the first Mormon trains into Salt Lake. In the 1860s, Mark Twain, Horace Greeley, and Sir Richard Burton stopped here on their stagecoach trips west.”
Rinker Buck, The Oregon Trail, p. 340
Delivering the Utah Mail in 1849
“Mr. Babbitt [who held the mail contract between Missouri and Utah] certainly deserves our thanks and praise for his perseverance in swimming rivers and towing over his wagon on rafts made with a hatchet and tied together with larriatts [sic]. It cannot be a very pleasant job to freight a rude sort of raft with a wagon and push off into a rapid current and poll [sic] out about one quarter of the distance across then take one end of a rope in your teeth while the other end is attached to the raft and plunge into the stream like a spaniel and swim over with craft and cargo in tow being swept down stream over snags and sawyers for a quarter or half mile as Mr. Babbitt informs us has been his lot in two or three instances.”
Ralph L. McBride, Utah Mail Service Before the Coming of the Railroad, 18691869" (M. A. thesis, Brigham Young University), p. 11
Blatherskite
“But this was nothing new in my experience on the plains. The greatest blatherskites in sneering at death and religion, were the most grovelling cravens when the last hour seemed imminent.”
Thaddeus S. Kenderdine, A California Tramp and Later Footprints, p. 47
Pro-Union Forces in California
Turning now to the forces, moral, military, and political, that were working to save California—first there was a loyal newspaper press, which saw and followed its duty with unflinching devotion. It firmly held before the people the loyal responsibility of the state and declared that the ties of union were too sacred to be broken. It was the moral duty of the people to remain loyal. It truthfully asserted that California’s influence in the Federal Union should be an example for other states to follow. If the idea of a Pacific Republic were repudiated by their own citizens, such action would discourage secession elsewhere and be a great moral handicap to that movement. And the press further pointed out with convincing clearness, that should the Union be dissolved, the project for a Pacific Railroad with which the future of the Commonwealth was inevitably committed, would likely fail. (All parties in California were unanimous in their desire for a transcontinental railroad. No political faction there could receive any support unless it strongly endorsed this project.)
Aroused by the moral importance of its position, the state legislature, early in the winter of 186o-1861, had passed a resolution of fidelity to the Union, in which it declared “That California is ready to maintain the rights and honor of the National Government at home and abroad, and at all times to respond to any requisitions that may be made upon her to def end the Republic against foreign or domestic foes.” Succeeding events proved the genuineness of this resolve.
Glenn D. Bradley, The Story of the Pony Express, p. 83-85
Mail between Sacramento and Salt Lake
“George Chorpenning and Absalom Woodward signed [a U.S. mail contract] in February 1851, to carry the mail from [Salt Lake City] to Sacramento, California.This put the United States mail in operation from end to end of the Central Route for the first time. On May 1 of that year Chorpenning left Sacramento with a party of men for the first trip. In the high Sierra they encountered snow so deep that they had to pound it down with wooden mauls so that the animals could travel. Through sixteen days and nights they toiled and camped under those conditions.
When summer came they experienced difficulties with the Indians. In November Woodward by a war party west of the Malad River in Western Utah. In December the carriers were compelled to turn back on account of deep snow. the mail for February 1852, was routed through Feather River Pass and arrived at Salt Lake City in sixty days. The horses had frozen to death in the Goose Creek Mountains and the party had to travel the last two hundred miles on foot. In March the mail was sent by water to San Pedro, and thence through Cajon Pass and up the Mormon Trail to its destination. . . .
In 1854 . . . [t]he route was changed to run from San Diego to Salt Lake City . . .”
Mail between Sacramento and Salt Lake
First Premier of All Western Gunmen
“While [Slade] was a controversial figure in the early West, nobody can discount his contribution to the development of our country—in the transportation of passengers and supplies by the Overland stage coaches and freights lines, his efforts on behalf of national communications by Pony Express and telegraph, his rigorous suppression of outlaw activity on the main traveled highway to the West. He was the first premier of all western gunmen.”
John B. McClernan, Slade's Wells Fargo Colt, p. 7
Fort Laramie Mail
“A Fort Laramie postmarked letter in existence today is worth a small fortune to collectors. This was the last chance to mail anything this side of California without detouring to Salt Lake City, and the emigrants made the most of it, often swimming the North Platte for the privilege. The post office was not a separate building; it was part of the sutler’s store. . . . Woodson, Magraw, and Hockaday, the regular mail carriers from Salt Lake City to the Missouri, took turns at attempting to run monthly mails, though frequently interrupted by weather and Indians. Sometimes emigrant mail was accepted for delivery by army messengers. . . .
Although the mail normally ran in just two directions, east and west along the Platte, Fort Laramie also served briefly as the mail contact point for two distant gold rush communities, south and north. In 1858-1859, before more direct routes were established, mail from the Denver area was routed to the states through Fort Laramie; and for a few years beginning in 1876 Fort Laramie was a major stage and mail route on the Cheyenne-Deadwood Trail to the Black Hills of South Dakota.”
Merrill J. Mattes, The Great Platte River Road, p. 515
Mile 151: Hanover
“Early in the morning, near the town of Hanover, we had our first glimpse of the Little Blue—a small and gentle river, always to be remembered fondly by the westbound families who, except during Indian uprisings, looked forward with happy anticipation to the days in its rolling valley. Wood, water, and grass were plentiful and, best of all, the headwaters lay to the west so that for almost a week’s journey the caravans camped cozily side by side on its shady bank. Here, if anywhere, the ‘Oh Susannah’ quality of the journey across the plains flourished at its inspiring best. . . .
After a regular stage line with relay stations had been established from the Missouri River to the Pacific Coast, the Little Blue Valley was considered by crew and passengers to be the cream of the whole trip. . .
The home stations along the Little Blue were especially blessed with farm products—eggs, cream, buter, cheese, and vegetables.Nowhere else along the emigrant road, except at Salt Lake City, were these commodities found. The charm of the home-grown viands was somewhat marred for the curious soul who, in wandering about behind the house, saw the chickens roosting for the night on the butchered pig destined to be his morning pork-chops. But hunger was a potent sauce. No doubt he ate the chops and washed them down with coffee, abundant and hot—the unchallenged beverage of the plains.”
[N.B. The Hollenberg Station site is near Hanover, the base of the Little Blue Valley. The Trail follows the Little Blue until near Ayr, NE (Mile 284)]
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 65-68
First Stamps
ln 1847, a delighted America got its first stamps: tiny receipts that turn letters and parcels into official mail. (Some “postmaster provisionals” had appeared a few years before, but they could only be used locally.) Just as Great Britain had put Qyeen Victoria on the world’s first postage stamp in 1840, the United States honored Franklin and Washington (based on the Gilbert Stuart portrait) on its five- and ten-cent issues, respectively. At first, the new stamps were mostly available at the larger post offices, but as more were issued, their sales soared along with the volume ofletters and the department’s revenue.
Winifred Gallagher, How the Post Office Created America, p. 88
California Money for the Union
As has been mentioned, the Golden State was very liberal with her gold in aiding the national cause. No claim or demand made by the national government was ever delayed or questioned. When Lincoln came to the Presidency, the finances of the country were in so deplorable a condition that Chase, Secretary of the Treasury, found it necessary to call on the people for contributions to keep the wheels of government in motion. California responded gladly and substantially. In all monetary matters—except the “Specific Contract” act, she (through the legislature) declared her devotion to the government; e. g., $24,600 was appropriated by the legislature to aid recruiting officers in filling up volunteer regiments, $100,000 to place the Coast in a more efficient state of defense, $600,000 for a soldiers’ relief fund, etc. Even the tax in 1864 on gold and silver bullion was patriotically paid without murmur of objection. And, it is generally conceded that the war could not have been carried oq by the North, had California not given of her wealth to the national treasury. General Grant, in fact, said: “I do not know what we could do in this great national emergency, were it not for the gold sent from California.”
Imogene Spaulding, "The Attitude of California to the Civil War," Annual Publication of the Historical Society of Southern California , 1912-1913, Vol. 9, No. 1/2 (1912-1913), pp. 125
Mile 2098: Strawberry, CA
“[The hostelry at Strawberry] belonged to a man named Berry who sold straw under the name of hay and received the unflattering sobriquet old Straw Berry.”
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 449
Mile 437: Cottonwood Station
“Eighty miles west of Fort Kearney the emigrants found a spring surrounded by cottonwoods. Near it the ravines were filled with scrub cedar. It was always a favorite camp and later became an important stage stop with the unimaginative name Cottonwood Spring. The cedar wood was freighted by ox train for a hundred miles in each direction to supply the stations, and the cottonwood logs were cut and hauled for building purposes. When the Indians became troublesome Fort McPherson was established close by; and we saw its flag, high and tiny but unmistakable, long before we arrived in sight of the buildings. The stage station disappeared long ago, but the fort remains, surrounded by the beautifully kept grounds of a national cemetery.”
[N.B. The Fort McPherson marker is just before Mile 435 on the Pony Express Bikepacking Route.]
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 100-102
Dogs on the Trail
“The ordinary [emigrant] party was accompanied by a number of dogs. Some of these were pets, and others were valuable for hunting and herding and keeping watch at night. But in addition to these well-trained animals there were the worthless curs, fighting, yapping, and snapping, pestering the cattle and horses by day, and keeping people awake at night with senseless barking and howling. Dogs were often the cause of quarrels among the people, and one company tried to outlaw dogs entirely, decreeing that they should be shot.”
George R. Stewart, The California Trail, p. 118
Chaparral
“The Spanish ‘chapparal’ means a low oak copse. The word has been naturalized in Texas and New Mexico, and applied to the dense and bushy undergrowth, chiefly of briers and thorns, disposed in patches from a thicket of a hundred yards to the whole flank of a mountain range (especially in the Mexican Tierra Caliente), and so closely entwined that nothing larger than a wolf can force a way through it.”
Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 187
Mile 917: Fort Caspar
“Considered historically, the year 1858 is the beginning of the end of the picturesque extravaganza at the [North Platte] river crossing. First a prosaic military encampment, known as Mormon Ferry Post, appears in the picture. Then, in the winter of 1858-59, a bridge presents itself apologetically for our consideration. . . .
The first name, Mormon Ferry Post, was supplanted naturally enough by Platte Bridge Station; but its final appellation, Fort Caspar, was bestowed after the heroic death of Lieutenant Caspar Collins, and is the one which proudly comes down through history.”
[N.B. The Fort Caspar site is just to the south of the Pony Express Bikepacking Route and Mile 917]
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 198
Mile 2056: Mormon Station/Genoa, NV
“Mormons had established a permanent settlement at Mormon Station, now Genoa, which was a rankling thorn in [the local Native Americans’] flesh. It was, however, a genuine spine-stiffener for the feminine portion of the early-day cavalcades. There were white women there, the first since Salt Lake City, and real houses with vegetable gardens at the foot of the forested mountain.” . . .
Mormon Station was, to all intents and purposes, a trading post. It maintained a store and a boarding house that served appetizing meals with vegetables and bread. There was even a dinner bell at noon and at sunset. One of the buildings was, in later years, treated to a genteel two-store false front as deceptive as a cheap toupee and as useful, and was the oldest house in Nevada when, quite recently [in the 1940s] it was destroyed by fire.
In the late fifties, after the difficulties between the Mormons and the government were settled, harassed travelers found a United States Indian agent in Genoa. Widows and orphans from Indian massacres were placed in his charge to be returned to their homes when opportunity afforded.”
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 437-438
Russell's Second Mistake
“The launching of [the Leavenworth and Pike’s Peak Express in 1858] was the second disastrous mistake Russell made. Had he resisted the temptation to join Jones in it and worked solely to repair Russell, Majors & Waddell’s damaged credit [after losses incurred during the Mormon War] the firm might have succeeded. His action further undermined its financial standing, earned for himself the reputation of being a reckless gambler and involving him and his partners in a series of catastrophic events which in the end brought total ruin.”
Settle and Settle, Empire on Wheels, p. 37
Great American Desert
“These frequently mentioned fears of overland travel derived in large measure from the commonly accepted geographic concept of the so-called ‘GreatAmerican Desert,’ an area thought to extend westward from approximately the hundredth meridian to the Rocky Mountains. Until the beginning of the Civil War virtually all maps of these regions in school textbooks and governmental reports were labeled the ‘Great American Desert.’ . . . Prompted largely by reports of the western expeditions of Lieutenant Zebulon Pike and Major Stephen L. Long, the myth of the American desert persevered in some quarters until almost 1880, when it was finally replaced with another concept similarly overdrawn—the myth that the western plain was a garden, a veritable agrarian utopia.”
John D. Unruh, Jr., The Plains Across, p. 30
Sharing a Blanket
“In this connection I might say that at least one of the men is still on earth. I refer to Thomas Crummel, ex-mayor of Auburn. He was my ‘partner’ on that trip, slept with me under the same blankets, and a truer or more loyal fellow never cracked a whip or stole a chicken from a ranchman.”
George P. Martin, "Bull-Whacking Days," Proceedings and Collections of the Nebraska State Historical Society, 1902, p. 230
Mile 753: Fort Laramie
“Recorded history of the section immediately west of Scott’s Bluff begins about the year 1818 when Jaques La Ramie, a French Canadian, built a trapper’s cabin near the junction of the North Platte and the Laramie River. He was trapping in the vicinity of Laramie Mountains when the erection of the tiny dwelling established him as the first permanent resident of the section. Four years later the Indians clinched his claim to permanence by leaving his bones to bleach on the headwaters of the river that bears his name. . . .
[In 1834, Robert Campbell and William Sublette stopped to trade at the Laramie River on their way to the rendezvous at Green River.] At Laramie River, the trading was excellent. Sublette left Campbell to hold down the situation and hurried on. Campbell, getting help, built a small trading post consisting of a high stockade of pickets and a. few tiny huts inside. . . .he named the place Fort William, after his partner; but in two years, it evolved into what history knows as Old Fort Laramie. . . .
In 1835 . . .Fort William passed into the hands [of the American Fur Company] and was rechristened Fort John after John B. Sarpy, an officer in the company. . . .In 1836 the American Fur Company deserted the the stockade of Fort John and built a better one a few hundred yards up Laramie River on a small plateau. The name went with it but ‘Fort John on the Laramie’ was soon corrupted to the simple ‘Fort Laramie’ that has remained in use ever since. It was of adobe, copying those forts farther south that had been built with Mexican labor. . . .
By the year 1845 the fur traders dealt mostly in buffalo robes, beaver having passed gradually from its position of importance, and although the other forts did a brisk business, the preeminence and prestige of Fort Laramie was unquestioned. [Francis] Parkman wrote of the American Fur Company at Fort Laramie that they, ‘well-nigh monopolize the Indian trade of this whole region. Here the officials rule with an absolute sway; the arm of the United States has little force; for when we were there, the extreme outposts of her troops were about seven hundred miles to the eastward.’ . . .
The lack of governmental protection mentioned by Parkman was felt so keenly that in the summer of ’49 the United States purchased Fort Laramie and garrisoned it for the avowed purpose of giving advice, protection, and the opportunity of buying supplies to the emigrants. It had a monthly mail service, and the marching thousands moved perceptibly faster the last few miles, hoping for a letter from home. Comparatively few were received, for they were apt to be longer en route that the would-be recipients; but the myriads of letters sent eastward fared better, and, if the addressee stayed long enough in one place, they arrived in the fullness of time.”
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 151-156
Rolling Prairie
“A short mile’s walk brought one to camp on a slope of the glorious ‘rolling prairie,’ the finest descriptive name Americans have invented; ‘undulating’ is a poor puny word, but ‘rolling’ breathes poetry, as of a wind that swept over the earth’s surface, while it was yet a liquid globe.”
William Chandless, Chandless, W. (1857). A Visit to Salt Lake, p. 10
North vs. South and Land vs. Ocean
“By the end of 1858, United States mail was transmitted from the East to West by six different routes. The four overland lines in operation were:
Central route by “joint venture” of Chorpenning-Hockaday Company. They provided weekly mail-passenger service from Missouri to California, via Salt Lake City.
South-central route by Jacob Hall;, who provided monthly mail and limited passenger service from Kansas City to Stockton, California, via Santa Fe.
Southern route by the famous Butterfield line, which provided semi-weekly mail/passsenger service from St. Louis to San Francisco, via El Paso, Texas.
Southern extreme route operated by James E. Birch, who provided semi-weekly mail/passenger service from San Antonio, Texas to San Diego, California, via El Paso and Fort Yuma.
In addition to these overland routes, in 1858, there were two ocean mail-passenger routes. They were:
Atlantic route from New York City to San Francisco operated by three companies, the United States Mail Steamship Company, the Panama Railroad Company, and the Pacific Mail Steamship Company. This line ran a semi-monthly mail-passenger service via the Isthmus of Panama.
Gulf of Mexico route from New Orleans to San Francisco via Isthmus of Tehuantepec. This route was operated by the Louisiana Tehuantepec Company, which ran a semi-monthly mail/passenger service.
With all the routes taken together, the postal outlay for the six different routes amounted to $4.14 for each person, whereas elsewhere in the nation, the postal expenses reached only $.41 for each person.”
Anthony Godfrey, Historic Research Study Pony Express National Historic Trail, p. 21-22
Mile 1557: Route Alternate
According to one source (William Hill, p. 214), the road over Rock Springs Pass was a summer shortcut. Winters, the route ran around the south of the Antelope Mountains. According to Richard Burton (quoted in Hill, p. 213), “Beyond Antelope Springs was Shell Creek, distant thirty miles by long road and eighteen by short cut.”
A detour along this route would continue southeast on White Pine County Road 32 to Twelvemile Summit, then turn northwest over Tippett Pass on White Pine County Road 34 to Hwy 893 (White Pine County Road 31) and rejoin the route at the site of Spring Valley Station.
Note: water is marked as available at Rock Springs on the summer route. No water sources are marked on the alternate.
William E. Hill, The Pony Express Trail: Yesterday and Today, p. 214
Vaccinations
As for compelling or persuading any great number of Indians to submit to the insertion of a certainly diabolical medicine in a scratch on their arms, consult the records first of religious missions and then of scientific foundations that have tried to deal with the neolithic mind all over the world. Including the rural white population of the southern United States in the twentieth century.
Bernard De Voto, Across the Wide Missouri, p. 298
Star Bids
“The transportation of the mails overland before the completion of the railroad was considered impracticable by the Postmaster-general [Joseph Holt, Aaron Brown’s successor] because of their bulk. As dispatched semi-monthly they averaged ten tons. This amount he considered to be too large for overland transmission even when divided into semi-weekly allotments. The overland routes had been demonstrated as available for light mail and could be used in case of foreign war or such emergency, and now there was no further necessity for their extensive employment. He believed that the law of March 3, 1845, announced the proper principle in reference to mail contracts when it provided that contracts were to be tendered to ‘the bidder tendering sufficient guarantees for faithful performance, without other reference to the mode of such transportation than may be necessary to provide for due celerity, certainty, and security of such transportation.’ Inasmuch as this law was still in force, Holt announced that hereafter only ‘Star Bids,’ in conformity with the above law, would be invited. . . .
In the Post office Department files the lines upon which the service was performed with ‘celerity, certainty, and security,’ with no reference to the mode of conveyance, were marked with a star, hence the term ‘Star Bids.'”
LeRoy Hafen, The Overland Mail: 1849–1869, p. 137 (and note 295)
Meaning of "Pah-Ute"
“The Piutes belonged to the Ute band at the time that the original Shoshone tribe broke up through its own weight and unwieldy size. They settled about the lakes—Humboldt, Pyramid, Carson, and Walker—and were therefore called Pah-Utes; that is, water Utes, “pah” being the word that sininifies water among all the Indians of the Great Basin region, Finally, the Utes and Pah-Utes, or “Piutes”—as the name is now generally, though improperly, written—became separate tribes.”
Dan DeQuille, History of the Big Bonanza, p. 260
Secondary Consequences
“There was no government bailout for [Russell, Majors & Waddell]. Some could argue that the government or some officials did the opposite by making sure there were no government contracts for the firm. However, it did succeed in proving the practicality of the central route. And that route was almost instantaneously used by the telegraph, emigrant and freight wagons and much of it later by the Lincoln Highway, the first cross-country auto road in the early twentieth century. It also succeeded in relation to our broader American history regarding the Civil War by keeping California in the Union. These secondary consequences by themselves were actually more important than the success or failure of the firm of Russell, Majors [sic] and Waddell.”
(N.B. Emigrant and freight wagons’ use of the central overland route preceded the Pony Express over the central route, in emigrant’s case, by nearly 2o years)
William E. Hill, The Pony Express: Yesterday and Today, p. xvi
Army Civilian Court
“Almost every day appeals were made to the post for the settlement of disputes, quarrels and bets. We did the best we could, came as near to doing justice in each case as we knew how, and let the matter go at that. It was the only court that could enforce its decrees. I always thought the people had confidence in it, and that it was a good thing, because there were many disputes over matters that people did not want to kill each other for. Shortly after that there was a killing in a wagon train going down from Denver. One man shot another about fifteen miles west of our post. We arrested and held the man up, and finally sent him down to Fort Kearney, in confinement.”
Eugene Ware, Indian Wars of 1864>/em>, p. 384-85
Senator Gwin
Strange to say, this stalwart Union senator afterward entered the Confederacy, lost his prestige and large fortune, and, at the close of the war, drifted into Mexico and the service of the unfortunate Maximilian, by whom, in 1866, he was made Duke of Sonora.
W.F. Bailey, "The Pony Express," Century Magazine, 41 (Oct. 1898), p. 883
Sources of Pony Express History
In 1912, the year Pony Bob died in Chicago, Professor Glenn Danford Bradley published The Story of the Pony Express: An Account of the Most Remarkable Mail Service Ever in Existence, and Its Place in History. Unlike Colonel Visscher, Professor Bradley was a historian with a doctorate from the University of Michigan, but unlike Mrs. Loving, Professor Bradley did not bother to interview anyone associated with the Pony Express. Bradley fully mined the few existing sources: Majors’s memoirs, Root and Connelley’s The Overland Stage to California, Inman and Cody’s The Great Salt Lake Trail, and “the file of Century Magazine,” which includes W. F. Bailey’s 1898 article on the Pony Express. Virtually all information about the Pony Express descends from these works.
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The year before the centennial, Roy S. Bloss, a California historian, published Pony Express-the Great Gamble, a 159-page book billed as “a fresh, unbiased approach to an emotion-packed historical episode.” The editors of the Union must not have read its preface. “Probably the final, complete and authentic word on the Pony Express will never be written. For all of the notable episodes in United States history, few have been so scantily annotated as the horseback mail, the trail of which has been indelibly—but only grossly—etched in the panorama of American pioneering. Even the parade of Caesars, or the Gallic Wars, or our own Revolution—all in the days when historical narration lacked the incentive of the common man’s literacy even these events have been better documented and more accurately interpreted than the relatively recent Pony Express.”
Noting that there were few records of the mail service, Bloss added, “In several instances, the inexorable wear and tear of time caused buncombe to be offered as gospel.”
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Bloss argued that the Civil War eclipsed the memory of the Pony Express and noted that nearly half a century passed before the first history of the fast-mail service was written. “But by then most of the principals, the riders and station keepers had passed from the scene. That raised a problem for the early historians. Seemingly, few records of the nineteen-month mail service were then (or now) extant. The living participants, pressed for their recollections, occasionally resorted to colorful embellishment or a self-serving memory.”
Bloss acknowledged that what he set out to do—sort out the story of the Pony Express—was not going to make him popular. “Whenever sympathetic legend or nostalgic romance has threatened to collide with objective deduction (a recurring hazard in this lore-laden subject) objectiveness deliberately has been given the right-of-way. Admittedly, such arbitrariness may find disfavor among some devoted followers of the Pony; if so, their displeasure is risked with apologies.”
Bloss was not the first to make these observations. It had been a theme for half a century—although it had made not the slightest impression on the American public or Pony Express devotees.
Writing in 1932, Arthur Chapman, journalist-turned-historian, offered his assessment in The Pony Express: The Record of a Romantic Adventure in Business. “The records of the Pony Express, as kept by the Central Overland California & Pike’s Peak Express Company were long ago either lost or destroyed. The fact that the Pony Express was not a Government institution, but was privately owned and controlled, absolved postmasters from the duty of making official records of arrivals and departures. Old letters and diaries, which have been submitted, have only tended to make the confusion greater, as they too have been conflicting in the names of riders.”
Even Raymond Settle and his wife, Mary, in whom the Union placed such faith, had doubts, noting in Empire on Wheels, their history of Russell, Majors, and Waddell’s freighting empire:
“The Pony Express was a romantic, glorious yet brief incident, which although it proved nothing except that it could be done, is eminently worthy of remembrance. Even though the amount of mail it carried was relatively insignificant and out of proportion to the fame it achieved, nobody begrudges it the spotlight. The tattoo or me nymg noorbeats, awakenmg the echoes by day and mght along the two-thousand-mile stretch of boundless prairie, lonely canyon, and mountain slope, wrote into the body of strictly American folklore such a romantic tale of youthful grit as is given few peoples to possess. It has been the source of a thousand tales of daredevil courage and will continue to make its contribution to that thrilling body of literature which concerns itself with stark courage and dauntless enterprise.”
In 1958, William H. Floyd, yet another amateur historian in St. Joe, produced Phantom Riders of the Pony Express to sort out this “web of fancy,” as he called it. Floyd pronounced the whole Pony Express story part of “a dim bob-tailed era in which fact and fiction can be hopelessly scrambled.” He deemed the saga “fragmentary and often conflicting.” Floyd’s exasperated conclusion: “This was the Pony Express. Fact and fiction. Truth, half-truth, and no truth at all. These have become so thoroughly blended that, after nearly a century … legend has largely replaced and superseded a clear and unclouded record, if indeed such a chronicle ever existed.”
Christopher Corbett, Orphans Preferred, p. 210, 214-15
Robber's Roost
“While the Shoshonee is tracking and driving the old mare, we will glance around the ‘Robber’s Roost,’ which will answer for a study of the Western man’s home.”
[Note: Long disparaging description follows.]
Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 468
Branding Steer
“Then, after applying a solution of salt and water, he was left to recover as best he could. The brand would remain in evidence more than a year unless the steer was captured by cattle thieves, who possessed a secret for growing the hair again in six months. When the branding was completed, each man was given twelve steers to break to yoke, and it was three long weeks before we were in shape to proceed on our long Western tramp.”
Charles E. Young, Dangers of the Trail, p.27
Rock Creek Hollow
We walk on down the Trail till we come to a plaque honoring a mass grave of eighteen Mormons. They were members of a handcart company who froze to death in a snowstorm as they marched toward Salt Lake City in the 1850s.
The plaque says they died right here, says Sam, but it makes no sense that they would have sought shelter in this spot. See that cliff just over there? That’s where they tried to save their lives. I have found pieces of their carts with my metal detector.
Seeking freedom from bigotry, the Mormons began the long and harsh journey West out of St. Jo and Independence, Missouri. Many were so poor that they could not afford wagons, so they walked and pushed handcarts. One such walker was Thomas Dobson, who became a Pony rider in Utah. When he emigrated with this family in 1856, he walked barefoot all the way from the Sweetwater River, near where I found the two dead buffalo, to Salt Lake City.
Jerry Ellis, Bareback!, p. 180
Mile 1392: Camp Floyd
“The station was located within John Carson’s Inn in Fairfield and saw use for both the Express and stage travel. The adobe building was built in 1858. It is still standing, has a wooden facade, and is open to the public as a Utah State Park. It was operated by the family until 1947. Such personages as Horace Greeley, Mark Twain, Sir Richard Burton, Porter Rockwell, Bill Hickman, and General (then Colonel) Albert Johnston stopped at the inn.
“In 1885, John Carson and his brothers, along with John Williams, William Beardshall and John Clegg, established Fairfield and Cedar City Fort. The latter was constructed as a private protective compound. It was adjacent to Fairfield that Camp Floyd, named for Secretary of War John B. Floyd, was established in November of 1858. Camp Floyd was the second military establishment in Utah and was commanded by Colonel Albert Johnston. (The first military reservation in Utah was established in Rush Valley, near present day Stockton, in 1853, by Colonel Steptoe. Its objective was to establish a military route to California and to investigate the Gunnison Massacre.)
“Captain Simpson, Senior Engineering Officer at Camp Floyd, designed the overland stage route from Salt Lake City to San Francisco.
“With a population of 7,000 — 3,000 of which were soldiers — Fairfield was the third largest city in the territory. Boasting 17 saloons, wild Fairfield catered to soldiers and the army payroll.”
It is in these travelers’ diaries that one reads of women wearing “bloomers” as a gesture of participation in the fashion of the day—a considerable contrast to Rebecca Ketcham, who had but one dress to wear “for the duration of the journey. Harriet Ward took a long walk with Mrs. · Singletary, whom “notwithstanding her bloomer dress we found to be a sensible pleasant woman.” Jane Kellogg also noted that “we wore bloomers ;all the way, the better to enable us to walk through the sagebrush, They were made with short skirts and pants reaching to the shoe tops. Everyone wore them.” And Lucy Rutledge Cooke similarly counted herself among the women who wore bloomers, But not every women wore them. Bloomers appeared only among those women who could afford special fashions for special occasions. The majority of the overland women wore what clothing they had and prayed that what they wore would not tear. They were too preoccupied with the necessities of the day to consider fashion at all.
Lillian Schlissel, Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey, p. 105
Cost of Pony Express Mail
The firm’s high rates for carrying a half-ounce letter-initially $5 (perhaps $75 today), later $1, attest to the demand for the service, but its revenues couldn’t begin to cover the $700,ooo start-up costs. Everything depended on the Pony’s success in winning the government’s overland mail contract.
Winifred Gallagher, How the Post Office Created America, p. 131
Express Rider's Clothing
The riders wore their own clothing, perhaps a buckskin hunting shirt or one of red flannel, cloth trousers, high boots, a jockey cap or slouch hat. There were no uniforms. They carried only what they needed, only what was absolutely necessary. Armed at first with a Spencer or Sharps rifle and two Colt revolvers, the riders eventually carried only a single Colt, often with an additional cylinder of ammunition.
Christopher Corbett, Orphans Preferred, p. 87
Perqs of Being a Postmaster
Franklin’s service in the Crown’s colonial post exemplifies his flair for doing well while doing good. Many colonial printers, particularly those who also published newspapers, were eager to serve as postmasters, less for the position’s modest financial rewards than for its perquisites. The job put them on the inside track for lucrative official printing jobs and also gave them privileged access to both the news and its circulation. Their valuable franking privilege enabled them to send their newspapers to one another through the mail for free, and articles recycled from these “exchange papers” helped to pad their broadsheets’ profitable ads and notices for little trouble or expense. Moreover, once the costly, top-priority letters and government documents had been locked in the portmanteau, as the secure official mailbag was called, postmasters selected which newspapers could also travel with the post, though informally, in saddlebags, and pending the courier’s approval as to bulk. This was an easy decision for postmaster-printers who were eager to increase the circulation of their own publications, and at no cost.
Winifred Gallagher, How the Post Office Created America, p. 20
Dobytown Description
“‘The saloon . . . in which I spend=t most of the evening consisted of a long narrow room with a bar made of rough boards extending the entire length of one side . . . some square pine tables covered with woolen blankets used for card tables. Some gambling was going on night and day, but at night . . . the tables were always full . . .languages used were Mexican, French, English and . . . profanity. Occasionally some exultant winner would express his delight by firing his pistol through the roof or into the sod walls . . . and a little loose dirt would trickle down. The air was heavy with the blue smoke from the guns and the lighter tobacco smoke; and the fumes of both, mixed with the stench of the liquors slopped over the bar by unsteady drinkers, made a combination of foul smells unknown outside a whiskey dive.'”
Merrill J. Mattes, The Great Platte River Road, p. 220-222
Post Offices on the Pacific Coast
California was desperate for fast, efficient mail. Miners wanted to correspond with the folks back home, perhaps on the new illustrated stationery that predated picture postcards. Businessmen needed to transfer bank drafts and contracts. In 1848 Postmaster General Cave Johnson authorized its first post offices, in San Francisco and Sacramento, but service remained so poor that, in 18501 irate residents didn’t get the news that they had achieved statehood until six weeks after the fact. . . .
The federal government had been quick to use the post to strengthen its new stake in the Pacific Northwest, at least in theory, by authorizing the first post offices west of the Rockies in 1847: one at Astoria, a deepwater port on the Columbia River, and the other at Oregon City, on the outskirts of today’s Portland. By 1851, the region also had eighteen postal routes. However, mail from the outside world still had to reach San Francisco first, then travel north by bimonthly steamers to Astoria, where the portion destined for Oregon City was dispatched. Hopeful recipients had to travel to an often distant post office to fetch their letters in person or wait for an obliging traveler to bring them into the outback.
In 1853, the northern section of the Oregon Territory split off to become the Washington Territory. The tiny village of Seattle, founded in what’s now the Elliott Bay neighborhood, boasted a log post office as well as a church, a brothel, and two blockhouses used for protection during Indian attacks. Nevertheless, one of the few things on which its fifty or so white, Indian, Hawaiian, and Cape Verdean residents could agree was that postal service was worse on their side of the Columbia River.
Winifred Gallagher, How the Post Office Created America, p. 120, 122-23
Emigration Over South Pass
“’From 1812 to 1848 travel up the Platte was only minimal to moderate, historian Merrill J. Mattes observed, ‘with a grand total of around 5,000 to Salt Lake, 10,000 to Oregon, and 2,000 to California.’ Between 1849 and 1852, about 120,000 people—mostly men—would flock to the gold fields over the California Trail, while some 35,000 more men, women, and children would cross South Pass on their way to Oregon or the Great Basin.”
Will Bagley, South Pass: Gateway to a Continent, Location 2167 [Kindle Edition]
Whips
“the whip was the teamster’s badge of office. The muleskinner from his post astride the nigh-wheeler, with the top of the wagon close behind him, was restricted to a ‘blacksnake’ some eight to ten feet in length. The bullwhacker from his post on the ground alongside the nigh-wheeler had room in which to swing a more magnificent instrument— a three-to four-foot stock of hickory or other tough wood, and an eighteen- to twenty- foot lash of braided rawhide, tipped with a six- or eight-inch popper of rawhide.”
Henry Pickering Walker, The Wagonmasters (1966), p. 91
Battle of Resaca de la Palma
“The action that followed was a good deal more of a battle. It is known as Resaca de la Palma. It was a fierce, bloody, and obstinate confusion in the underbrush, with the Mexicans fleeing here and charging there, the Americans doing likewise, and no one to do staff work or make order of the attack. Since no one above the platoon leaders could see far enough to exercise command, some pretty local duels developed. For a long time it was a near thing. The Mexicans rushed into the thorn bushes with an admirable fierceness and, less admirably, their cavalry charged artillery – and nearly took it. That seemed a good idea to Taylor and, to the horror of his staff, he ordered Captain May’s Dragoons to charge a Mexican battery. It was his principal contribution to the battle and, alas for the textbooks, it worked. Pretty soon the Mexicans, who had bent at one flank already, broke and ran. Fort Brown was saved and Taylor had won two battles.
Or his army had. Colonel Hitchcock, who was right about their commander, was proved wrong about the troops and they were entitled to the admiration which Lieutenant Grant accorded them. The American soldier had won his first battle against civilized troops since January 8, 1815, by the merits which tradition had emphasized, marksmanship, steadiness under fire, and individual initiative and courage. A good many subalterns who would be general officers in the Civil War had had their first taste of battle. And before the guns were swabbed the newspapermen were sending the news to the folks back home. The two engagements, Grant wrote, “seemed to us engaged as pretty important affairs but we had only a faint conception of their magnitude until they were fought over in the North by the press and the reports came back to us.”
Bernard De Voto, The Year of Decision, 1846, p. 195-196
Freighting Near Fort Kearney
Freighting across the Plains became big business with accelerated military campaigns of 1857 and 1858, and one of the biggest was the contracting firm of Russell, Majors and Waddell. Thaddeus Kenderdine, a bullwhacker, arrived at Fort Kearny in August, 1858, and throws some light on that activity: ‘When within a mile the train was stopped, and orders given for each man to overhaul his load, and out the flour which was in any way damaged by rain in the bottom, so as the load would pass governmental inspection. We were forced to become parties to this fraud.'”
Merrill J. Mattes, The Great Platte River Road, p. 228
The Sioux
“Bryant was right. The Sioux were big, tall, lithe, Roman-nosed Indians, among the most impressive of the tribes. As Clark Wisslet points out, it happens that most of our popular iconography of the Indians is Sioux – the Indian on the nickel, the war bonnet and lance and shield conventionally bestowed on all Indians, the characteristic dress, the characteristic tipis, robes, beadwork, etc. They got a good press early and have come to typify all Indians to most Americans. Probably the Indian most widely remembered in our time is Sitting Bull, who was a Hunkpapa Teton Sioux, and it was the Sioux who disposed of Custer.”
Bernard De Voto, The Year of Decision, 1846, p. 506-507, n. 16
Claiming Oregon for America
So [Robert Gray in 1792] gave the United States a claim recognized by the polity of nations. Discovery and entrance of a river mouth gave the discovering nation sovereignty over the valley and watershed of the river and over the adjacent coast. The two empires that were pushing westward in the interior toward this same perimeter had met on the Pacific shore. Inland Great Britain was far in the lead – but the Americans had reached Oregon [Columbia River] first. . . .
In September, after sailing round his island, Vancouver was back at Nootka, where Gray had meanwhile put in after a profitable trip up the coast. The Spanish commandant, Bodega y Cuadra, told Vancouver that Gray had found a river at Deception Bay after all and gave him a copy of Gray’s chart. He sailed south to investigate, though sure that the Yankee could have found only a small river at best. The Columbia confirmed him a little in that the water at the bar which caused the breakers was not as deep as it had been in the spring flood. He sent Lieutenant Broughton in the brig Chatham over the bar on October 19 1792 but found no channel he thought it safe to take the Discovery into and two days later sailed for California. Broughton found that it could not be called a small river and decided that Gray had not entered it. Gray’s chart showed that he had gone thirty-six miles upstream. By triangulation, computation, and divination Broughton scaled this down to fifteen miles and decided that up to here the river had not narrowed enough to be called anything but a sound. A fresh-water sound that opened on the ocean would be unusually interesting geography but it would do to peg down an imperial claim. Broughton anchored in what he took to be one of Gray’s anchorages and went on by small boat to a total of a hundred miles above the bar, almost to the mountains an~ with the river shoaling to three fathoms. That ought to do it and the names he gave to peaks and other landmarks ought t stick. He claimed for Great Britain the river Gray had named all its watershed, and the adjacent coast. Vancouver accepted his findings, “having every reason to believe that the subjects of no other civilized nation or state had ever entered this river before.” So did British diplomacy down to 1846. Two expanding empires had now made claim to the Columbia River and the unknown area it drained. For both of them the immediate value was the trade in sea otter furs, the maritime Northwest trade.
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[Lewis and Clark] left various rosters and announcements in the hands of various Indians to be shown to traders when they should appear. They carved and branded trees and affixed notices to …J them, recounting their achievement. (No one said so but in ;- the polity of nations this was ritual to buttress the claim which the United States had to the Columbia drainage through Robert Gray’s discovery. The ritual announced that they had traversed the country and had occupied it.) Then in some of the dugouts they had made at the Clearwater and two of the much better seafaring canoes of the Columbia River tribes, they abandoned Fort Clatsop on March 23 1806.
Bernard De Voto, The Course of Empire, p. 328 and 512
First Run over the Sierra Nevada
“Critics of the central overland route predicted that weather conditions (especially winter conditions) along the route would cause delays for the C.O.C. & P.P. Express Co. Perhaps to avoid an unsettling beginning to their new enterprise, Russell, Majors, and Waddell decided to the start the Pony Express in the springtime. Despite the springtime start, the first rider from Sacramento to St. Joseph encountered four-foot-deep snow in crossing the Sierra Nevada, and it looked as though adverse weather conditions would defeat the C.O.C. & P.P. Express Co. from the outset. Fortunately for the rider, a narrow mule-path created by pack-trains on their way from California to the Washoe mines opened the way for him. The rider was delayed by only a few hours, indicating to many that the Pony Express could conquer the critics of the central overland route.”
Anthony Godfrey, Historic Research Study Pony Express National Historic Trail, p. 67
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 first time,\ became a subsidized postal operation.
Roy S. Bloss, Pony Express—The Great Gamble, 128
Secretary Floyd Stealing Guns for the Confederacy
When the Rebellion started, it was found that Floyd,· while in office, had removed 135,430 firearms, together with much ammunition and heavy ordnance, from the big Government arsenal at Springfield, Massachusetts, and distributed them at various points in the South and Southwest. Of this number, fifty thousand were sent to California where twenty-five thousand muskets had already been stored. And all this was done underhandedly, without the knowledge of Congress.
Glenn D. Bradley, The Story of the Pony Express, p. 76
Troop Punishment
“But the methods of punishment are to my mind far more odious and de-grading than the lash; tying a man to a waggon by his thumbs, loading him with a heavy wooden or iron collar (and even in a town like Leavenworth, K.T., making him stand guard in public with it on), chaining a heavy ball to his ancle, &c. ; who can wonder that desertions are numerous, followed now and then by recapture, flogging, branding, and imprisonment? And this, too, when men are but enlisted for five years at a time.”
William Chandless, Chandless, W. (1857). A Visit to Salt Lake, p. 77-78
Competing Routes to the West
William Lander, chief engineer on the Lander Cutoff from South Pass to Fort Hall, stationed “an old mountaineer, Charles H. Miller, at the South Pass [for the winter] to make weather observations and direct the earliest immigration to the new road in the spring of 1859. Miller was faithful in the performance of his assignment untilled killed in a gun fight in early March . . .
Lander reached South Pass at the close of June to discover that traders along the old routes to Soda Springs and Salt lake Valley were meeting emigrants and trying to divert them from his new road. Miller’s murder of the previous winter was indirectly attributed to these men, so Lander stationed a former soldier of his party at Gilbert’s Trading Post to inform travelers of the advantages of the federal wagon road and present them with a published guide. Fist fights became weekly occurrences in the bid for the emigrant’s favor, so Lander decided it would be necessary to leave a blacksmith at the pass during the winter to ply his trade and explain the merits of the road.”
[N.B. See also Unruh: “In his reports Landers complained about the ‘designing parties’ (in particular, Mormons and mountaineers) who energetically directed emigrants to travel on the established trail while casting aspersions on the new government route—which bypassed their trading posts and green River ferries.” John D. Unruh, Jr., The Plains Across, p. 300]
W. Turrentine Jackson, Wagon Roads West, p. 209-213
Mile 1915: Cold Springs Station Cold Springs Station, NV
“[D]uring the Pyramid Lake War, three Pony Express riders were killed by Paiute warriors . . . One of them, Jose Zowgaltz, was Hispanic. He was ambushed as he crossed the thick aspen bottoms of Edwards Creek, north of Nevada’s Cold Springs Station (pictured). Suffering a mortal abdominal wound, Zowgaltz galloped to the station where, upon arrival, he slipped bleeding from his saddle and soon died.”
[N.B. Cold Spring Station is a few miles off the Pony Express Bikepacking Route, west of Austin, NV. There are three stations in this area, just north of the Route (starting from a turnoff at about Mile 1885), though there doesn’t appear to be any direct line between them. This is the part of the trail where Jan Bennett took a break from the miles of gravel for a nice paved stretch.]
While the [telegraph] lines were under construction the Pony Express operated as usual. Letters and newspapers were carried the entire length of the line from St. Joseph to Sacramento, but telegrams only between the rapidly advancing wire ends.
Raymond W. Settle, "The Pony Express, Heroic Effort—Tragic End," Utah Historical Quarterly, Vol. 27 n.2, p. 120
Description of Native Americans
“The braves were armed with small tomahawks or iron hatchets, which they carried with the powder-horn, in the belt, on the right side, while the long tobacco-pouch of antelope skin hung by the left. Over their shoulders were leather targes, bows and arrows, and some few had rifles; both weapons were defended from damp in deer-skin cases, and quivers with the inevitable bead-work, and the fringes which every savage seems to love. These articles reminded me of those in use among the Bedouins of El Hejaz.”
Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 57
Crossings of the South Platte
Prior to 1859, there were three crossings of the South Platte.
“These were commonly known as the Lower, Middle, and Upper crossings (or fords). Their respective locations would be roughly (1) a few miles west of the city of North Platte, in the vicinity of Fremont Springs, opposite Hershey, (2) a few miles east of Ogalala, and (3) a few miles west of Brule, Nebraska.
The one most heavily used was the Upper Crossing, otherwise variously known as Kearney’s Ford (from the 1845 expedition), Beauvais’ Crossing (from the nearby trading post), Laramie Crossing, Ash Hollow Crossing, or California Crossing. After 1859, with a new California Crossing at Julesburg, this became the Old California Crossing. (The terms Lower California Crossing and Upper California Crossing used by some latter-day historians to differentiate between the Ash Hollow Crossing and the Julesburg Crossing are nowhere to be found in emigrant journals and have resulted only in confusion. Frank Root seems to have invented this usage in his reminiscences.”
Merrill J. Mattes, The Great Platte River Road, p. 265
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 contract with the Y.X. Express, the route between Salt Lake City and Fort Laramie could count on the use of trader cabins on the Big Sandy, at Pacific Springs, at Devil’s Gate, at Independence Rock, and at the Platte bridge, and the great surge of hauling that accompanied the Utah War made those places into permanent stage stations. In 1860, when Richard Burton made his celebrated trip to Zion to study, among other things, the sex habits of the Mormons, he found Ward’s Station two hours out of Fort Laramie on the Black Hills road; Horseshoe Station, run by Jack Slade, on Horseshoe Creek; a station “in the building” on the La Bonte; Wheeler’s Station on Box Elder Creek; a Sioux agency and station on Deer Creek; a station on Little Muddy Creek; and the station of Louis Guenot, the bridge owner, near the Last Crossing. Beyond Last Crossing his stage stopped at Red Buttes Station, Willow Springs Station, Plante’s station above Devil’s Gate, the ranch of Luis Silva below the Three Crossings of the Sweetwater, the Three Crossings station itself, the Foot of the Ridge Station, a ranch run by two Canadians at Willow Creek, Pacific Springs Station, Big Sandy Station, McCarthy’s station on the Green, Michael Martin’s store farther down the Green, Ham’s Fork Station, Holmes’ station at “Millersville” on the Smith Fork, and finally Fort Bridger. Reported us and omniscient style, it seems a populous road.
Wallace Stegner, The Gathering of Zion, p 295-96
Slade and Gilman Ranch
What is certain is that the division superintendent for the Pony Express who stopped to enlist the Gilman brothers in the crosscountry mail relay was a name that Mark Twain knew well. In writing about Joseph (Jack) Slade in Roughing It, Twain recalled a famous and notorious published description of the bad man: “From Fort Kearny, west, he was feared a great deal more than the Almighty.”
Joseph Slade was not a figment of Mark Twain’s imagination. Nor was he a tall tale. Slade is perhaps the most solid example that everyone in the employ of Russell, Majors & Waddell was not enjoying a glass of sarsaparilla and the Psalms in the evening. The Central Overland California & Pike’s Peak Express Company hired men who could get the job done, and some of those men were plainly outlaws. Joseph Slade was the most stunning example.
Christopher Corbett, Orphans Preferred, p. 135
Army of Utah at South Pass
“On May 28, 1857, a small army . . .was ordered to assemble at Fort Leavenworth to march to Utah with the old Indian fighter, General S. W. Harney, in command. . . .
General Harney, being familiar with the country west of the Missouri River, was opposed to marching for Utah two months past the usual time for starting. He felt the journey should not be made until early in 1858. An over-eager administration in Washington ruled otherwise, however. This threw the Army of Utah and Majors & Russell’s trains so far behind the usual season for travel that by the time South Pass was crossed winter was setting in.”
Army of Utah at South Pass
Kinnikinnick
“The red color soon mottles and the bowl clogs if smoked with tobacco; in fact, it is fit for nothing but the “kinnikinik” of the Indians.”
[Note: “Kinnikinnick is a Native American and First Nations herbalsmoking mixture, made from a traditional combination of leaves or barks. Recipes for the mixture vary, as do the uses, from social, to spiritual to medicinal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinnikinnick.]
Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 88
The Great Plains' Effect on American Institutions
“The purpose of this book is to show how this area, with its three dominant characteristics [plane, or level surface; treeless; sub-humid], affected the various peoples, nations as well as individuals, who came to take and occupy it, and was affected by them; for this land, with the unity given it by its three dominant characteristics, has from the beginning worked its inexorable effect upon nature’s children. The historical truth that becomes apparent in the end is that the Great Plains have bent and molded Anglo-American life, have destroyed traditions, and have influenced institutions in a most singular manner. . . .
As one contrasts the civilization of the Great Plains with that of the eastern timberland, one sees what may be called an institutional fault (comparable to a geological fault) running from middle Texas to Illinois or Dakota, roughly following the ninety-eighth meridian. At this fault the ways of life and of living changed. Practically every institution that was carried across it was either broken and remade or else greatly altered. The ways of travel, the weapons, the method of tilling the soil, the plows and other agricultural implements, and even the laws themselves were modified. When people first crossed this line they did not immediately realize the imperceptible change that had taken place in their environment, nor, more is the tragedy, did they foresee the full consequences which that change was to bring in their own characters and in their modes of life. In the new region – level, timberless, and semi-arid – they were thrown by Mother Necessity into the clutch of new circumstances. Their plight has been stated in this way : east of the Mississippi civilization stood on three legs – land, water, and timber; west of the Mississippi not one but two of these legs were withdrawn, – water and timber, – and civilization was left on one leg – land. It is small wonder that it toppled over in temporary failure.”
Walter Prescott Webb, The Great Plains, p. 8-9
Mormon Land Rights in Utah
“U.S. President Buchanan [in 1858] even weighed in on the land issue in Utah saying, ‘The land you live upon was purchased by the United States and paid for out of their treasury. The proprietary right and title to it is in them, and not in you.’ Church distribution and ‘ownership’ of the land in the territory was alarming, because the Church leadership had no legal proof or right to the large amount of land they claimed. Now that the United States owned the land that would become Utah, anyone could buy the land that Church members were now living on. The 1841 Preemption Act allowed any citizen over 21 to buy 160 acres of land for $1.25 an acre. In order for a citizen to claim land under the Preemption Act, the land needed to be surveyed by federal surveyors and Indian claims to land would need to be settled. Federal land surveyors would need to come to Utah. “
Raelyn M. Embleton, Racial Conflict in Early Utah: Mormon, Native American and Federal Relations, p. 9
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. Denver City town promoter General William H. Larimer, Jr. aimed to attract essential enterprises to Denver City drawing business away from its larger, more established rival, Auraria Town Company, located on the opposite side of Cherry Creek. Larimer realized the leverage and influence a stage line generated to an infant communfry. He discussed a proposition of running a stage line from Leavenworth, Kansas Territory, to Denver City with William Hepburn Russell, a veteran freighter. Larimer enhanced the proposition by offering fifty-three Denver City lots to the freighting firm of Russell, Majors and Waddell express company (a freight line of which William Russell was a principal) and six lots to William H. Russell, if Russell agreed.
Additionally, Larimer gave the stage line two city lots strategically located in the heart of Denver City. William H. Russell, known to embark on “new and profitless” enterprises, joined with John S. Jones, a pioneer government contractor of the West, to organize the first passenger service from the states to Denver City. They called their stage line the Leavenworth & Pike’s Peak Express Company (L & PPE). Russell and Jones invited Alexander Majors and William Bradford Waddell to join them in the new venture. However, both Majors and Waddell agreed that engaging in a stage line was premature and risky in an undeveloped area with an unknown future. Russell, Majors and Waddell provided the L & PPE a ninety-day loan for most of its origination costs, which were nearly $79,000.
Heather King Peterson, Colorado Stagecoach Stations, p. 18-19
Ethics in Writing About American Indians
Different schools of thought like the Germ theory and Turner thesis have encouraged historians to ignore the original inhabitants of the entire western hemisphere. Why did this happen, if a scholar’s professional responsibility is to be objective in researching historical topics? These approaches described the “white experience,” as if Indians did not exist. To write a history of the Anglo- American experience is not wrong, but to claim that it represents the entire history of the American experience is a gross mistake.
Donald L. Fixico, "Ethics and Responsibilities in Writing American Indian History," American Indian Quarterly , Winter, 1996, Vol. 20, No. 1, Special Issue: Writing about (Writing about) American Indians (Winter, 1996), p. 30
Mormon Attacks on the Army's Supply Trains
“On October 4 a small band of Mounted Mormons led by Major Lot Smith bypassed the Tenth Infantry and fell upon two of [Russell, Majors & Waddell’s supply] trains camped along the Green River, a very few miles from Colonel Waite’s command [Fifth Infantry]. Secure in the knowledge that the army’s calvary, the Dragoons, was some 700 miles to the east [as it had been ordered to assist keeping order in Bleeding Kansas], Smith burned these trains and the next day surprised and destroyed a third on the Big Sandy.
All told the flames lit by Smith and his few dozen men consumed seventy-two wagons containing 300,000 pounds of food, principally flour and bacon—enough provisions to feed the troops for several months.”
Norman F. Furniss, The Mormon Conflict, 1850-1859, p. 109
Prairie Spring
“[The emigrants] started in good weather, of course. The sun shone upon a ‘grand and beautiful prairie which can be compared to nothing but the mighty ocean.’ A succession of rich, shining green swells was star-dusted with small frail blossoms and splashed with hardier varieties like great spillings of calcimine powders. here a patch of mountain pink, here spiderwort—while ahead, a spreading of purple over a sunny slope proved, on closer acquaintance, to be larkspur. Bobolinks sang where currant bushes lined the meandering watercourses, and the line of white wagon tops stretched like a shining ribbon across the curving velvet breast of the prairie.”
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 24
Pony Express Using Chorpenning's Stations
“Russell, Majors and Waddell’s pony express company became the immediate beneficiary of Chorpenning’s demise. On the same day that Chorpenning’ s service was terminated, William Russell signed a contract with the post office on behalf of Russell & Jones Company, a subsidiary of Russell, Majors and Waddell. Russell agreed to provide the same semi-monthly service at $30,000 per year-$47,000 less than Chorpenning. The new contractor immediately seized the stations, stock, and equipment along Chorpenning’s mail line. From May of 1860 until the termination of the Pony Express in October of 1861, both Russell & Jones and the U.S. mail utilized the stations and route established by the Chorpenning mail between Placerville and Salt Lake City. Subsequently, the Union Telegraph and the Overland Stage Company also adopted the trail blazed by the Chorpenning mail carriers.
“Roy S. Bloss, Pony Express: The Great Gamble (Berkeley, California: Howell-North, 1959), 28, suggests when the Pony Express established its route in February and March of 1860, it ‘borrowed or appropriated’ many of Chorpenning’s stations. In a letter of April 16, 1861 to the Salt Lake City Deseret News, W. H. Shearman of Ruby Valley clearly stated that the Pony Express simply helped itself to Chorpenning’s assets. Shearman’s persuasive and pungent letter is quoted in Journal History, April 16, 1861, LDS Library-Archives.”
John M. Townley, "Stalking Horse for the Pony Express: The Chorpenning Mail Contracts between California and Utah, 1851-1860", Arizona and the West, Vol. 24, No. 3 (Autumn, 1982), p. 251 and n.55
Butterfield Goes Bankrupt
By 1860, overland stagecoaches carried more mail across America’s sea of grass than steamships on the rivers and oceans, but not even the postal subsidy and passenger revenue combined could sustain Butterfield’s stupendously costly enterprise. In March of that year, he was forced out of his own firm for failing to cover large debts to Wells Fargo, its major creditor, which took over his entire operation. A year later, just days before the Civil War began, the government awarded the postal contract to the renamed Overland Mail Company, which operated on the more northerly, soon-to-be-safer “Central” route, from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Placerville, California.
Winifred Gallagher, How the Post Office Created America, p. 127
Brigham Young and Zion
Brigham Young was a realist. Texas was out of the question; it was square in the path of empire, and if the Saints could not survive among Illini and Missourians, they had still less chance to survive among Texans. California was no better. The notion of settling at or near the mouth of the Colorado (we shall see Cooke suggesting it to the Mormon Battalion) was considered and rejected. Israel would not be a buffer state between the Americans and the Mexicans, though the idea of maintaining an outpost there seems to have developed very early. By 1846 it was clear that northern California was also a Gentile terminus; a large emigration was preparing for it and anti-Christ in person, ex-Governor Boggs, was going to go there. The golden shore, as either an independent republic or a territory of the United States, was certain to fill up with Israel’s enemies, and this fact was quite clear to Young before the migration started. The two hundred and thirty-eight Mormons who sailed with Sam Brannan in the Brooklyn on February 4, the day when the first ferries crossed to Iowa, expected that the main body of the Church would join them west of the Sierra, and many of the Battalion, who started west six months later, shared that belief. But even before the Brooklyn sailed, Young was thinking of its company as only an outpost – which, in the San Joaquin Valley, is what it became.
It may have been Stephen A. Douglas who initiated the idea of Vancouver Island. That was a politician’s happy solution but Young appears not to have taken it seriously, except that another outpost there would be a good thing and it could be colonized with convert, Pillar of Cloud 9I from the British Isles. (As late as November, ’46, the Church was memorializing the British government for help in establishing such a colony. Nothing came of it.) Douglas shifted and recommended Oregon, which the Saints had considered much more seriously. But Oregon also was impossible – whether as the United States or as the Republic of the West which Daniel Webster and so many others envisioned. Young had rejected it before 1846. Oregon also was square in the path of empire, it had ten times as many Americans as California, five times as large an emigration was preparing to go there in ’46, and it would certainly come under the flag.
Mormon legend has it that when, on July 24, 1847, Brigham Young, weak with mountain fever, came jolting in a white-top over the last summit in the road down Emigration Canyon and gazed over the sagebrush flat toward the Dead Sea, he spoke with the power of revelation and said “This is the place.” Brigham, however, held it irreligious to call upon the Lord until you had first exhausted your own resources. Long before that day he had determined on Great Salt Lake Valley. He had, in fact, decided on that general vicinity sometime in 1845.
Throughout 1845 the destination of the Saints was constantly discussed by the leaders who would have to manage the emigration, and they made the most minute study of the available literature. It is not clear that Fremont’s second report was decisive. They used it with exceeding care to rough out an itinerary, but they could get little more from his account of the Great Salt Lake country than that the lake did not have the mysterious whirlpool which legend attributed to it, that its islands were barren, and that the canyons which ran down to it from the east were well timbered. It seems likely that Young knew more details about Zion by the end of 1845 than Fremont had observed there. Certainly he knew much more by the end of 1846.
It is clear that Young had decided on the Great Basin, rather than Oregon or coastal California, by midsummer of 1845. It was an inevitable decision: there was, in fact, nowhere else to go. Israel could survive only if left to itself long enough for Young to organize and develop its institutions. That meant that it must find a place where the migrating Americans would not be tempted to settle. That, in turn, meant the Great Basin. But also, as Young seems to have understood quite clearly, Israel must be near enough the course of empire to sustain itself by trading with the migration. And that meant the northern portion of the Great Basin. It meant, in fact, one of no more than three places, Bear River Valley, Cache 92 The Year of Decision: 18 46 Valley, and Great Salt Lake Valley. All three places seem to have been in his mind in ’45, and there are still references to Bear River Valley late in the autumn of ’46, but the actual choice proved to be between the other two. Later we shall see the choice being made.
In March of 1846, then, Young and the Apostles knew that Zion was to rise somewhere in the Great Basin. They knew that certainly; they were less clear about the site of Zion and still less certain when they could get there. As late as January 1, 1847, at Winter Quarters, Hosea Stout, who was in the confidence of the Twelve, heard that a pioneer company was to push out from the Niobrara River to the headwaters of the Yellowstone to put in a crop. (Faulty information: crops could not be raised there.) Such a pioneer party, to go , ahead of the Church proper and select Zion and put in crops, was discussed throughout 1845 at Nauvoo, and actual preparations for it were made, in the expectation that it could start late that summer. After the Saints began leaving Sugar Creek in March of ’46, another call for such a party was made. ( Actually the company under the unruly individualist Bishop George Miller did pull ahead of the main body with an intention of going all the way, as we shall see.) But neither Brigham nor his counselors could determine, at the beginning, whether any could cross to the mountains this year, or if any could, how many could be spared. It was the principal question to be answered while Israel toiled through the mud.”
Bernard De Voto, The Year of Decision, 1846, p. 90-92
Windmills
In the eastern p0rtion of the United States the old-fashioned dug well was common to every home that did not have access to a living spring. It was from eight to thirty feet deep and was curbed with stone or brick or perhaps was without curbing. Water might be drawn from it “hand over hand” but usually it was drawn by means of a pulley suspended over the well by a heavy crossbeam attached to upright timbers. . . .
West of the ninety-eighth meridian comparatively tew such wells are found. The water lies too deep and the soil is too hard. The wells are sunk by drill, a hole six inches in diameter and anywhere from thirty to three hundred feet deep, and walled by sheet-iron casing. The bucket, also of metal, is nearly four feet long and three inches in diameter and is fitted with a float valve in the bottom to admit the water. If anyone ever looked on the water in such a well, he did it by use of a reflecting mirror. Ordinarily the bucket furnishes the only proof of its existence, and in actual practice that proof sometimes fails. Such were the typical wells of the East and the West. In the East they were handmade with pick and shovel; in the West they were bored by itinerant well-drillers, who moved their machines about from place to place as they plied their trade. . . .
It followed from the nature of the wells in the West, particularly their depth, that men had to devise new ways of raising the water to the surface. In the beginning great hope was nourished for the prospect of artesian wells, which were found in certain favored localities in Kansas, Texas, and elsewhere. The excitement over artesian wells ran high for a time, and bonuses were offered for every such well found. Extensive boring revealed that the possibilities of water from such a source were very limited, and men then turned to ground water. Here they were confronted with great depth on the one hand and a slow delivery on the other. It was a task to raise water from fifty to two hundred feet by hand, an almost impossible task where cattle were to be watered. Furthermore, because of the small capacity of the well it was desirable to raise the water as fast as it was available and at all hours. . . .
The windmill was adopted, adapted, and developed until it met all these requirements most admirably. It could be made at a cost ranging from $1.50 up, depending on whether it were home-made or shop-made; it would deliver a small amount of water day and night as long as the wind was blowing. Within a short time after its introduction the windmill became the unmistakable and universal sign of human habitation throughout the Great Plains area. As before stated, it was the windmill that made it possible for the land to be fenced in small areas and for the stockmen to cut their ranges up into pastures.”
Walter Prescott Webb, The Great Plains, p. 334-336
Mile 1464: Black Rock Station
[Not: The site is between Mile 1463 and 1464]
“Also known as Butte, or Desert Station, it was named for the black basalt outcropping just to the north of the road and the monument. Sharp says it was also known as Rock House. Initially called Butte or Desert Station, the rock structure was constructed as part of trail improvements undertaken by the Overland Mail Company after acquiring the Express in July 1861.
Little is known about Blackrock station, or its usage possibly due to it being a non-contract station. A structure of native black stone was apparently built here in 1861, while other structures in the area are suggested. Reconnaissance and infrared photographs have also failed to produce any evidence. Only a vandalized monument marks its general location.
Informants say the station site lies west and north of the volcanic outcrop known geographically as Blackrock. The old Lincoln Highway (1913-1927) first encountered and utilized the old Overland Route about ¼ mile east of the monument. This routing was used as an alternate to the main road during wet weather. http://www.expeditionutah.com/featured-trails/pony-express-trail/utah-pony-express-stations/
BLACK ROCK STATION
Fike and Headley list this station thirteen and three-fourths miles from Dugway. Several sources identify Black Rock or Blackrock as a station between Dugway and Fish Springs, although Fike and Headley add Butte and Desert Station as alternative names. The exact location of the station, originally known as Butte or Desert, remains unknown. The Overland Mail Company may have erected a stone structure near the Blackrock volcanic formation after July 1861, but its connection with the Pony Express is uncertain because it did not appear on the 1861 mail contract. A damaged monument marks the general area of the station site.
“[E]migrants ‘had a horror of being buried without a coffin,’ but this dismal piece of furniture was too cumbersome to take along ‘just in case.’ While still within reach of timber, along creeks in eastern Kansas, crude coffins could be constructed. Out on the Plains a ‘rude box’ might be made from tail gates or packing boxes, but this source was soon gone, and the departed was fortunate if he was wrapped in so much as a blanket. . . .
The graves were promptly invaded by wild animals. Succeeding emigrants were greeted, not only with scattered bones, buttons, and bits of clothing, but hands, feet, and various other parts of the human anatomy in varying stages of decomposition, with ‘prairie wolves howling over their loathsome repast.’
Horrified by the desecration and havoc wrought by wild animals, the emigrants experimented with methods of protecting the mortal remains, covering and lining the grave where possible with rocks, stone slabs, or timbers. . . .
[G]raves were not always marked. Polly Purcell recalled that Indians robbed emigrant graves. To forestall this practice, efforts were made to conceal graves by driving back and forth over them, in some cases going so far as to replace sod, prickly pear, and other vegetation. . . .In 1849 and later . . . Indians had a healthy respect for epidemics and left the graves to the mournful coyote.”
Merrill J. Mattes, The Great Platte River Road, p. 88-89
Confederate Sympathy in California
Now to turn once more to the potential dangers that made the California crisis a reality. About three-eighths of the population were of southern descent and solidly united in sympathy for the Confederate states. This vigorous minority included upwards of sixteen thousand Knights of the Golden Circle, a pro-Confederate secret organization that was active and dangerous; in all the doubtful states in winning over to the southern cause those who feebly protested loyalty to the Union but who opposed war. Many of these ” knights ” were prosperous and substantial citizens who, working under the guise of their local respectability, exerted a profound influence. Here then, at the outset, was a vigorous and not a small minority, whose influence was greatly out of proportion to their numbers because of their zeal; and who would have seized the balance of power unless held in check by an aroused Union sentiment and military intimidation.
Glenn D. Bradley, The Story of the Pony Express, p. 79-80
Noisome Lunch Spot
“Going five miles more [along the Lassen Trail in 1849] the company nooned at a place where others had done the same. One may wonder why, in a country thus lacking in water and shade, people should customarily pass the noon hour at the same spot. Possibly it is merely another illustration of the gregariousness of man. This particular place was noisome. Around and about it lay the carcasses of sixty-six oxen and a mule. The oxen, Bruff noted, often lay in groups close to an abandoned wagon, as if still in hope that men would care for them.”
George R. Stewart, The California Trail, p. 280
Yoking Oxen
When Ford demonstrates the historical method for yoking a well-trained team, he places his oxen—in this example, Thor and Zeus—side by side in the driving position. Standing beside the team, he tells the ox on the left, or nigh side, “Move your head, Thor,” and Thor responds by swinging and holding his head far to the left. With the nigh ox’s head out of the way, Ford steps in front and places the beam over the neck of Zeus, who is standing on the right, or of side. He lifts the other end of the yoke up over the nigh ox’s neck and tells him, “Move your head, Thor,” and Thor returns his head to the natural forward position. The beam now rests on the team’s necks. Ford fts the bow under the neck of the of ox, Zeus, and secures it with a pin, then repeats the process with Thor. “This process is done very quickly and is very spectacular for the novice to watch,” he says, “since it shows the degree of exact obedience the properly trained ox team has, and it is done with a surprisingly small amount of effort on the part of the drover.”
Dixon Ford and Lee Kreutzer, "Oxen: Engines of the Emigration," Overland Journal, V. 33. No. 1 (2015), p. 8-9
Cholera in Independence, MO
“The Asiatic cholera brought along by steamboat passengers from St. Louis was particularly deadly around Independence, and graves multiplied. This, coupled with the rivalry of neighboring Westport and the advantages of going farther upriver by steamer, led to the decline of Independence in the fifties as a significant jump-off.”
Merrill J. Mattes, The Great Platte River Road, p. 108
1935 Pony Reride
Yeah, son, says David, this old shack is where Mark Twain and Sir Richard Burton stayed as well as the Pony riders. Back in 1935 it became an important part of my own history. I was to ride in the Pony Express Association Race when my horse got kicked in the knee. I got discouraged. My sister offered to let me ride her horse, but I didn’t want to take a girl’s animal into the race. I did, though, and I set a record. I galloped ten miles in thirty-five minutes and one second. I can’t even get on a horse today and this old shed is just filled with junk.
Jerry Ellis, Bareback!, p. 230
American Empire
“They had done that, the people of this book: they had brought in that empire and made that war inevitable. The soldiers who followed Kearny to Santa Fe and on to California, Doniphan’s farm boys and . the Mormons slogging along with Cooke under their canopy of dust and miracle, Brigham Young’s dispossessed people, and Owl Russell, Edwin Bryant, Jessy Thornton, the Doriners. The wagon trains pulling out from Independence in· the mud and coming finally to the Willamette or the Sacramento. They had shifted the center of gravity of the nation forever.”
Bernard De Voto, The Year of Decision, 1846, p. 498
Sound on the Goose
“In those early days there was no law in the city, not even a Vigilance Committee, and the sporting fraternity, holding all together, and being well armed, ruled without question. They were all ‘Sound on the goose,’ or in other words, strong pro-slavery men, and their misdeeds notwithstanding, were in a measure popular with the rest of the community.”
R.H. Williams, With the Border Ruffians, p. 75-76
The Oregon Trail
“There is such thing anymore as the Oregon Trail. There never was a single Oregon Trail. After Fort Kearny on the Platte in eastern Nebraska, some wagon trains hugged the north side of the Platte along the edge of the Sand Hills, and some took the south banks. To avoid each other’s dust and to hunt for game, the wagons fanned out widely across the prairie all day. The trains generally followed a set of central ‘ruts,’ or the rivers, for navigation, but the trail west was often five miles wide on either side of the river, or as much as twelve miles total, including both banks. By the 1850s, western Wyoming was a sprawling network of wagon tracks and shortcuts—the Lander Cutoff, the Farson Cutoff, the Sublette Cutoff, the Hams Fork Cutoff—that extended more than a hundred miles north and south, all of it considered the Oregon Trail. By some counts there are as many as forty cutoffs and alternate branches from the main ruts along the 2,100-mile route. The ‘trail’ was really just an aggregated landscape that the pioneers followed across the plains and then the high deserts.”
Rinker Buck, The Oregon Trail, p. 55
Little Blue Telegraph
“The Little Blue had a telegraph style of its own. Wrote G.A. Smith, ‘Thousands of names are written on trees by emigrants.’ Benjamin Gatton found not only trees ‘skinned and written upon, giving names of individuals and companies,’ but ‘all trees near the road covered with cards, some of paper and some of boards.’ B.R. Biddle was constantly passing by notices written on paper, elk horn, and boards, ‘so that we are appraised of all going on ahead of us.’ Gatton said that these informal ‘postoffices, as they are called, we found at all the crossings.'”
Merrill J. Mattes, The Great Platte River Road, p. 154-155
Utah Gets News of Coming War
“On July 24, 1857, the Saints held their annual celebration of Pioneers’ Day at the head of Big Cottonwood Canyon, some twenty-five miles southeast of Salt Lake City and 10,000 feet above sea level. . . . Suddenly four travel-worn men, one of whom had ridden the long road from Eastern Kansas, rushed upon the scene with the information that a new governor, with a large military escort, was on his way to establish Gentile rule over Utah. . . .the grimmy couriers, it would seem, had played the part of Pheidippides before the battle of Marathon. . . .
Whatever warning the Saints may have had, the fact remains that after seven turbulent years relations between the Territory and the nation seemed about to dissolve in civil war.”
Norman F. Furniss, The Mormon Conflict, 1850-1859, p. 60-61
Stamps
The new stamps also made correspondence far more convenient. Previously, letters of one or more sheets had been folded up, sealed shut with wax or an adhesive wafer, addressed on the “cover” side, and taken to a post office. The postmaster calculated the postage and jotted it on a corner of the cover, perhaps adding the date and name of his town or office. . . .
Most of the time, however, the cost was paid by the recipient, who had to come to the post office to fetch it. He or she might well decide that, unless it was a love letter, the message wasn’t worth the expense and return it to the postmaster. This labor-intensive system naturally generated a huge backlog of unwanted mail and dead letters. In one of many schemes to avoid postage, a traveler promised loved ones that he or she would send a letter upon reaching a particular destination; when it arrived, the reassured recipients would refuse it. Indeed, Zachary Taylor did not realize that the Whigs had nominated him to be their presidential candidate in 1848 because their letter to that effect sat in his local post office amid a pile of mail that he had refused to redeem.
Stamps revolutionized this cumbersome mailing process. Postage was standardized and prepaid by the sender, so recipients were no longer primed to reject all but the most important letters. (As a result, the volume of commercial solicitations, advertisements, religious tracts, and get-rich-quick promotions soared along with that of personal correspondence.) Moreover, stamps came in sheets that, although not yet perforated, were conveniently backed with adhesive and ready to stick on covers, which themselves were soon rendered obsolete by manufactured envelopes.
Winifred Gallagher, How the Post Office Created America, p. 93
Purpose of the Postal System
“The postal system was founded, and form many years was conducted, upon the principle that it should be self-supporting. However, in the fifties there were many Congressmen who did not subscribe to this doctrine. They did not look upon the Post Office Department as a mere business undertaking which must needs be self-supporting. To them the postal service, especially in its western lines, was and should be, primarily a pioneer of civilization; marking the trails and keeping them open to travel, encouraging settlement, and acting as the precursor of the railroad.”
LeRoy Hafen, The Overland Mail: 1849–1869, p. 129
Post Offices
“Continued population increase and settlement of Oregon, California, and Utah sustained a growing necessity for an east-west mail service. In response to these migrations and population increases, post offices were officially established in San Francisco (1848) and Salt Lake City (1849). Thereafter, the federal government let contracts to companies to provide east-west mail service.
For the next decade or so, vital questions regarding delivery routes (ocean versus overland), frequency of service (monthly or semi-monthly), speed of delivery (number of days for delivery), and costs were answered through pragmatic means—trial and error.”
Anthony Godfrey, Historic Research Study Pony Express National Historic Trail, p. 5-6
The Cherokee Trail
“But during July [1862] an important change in the overland mail route was effected. This was the transfer of the line from the North Platte road [via South Pass] to the Cherokee Trail. . . .
The Cherokee Trail probably derived its name from a party of Cherokees headed by Captain Evans of Arkansas, who made their way to California via this route, having begun their journey April 20, 1849 . . . This party however was not the first to take this route. General Ashley in going to the Green River rendezvous in 1825 took this trail Stansbury was guided over this trail eastward in 1850 by James Bridger.”
LeRoy Hafen, The Overland Mail: 1849–1869, p. 230 (and note 490)
Move to Nebraska City
Since the volume of goods to be delivered in Utah in 1858 was too great for Leavenworth facilities, Nebraska City was chosen as another loading and starting point. Alexander Majors moved his family and retinue of slaves there from Westport, and Russell closed his home in Lexington to build a bigger one in Leavenworth.
Settle and Settle, "Napoleon of the West," Annals of Wyoming Vol. 32, No.1, April 1960, p. 23
Attack by Lot Smith
“After we had been here about a week, Oct. 4, I think it was, Lot Smith, a Mormon captain with two hundred mounted men came riding into camp, stopped awhile, then rode off toward Green River. About seven miles out, he met one of the Company’s trains. He stopped them and ordered them to go back. The boss, seeing that they had the advantage of him, said that his cattle were nearly worn out, and that he would have to rest them before he could go far. Smith allowed them to camp and rest up, and then he and his men rode on. When he was out of sight they yoked up and came on to Ham’s Fork.
Smith reached Green River just as another train had unyoked, and drew their guns and demanded their arms. The boss, seeing they had no show, surrendered. Smith’s men set fire to their train. The boss plead for their private property-clothing, bedding, guns-and the mess wagon with their provisions which they finally allowed them, but burned the twenty-five wagons of government goods before their eyes. Smith then ordered the men to take good care of the cattle till he came back after them.
He and his men went from here to the Sandy and came upon two trains close together, camped for dinner, the next day, and burned the wagons, allowing the men their private property and mess wagons and cattle to haul them back to the States. They drove the rest of the cattle back to Green River, where the others were, and left them there. The boss of the Green River train, with his assistant, came to Ham’s Fork the next day.”
William Clark, "A Trip Across the Plains in 1857," Iowa Journal of History and Politics, 20 (1922), p. 192-193
Preemption
What a farm family wanted most was a government policy that would permit a farmer to “squat” on a piece of land. that is, to build a house and clear the trees, and then after the region had been surveyed, to purchase his land at the minimum auction price without being outbid by the speculator. In 1842 the first “Preemption Bill” was passed. It protected the farmer who had made improvements. It also whetted his appetite for free land. If a farmer improved new land. “homesteaded,” was he not performing a national service and benefiting the national economy by bringing the wilderness under cultivation?
Lillian Schlissel, Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey, p. 20
Danger of Younger Braves
“‘I guess a traveler in those days wouldn’t have been found dead here, would he?'” Bill ventured.
“‘No, kid,'” said our informant, “‘not dead probably, because the Kansas Indians didn’t do much killing; but if he happened to meet a bunch of young Pawnee braves out on a prowl, he would sure as fate be left afoot, and mebbe naked, to get back as best he could. That was their idea of a joke.'”
But it wasn’t exactly a joke, even to the Indians. Oh, of course, they enjoyed it as an entertaining and profitable incident, but it was really a matter of business. And that, I have since found out, was why a small party of young braves was more dangerous to encounter than a much larger party under an old chief.
They were trying to establish themselves, both financially and in the matter of prestige. A young Indian had nothing to start with. Emphatically he had to bring home his own bacon in order to give suitable presents to his bride’s father and to set up housekeeping. The regular proceeding was to take it away from some other tribe, but a few lone white men were a bonanza. They had better horses, so that it took fewer animals to make a suitable exchange for a nice young squaw. The warpath, for a young Indian, was almost in the nature of a business venture.
We have never been students of Indian customs and are only giving the point of view of the trail journalists; but there there seems to have been a wide gulf the headstrong young fry, who presumably had no dignity to injure, and the wise men, elders, and chieftains. These latter might demand tribute in person, but they are not commonly reported as coming to beg. They often, it is said, counseled good conduct and moderation in dealing with the Americans, and less often enforced it, and a tribe traveling under the personal supervision of its chief always, in peacetime, much safer to meet than a scattered band of young braves.
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 23 and 61
Mormon Emigrants From Eurpoe
Between 1847 and 1868, the last year of overland emigration by trail, nearly 50,000 British, Scandinavian, and German converts were pumped along that pipeline into Salt Lake City. During the peak year of 1855 it was said that a third of all the emigrants from the British Isles to the United States were Mormons.
Wallace Stegner, The Gathering of Zion, p 9-10
Annual Mail to Oregon in the 1830s
“This terrible inaccessibility is perhaps bet illustrated by the communications that passed back and forth between Narcissa [Whitman] and her family during the years just following the birth of her daughter and the little girl’s death by drowning at the age of twenty-seven months. By the first travelers’ caravan Narcissa sent word of her birth; months later, by another caravan, she sent for several pairs of little shoes. Then tragedy struck, and the baby girl was buried. The next westbound traders’ party brought congratulations, and the following year the shoes arrived. The grief-stricken mother was forced to wait until a third season for her letters of condolence.”
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 232
Mormon Stations Along the Trail
But Brigham did not, as he had intended, send Jones back to manage the Y.X. Express station now established at Devil’s Gate. He said he guessed Dan had had about enough of Devil’s Gate for any one man. And anyway, by that time it was midsummer, and by midsummer all of the stations ambitiously projected to give the Saints substantial control of the trail from the Missouri to the mountains would have seemed precarious. A few, particularly those at Fort Bridger, at Deer Creek, and at Genoa, a Mormon colony deliberately planted on the Loup Fork as a permanent way station on the model of Garden Grove and Mt. Pisgah, were already well established, along with others of a more tentative kind.
Wallace Stegner, The Gathering of Zion, p 273
Whites and Indians
Though frontier race relations were complex and even free African Americans were unarguably second-class citizens in comparison to whites, many people ultimately recognized only two kinds of people: “whites” and Indians. The white category included Caucasians of European origin, blacks, Hispanics, and Asians. Indians regarded them all with antipathy, just as blacks and whites often feared and hated various aboriginal peoples with equal vigor regardless of tribal or band affiliation. African American pioneers, whether free or slave, were part of, not distinct from, the Euro American or white cultural front engaged in conquering the landscape and native inhabitants of the American West. Though the Rock Ranch slave’s skin was black, as far as the Sioux and Cheyenne were concerned, he was white, and he was an enemy.
Todd Guenther, “‘Could These Bones Be From a Negro?’” Overland Journal 19, no. 2 (Summer 2001), 50
Milch Cows
“A yoke of milch cows was often included in the ox team, led behind the wagon, or driven loose with the extra stock. There are records of favorite cows which gave milk clear to Oregon and to the Humboldt Sink in western Nevada. The cows were milked morning and night. The morning’s supply was placed in a covered bucket and swung behind the wagon. At night, without further ado, it was removed in the shape of sweet buttermilk and butter. The night’s milking was used for the evening meal.”
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 16
First Western Mail Service
“The Mormons’ [who’d settled the Salt Lake area in summer 1847] need to maintain contact with their missionary organizations in the States and Europe provided the impetus for America’s first Western mail service.”
Dan Rottenberg, Death of a Gunfighter, p.58 (citing Settle and Settle, Empire on Wheels
Nevada Desert
“One sometimes thinks of the desert as a great expanse of barren, shifting sand, but the Nevada desert is quite different. It is broken by almost a hundred separate mountain chains, all running north and south, and the arid stretches between are dotted with sagebrush and greasewood. It’s few rivers have no outlet to the sea, but spread into great marshes before being swallowed by the thirsty soil. Nearly 500 miles of the Pony Express route lay through this desolate and uninhabited [sic] wilderness.”
Ralph Moody, Riders of the Pony Express, p. 88
Mile 546: Devil’s Dive
” Elston and a detachment were sent down ahead of the train to where it would pass a very bad piece of road, a few miles east of Julesburg ; there was at this point a very bad arroyo coming in from the south, and the hills of the plateau protruded north to the river-bed, obliterating the valley at that point. This place at the arroyo went by the name of ‘The Devil’s Dive.’ When the train had passed that, it reached open country, and could see where it was going.”
Eugene Ware, Indian Wars of 1864, p. 339-40
Desert Springs
“While all is green and fresh on the summits of the mountains, in the surrounding deserts all is salt, alkali, sterility, and desolation. In the early days, when thousands on thousands of persons were annually crossing the Plains to California and Oregon, hundreds perished because they did not understand the country through which they were passing. In looking for water they always went to the lowest places they could find, as they were in the habit of doing at home in the Eastern and Western States, whereas they should have left the desert valleys and climbed to the tops of the highest of the surrounding hills.
“On all of the mountain ranges springs of excellent water are found, and in places, small brooks; but the water sinks in the beds of the ravines and is lost long before it reaches the level of the deserts. The Indians always travel along the tops of the mountain ranges in summer. On their trails are put up signs that tell where springs can be found. These are small monuments of rock, capped with a stone, the longest part of which points in the direction of the nearest spring.
“Toward this spring are turned the long points of all the cap-stones on the monuments, until it is reached. Passing by the spring, the index-stones all point back to it until there is a nearer spring ahead, when the pointers are all turned in that direction.
“On finding the first monument, after striking the Indian trail, one may thus know which end of it to take to the nearest water. In traveling along a dry canon, where all was parched and dusty, I have sometimes seen upon one of its steep banks a monument, and, climbing up to it, have found the index pointing directly up the hill, where all seemed as dry as in the ravine below. But taking the direction indicated, it would not be long before a bunch of willows would be seen, and among these a spring was sure to be found. Not knowing the meaning of these little stone monuments, the early prospectors made a business of kicking them over wherever they found them, and so destroyed what would have been a useful thing to them had they understood it.”
Dan DeQuille, History of the Big Bonanza, p. 278-79
Zachary Taylor
“Taylor spent a week at Point Isabel building the earthworks he should have finished a month before, then, on May 7, started back to relieve the fort. His West Pointers begged him not to take the massive train, which could be brought up later in complete safety, but he had no patience with textbook soldiers … Well, what did he have? A sound principle: attack. A less valuable one which was to serve him just as well in this war: never retreat. Total ignorance of the art of war. And an instinct, if not for command, at least for leadership. He had been hardened in years of petty frontier duty, he had no nerves and nothing recognizable as intelligence, he was afraid of nothing, and he was too unimaginative to know when he was being licked, which was fortunate since he did not know how to maneuver troops. Add to this a dislike of military forms and procedures and a taste for old clothes and you have a predestinate candidate for the Presidency. The army and even some of the West Pointers worshiped him.”
Bernard De Voto, The Year of Decision, 1846, p. 193
Mile 278: Spring Ranch
“We then resumed our journey over a desert, waterless save after rain, for twenty-three miles; it is the divide between the Little Blue and the Platte rivers, a broken table-land rising gradually toward the west, with, at this season, a barren soil of sand and clay. As the evening approached, a smile from above lit up into absolute beauty the homely features of the world below. The sweet commune with nature in her fairest hours denied to the sons of cities—who must contemplate her charms through a vista of brick wall, or over a foreground of chimney-pots—consoled us amply for all the little hardships of travel. Strata upon strata of cloud-banks, burnished to golden red in the vicinity of the setting sun, and polished to dazzling silvery white above, lay piled half way from the horizon to the zenith, with a distinct strike toward a vanishing point in the west, and dipping into a gateway through which the orb of day slowly retired. Overhead floated in a sea of amber and yellow, pink and green, heavy purple nimbi, apparently turned upside down their convex bulges below, and their horizontal lines high in the air while in the east black and blue were so curiously blended that the eye could not distinguish whether it rested upon darkening air or upon a lowering thunder-cloud. We enjoyed these beauties in silence; not a soul said, ‘Look there!’ or ‘How pretty !’
At 9 P.M., reaching ‘Thirty-two-mile Creek,’ we were pleasantly surprised to find an utter absence of the Irishry.”
Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 38
Hurt and the Mormons
“More important than Burr’s encounters with the Saints in Utah was the concurrent reappearance of the quarrel over the Church’s policy toward the Indians. Previous agents, especially Jacob Holeman, had collided with Young on this matter and had helped broadcast the conviction that the people of Utah were seeking to subvert the Indians. Garland Hurt, the new agent, brought this situation to a head. . . .His opposition to their Indian policy was more determined than that of any other man in this period, and he further antagonized the Church by winning a wide influence among the tribes under his jurisdiction. In addition, unlike many federal officers, he did not react in panic to the anathemas of the Saints’ leaders; instead he continued his work after his Gentile colleagues had fled the Territory in 1857 and left only when the emotions of the excited populace seemed to threatend his life. . . .
Until June 1857 Hurt experienced no great difficulty in the territory and remained after the departure of Drummond, Burr, and the other officials . . . But when [the Mormons] learned that President Buchanan had ordered an expedition to Utah, the Mormons resolved that Gentiles in their settlements should not be allowed to remain in a position to weaken them at a time when they faced invasion.”
Norman F. Furniss, The Mormon Conflict, 1850-1859, p. 47-48
Constructing a Cache
“‘A proper place being selected, which is usually near the border of some stream, where the bank is high enough to be in no danger of inundation, a round hole two feet in diameter is carried down to a depth of three feet, when it is gradually enlarged, and deepened until it becomes sufficiently capacious to contain whatever is destined to be stored in it.’ They covered the bottom and sides ‘with sticks to prevent the bales from touching the ground, as otherwise they would soon contract moisture, become mouldy, and rot.’ When everything was ‘snugly deposited and stowed in,’ the trappers sealed the cache with ‘valueless skins.’ They covered the surface with beaten earth to prevent the ground from settling or sinking. The displaced soil was ‘carefully gathered up and thrown into the stream, and the cache finally completed, by replacing stones and tufts of grass, so as to present the same uniform appearance.’ Goods stowed in such a cache in a hard clay bluff would ‘keep [for] years without damage’—provided the cache was truly waterproof.”
Will Bagley, South Pass: Gateway to a Continent, Location 798 [Kindle Edition]
Pony Express Stations
From St. Joseph to Fort Kearny, Fort Bridger to Rush Valley, and from Carson City to Sacramento, most of the stations were located in fairly good country and were reasonably comfortable. All others were situated in deserts where conditions were unbelievably harsh and difficult. Some of these were constructed of adobe bricks in the middle of endless, dreary wastes, and others of loose stones in isolated, treeless canyons and unnamed hills. Still others were mere holes dug in the hillside with crude additions in front.
All of them, except those most favorably located, had dirt floors; window glass was unknown; the beds were pole bunks built against the walls, and the furniture consisted of boxes, benches, or anything else the ingenuity of the occupants could contrive. Most of them had water nearby, such as it was, and the stable for horses was only a few feet distant from the quarters of the men.
The food provided the stations was not of a quality designed to tickle the palate of an epicurean. It consisted of cured meats, mostly bacon, dried fruits, beans, bread baked upon the spot, molasses, pickles, corn meal when it could be had, and coffee. Fresh meat was a rarity, even in regions where wild animals were numerous, because nobody had time to hunt. Sometimes the wagon trains, which appeared about once a month with supplies, brought along a few delicacies, but these were never plentiful. Those trains also hauled hay and grain for the horses, and space, was always at a premium. Nobody thought of stinting them, no matter what the cost might be, or how short rations for the men were.
Settle and /Settle, Saddles and Spurs, 116-117
Freighter Sleeping Accommodations
“The sleeping accommodations for t he crew varied with different outfits; in fact, the arrangements were left usually for the men to work out for themselves. Some ccarried tents which added considerable comfort, but the surest and driest bed was in a big freight wagon. If it was loaded with coffee, rice or the like , so much the better , for the bed was more even. But the most common practice was to sleep on the ground under the wagons the weather permitting. The ‘bed was mother earth, a rubber blanket and buffalo robe the mattress, two pairs of blankets the covering. Heaven’s canopy the roof; the stars our silent sentinels.'”
Floyd Bresee, Overland Freighting in the Platte Valley 1850–1870, p. 57
California Mail in 1859
“By the late 1850s the gold rush had transformed California into the richest state in the Union, if not the world, and nearly 400,000 people had flocked there from all over the globe. Yet it took three weeks for a letter to reach California from the East Coast.”
Dan Rottenberg, Death of a Gunfighter, pp 8-9
Pony Bob Halsam's Ride
“The first Pony Express rider going east after the attack upon Williams Station was “Pony Bob” Haslam, who set out for [from?] Friday’s Station on May 9. If he was not aware of the outbreak when he started, he quickly learned about it when he arrived in Carson City. Since the volunteers had taken all the horses to chase the Pah Utes, there was no change for him. Scores of men were frantically at work fortifying Penrod Hotel and everybody was armed. After feeding his own mount he rode on to Buckland’s, 75 miles away. When he arrived he found W. C. Marley, the station keeper, and Johnson Richardson, the rider who was to relieve him, in something of a panic.
Richardson refused to take the mochila on and Marley offered Haslam $50 to continue with it. This he agreed to do not because of the bonus, but because he felt it was his duty to do so. Changing horses he pounded on to Sand Springs where he changed again. Making still another change at Cold Spring he arrived safely at Smith’s Creek, having covered 190 miles without a rest.
Jay G. Kelley took the mochila and raced eastward with the news of the tragedy at William’s Station. He made his regular changes along the way, briefly told his story, and pushed on to Ruby Valley, his home station. From there both mochila and news were rushed eastward. Every rider along the route, knowing the necessity for both reaching Salt Lake City at the earliest possible moment, outdid himself in an effort to make the best possible time.
Eight hours after arriving at Smith’s Creek, Haslam turned back with the west bound mochila, possibly on May 12, the day of the battle at Pyramid Lake. At Cold Spring he found that the station had been burnt, the station keeper killed, and the horses driven off. After watering and feeding his own horse, he rode on. Upon reaching Sand Springs he found only the stock tender there whom he persuaded to accompany him for fear he would be killed if left alone.
At Carson Sink he found fifteen men, probably the most of them survivors of the battle at Pyramid Lake, barricaded in the station. Leaving them to hold the place he rode on to Buckland’s, arriving only three and a half hours late.
Marley was so overjoyed to see him back alive that he doubled the bonus promised him. After resting an hour and a half he sped on to Carson City, which he found a city of mourning for those slain at Pyramid Lake. He reported to Bolivar Roberts, then rode on to Friday’s Station. When he arrived he had covered 380 miles and had been in the saddle thirty-six hours.
Settle and Settle, Saddles and Spurs, p. 150-151
Freight Wagon Load
“Western merchants were happy to pay ten dollars per hundred pounds, and each wagon could carry a five-thousand-pound load . . . In some cases the cost of shipping an item exceeded the value of the item itself.”
Dan Rottenberg, Death of a Gunfighter, p. 63-64
Bridge Across the North Platte
“In 1851 Jean Baptiste Richard, a French mountain man, built a log toll bridge over the North Platte. In the spring of 1852, the snowmelt-charged river slapped it aside. Richard came back and built a better bridge, and soon put the Mormon ferries out of business. Richard and his partners had no need to go to California. They found gold in thousands of emigrant pockets right on the banks of the North Platte.”
Keith Heyer Meldahl, Hard Road West, p. 89
Night Herd
“Some operators, seeking to reduce the size of their payroll, eliminated the extra hands and extra oxen and required the regular drivers to perform the night guard duties. Night herd was the most heartily detested duty a teamster could be called on to perform. One of them said, “It is impossible for anyone who has never had the experience, to realize the overpowering sense of sleepiness that comes over one after midnight, particularly after a strenuous day of yoking and unyoking the animals of his team, driving them to water, and walking beside them on the road when the train was moving.’ . . .
An experienced man on night herd would pick out a reliable old ox and lie down against him; thus, anything that disturbed the animal would rouse the man. On a cold night the body heat of the ox kept the man comfortable.”
Henry Pickering Walker, The Wagonmasters (1966), p. 118-119
Bullboat
“Our next obstacle was the Walnut Creek, which we found, however, provided with a corduroy bridge; formerly it was a dangerous ford, rolling down heavy streams of melted snow, and then crossed by means of the ‘bouco’ or coracle, two hides sewed together, distended like a leather tub with willow rods, and poled or paddled.”
Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 21
The Politics of Mail Service to California
“Like every political question in America in the late 1850s, mail service to California was eclipsed by the slavery question. Although Americans in California, Oregon, and Utah repeatedly pleaded for better mail service, Congressmen couldn’t agree on a transcontinental mail route. Northerners and southerners each insisted on a route through their respective sections in anticipation of the very real prospect that the Union would split. Their stalemate, meanwhile, encouraged another prospect: that without reliable mail, California itself would split off from the Union.”
Dan Rottenberg, Death of a Gunfighter, p. 103
Meeting Between Slade and Virginia
“The exact place and date of the meeting between Virginia Slade, nee Virginia Dale, and Jack Slade is not known, but from tracing actual dates of events in Slade’s tempestuous career, we do know that it was sometime in the early part of 1860 that she became known as ‘Mrs. Slade.’ At that time she rescued Jack from a band of his enemies who were holding him captive in a log hut, awaiting the arrival of the gang’s chieftains to decide on the manner of Jack’s death. Jack asked to see his wife, to tell her farewell.
Virginia, who was an expert markswoman, equally handy with revolvers and rifles, arrived on a fast horse. She was wearing a worried look and a voluminous skirt. Jack asked plaintively to ‘see his wife alone.’ The guards granted this request, and she flew to his arms. As he enfolded her caressingly, he felt the comforting bulge of two five-shooters in the pockets of her flowing gown. Jack still had his own two guns. Why the guards had been so careless is a matter of guesswork—maybe they liked the little guy! But anyway, he had them. He and Virginia rushed to the cabin door, each armed with two guns, surprised the guards, whom they kept at gun-point, jumped on Virginia’s fine, fast-moving horse, and dashed away.
Also in 1860, the Slades befriended Widow Bartholomew, whose husband, Dr. Bartholomew, had been murdered by a couple of ruthlesss ruffians.”
Virginia Rowe Towle, Vigilante Woman," p. 125-126
Dirty Water
“Strong coffee most likely was served always, and the enlightened cook with his coffee pot would waste no time in getting down to the draw for his water supply before the thirsty oxen plunged into the pool. The men endeavored to forget that in all probability another train’s cattle had waded in the water only a few hours before.”
Floyd Bresee, Overland Freighting in the Platte Valley 1850–1870, p. 49
Mile 137: Marysville/Palmetto
“Palmetto City and Marysville were adjacent settlements, the latter being one of the oldest and best known towns of northern Kansas, which had been laid out by Frank J. Marshall (Overland Stage, p. 109). When the daily stage service was instituted in 1861, the route ran west from Guittard’s to Marysville, where it crossed the Big Blue by a rope ferry (in dry weather the river could be forded here). The Pony Express station was located in a ‘small brick structure in Marysville.”
George Root, "Pike's Peak Express Companies," Part III, Kansas Historical Quarterly, Vol. 13, No. 8 (1944) p. 517, note 302
Overland Mail Road Improvements
“The year following the establishment of the Pony Express, the Southern Daily Overland Mail, which had been established in 1859 through northern Texas to California was transferred to the Central or Simpson route, its regular trips commencing on the first of July, 1861. . . .
From the date of the removal of the Southern Overland Mail to the Central route, and the establishment of the Daily Stage line, the mail facilities and means of transportation into and through the Territory began to improve rapidly. New roads were constructed and the old ones were improved, so that heavy loads of merchandise could be transported and faster time made over them. Two toll-roads were built across the Sierra; one called the Placerville, and the other the Dutch Flat, or Donner Lake route. These were wide enough so that teams could pass in the narrowest places. The overland stage ran with great regularity, and its business was conducted with promptness and dispatch.”
Thompson and West, History of Nevada (1881), pg. 105-106
Speed, Endurance, Commitment
“Though the range of these [Pony Express] stories is narrow, and the variants few, they are expressive of the public’s perception of the Pony Express. Speed, endurance, commitment. Tales of the Pony Express are dramatizations of what newspapers were writing explicitly in 1860.”
Bruce Rosenberg, The Code of the West, p. 128
Pony Express Schedule
“The time to Fort Kearny was to be 34 hours; Great Salt Lake, 124 hours; Carson City, 188 hours; Placerville, 226 hours; Sacramento City, 234 hours; and San Francisco, 240 hours. Telegraphic dispatches were to go to any place in California. from any point in the East in about 205 hours. . .
“A more complete time table appeared in the Elwood Free Press of April 7, with the following added stations: Marysville, 12 hours; Laramie, 80 hours; Bridger, 108 hours, and Camp Floyd, 128 hours.”
George Root, "Pike's Peak Express Companies," Part IV, Kansas Historical Quarterly, Vol. 14, No. 1 (1944) p. 51 and note 349
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 number from the Hodgett and Hunt wagontrains, which understandably suffered far less. A good many of the survivors had endured surgery like that of Eph Hanks, and had lost fingers, toes, feet, a few of them both legs to the knee.
Wallace Stegner, The Gathering of Zion, p 256
Army and Navy Signal System
“After practicing as a physician for three years, [Albert Myer] sought and obtained a commission as assistant surgeon in the regular army. Lieutenant Myer was soon ordered to New Mexico. It is said that one day, seeing some Comanches making signals to another group of Indians on a neighboring hill by waving their lances, the thought struck him that such motions might be utilized for connecting adjacent military posts, or parts of an army in active operations. So firmly did this idea take possession of the young surgeon that he devoted much of his leisure to its development, and finally devised a system of signals which became the basis of the code or codes used through the war. He came east, explained his system to the authorities, and took out letters patent on his invention.”
Walter Prescott Webb, The Great Plains, p. 82
Emigration Canyon
“Emigration Canon is one of the deepest and narrowest of them all; its cliffs are relieved by no beauty of form or colour, they are stern, grim, unpitying ; the snow higher up looks warmer. . .”
William Chandless, Chandless, W. (1857). A Visit to Salt Lake, p. 130
Removal of General Johnson from California
Colonel E. D. Baker, although a Senator from Oregon (in 1861), was looked upon by Californians as being more a representative of their own state than of Oregon. And since he represented the loyal sentiment of the people of California more truly than California’s own Senators did, he gave great satisfaction to all loyal citizens. He it was who explained to President Lincoln, a life-long friend of his, the importance of sending a loyal man of high military rank to relieve General Johnston, commanding the Department of the Pacific.
(James McClatchy, editor of the Sacramento Bee, hearing of suspicions about General Johnston, sent word to Lincoln through Colonel Baker, urging the removal of General Johnston.)
Imogene Spaulding, "The Attitude of California to the Civil War," Annual Publication of the Historical Society of Southern California , 1912-1913, Vol. 9, No. 1/2 (1912-1913), pp. 121 and n. 2
Misnaming Plains Animals
“A further fact worth remembering about the Plains animals is that most of those peculiar to the Plains have been popularly misnamed. The buffalo is the bison, the prairie dog is a marmot, the rabbit is a true hare. This is suggestive of what happened when a people having their background in a humid, forested region came out into a new environment. The point is not important except as a symptom of the Easterner’s misunderstanding of the West.”
Walter Prescott Webb, The Great Plains, p. 41-42
The Word Wyoming
The word Wyoming comes from two Delaware Indian words meaning large meadows, and it takes only a day’s walk along Highway 26 to reach the state line. As I head toward Casper, to the northwest, I follow country roads along the Trail, which still follows the Platte River.
Jerry Ellis, Bareback!, p. 140
Mile 1944: Route Detour to Simpson Pass
Just past Sand Springs Station (at Mile 1944), the Pony Express Bikepacking Route stays on US 50 to Fallon, NV. The road at this point heads northwest. The original Pony Express Trail runs west at this point through Simpson Pass to Desert Station (or Hooten Wells Station) where it rejoins the Pony Express Bikepacking Route.
At Sand Springs Station (at Mile 1944) on the Pony Express Bikepacking Route at Ride With GPS, Jan makes a note: “Playa is unrideable.”
Jan’s comment (on Facebook):
“If one follows the route directly from Salt Lake City to Carson City, for around 500 miles, the only town directly on the route is Austin, NV where resupply consists of a minimally stocked convenience store with somewhat limited hours. Taking the difficulty of the section you rode into account, in addition to the vast distance from prior resupply, I felt that routing through Fallon was the best option. Thanks [Kurstin] for documenting your ride! I’m sure others will want to stick to the route as much as possible so this gives them that option.”
Kurstin Gerard Graham scouted the original trail through this section. Kurstin rode it from west to east (opposite to the track of the PX Bikepacking Route) and cut across some of the unrideable terrain just west of Highway 50.
To get to Simpson Pass while riding from east to west, Kurstin posted another map here, which follows dirt roads through the area. The turnoff is about 1/4 before the Sand Springs Station marker. [N.B. The second map does not cover the entire detour, just the western portion which offers a dirt road alternative harder-to-follow route on Kirstin’s original map. Also, FWIW, parts of this route seem hard to trace. Suggest anyone trying it be well stocked and very confident in their riding and navigation skills.]
I scouted the route between Sand Springs and Highway 95 in October 2020. My route reports are here:
“In midwinter [1858-59] Simpson requested the Secretary of War, through the Bureau in Washington, to authorize a program of exploration for the spring which included a wagon-road survey from Camp Floyd to California by way of Carson Lake, to be followed by a an eastern trip to seek a shorter, better route from Camp Floyd to Fort Leavenworth . . . Secretary Floyd approved the project, and through General Johnson gave Simpson a carte blanche to organize the expedition. . . .
At Camp Floyd [after the exploration], Captain Simpson dispatched Lieutenant Kirby Smith with a small detachment to return over the last 100 miles of the route to straighten sections and mark them with stakes and guide posts. Wooden troughs were to be built at the springs in the desert to collect and save the water. . . .
Several days after Simpson’s return, California emigrants started west over the new route. One party with seven wagons and another with thirty were supplied with an itinerary. The same information was given to Russell, Majors & Waddell who planned to drive a thousand head of cattle over the road to California. . . .
The Pony Express, which began running between San Francisco and Salt Lake City in April 1860, used [Simpson’s] northern [outbound] route over the 300-mile course between Genoa and Hastings’ Pass, and after continuing along the 175 miles of Chorpenning’s extension of Simpson’s route as far as Short Cut Pass, it traveled along [Simpson’s] road to Camp Floyd on the way to the Mormon capital. . . .
According to General Johnson, emigrants passed daily over the new route to California, many driving large herds of stock, so that in a single season the road was well marked.
W. Turrentine Jackson, Wagon Roads West, p. 150-156
Mile 275: "Snow's Corner" Oregon Trail Stone Marker
Sometimes this stretch is referred to as “Nine Mile Ridge.” The stone marker was erected by the State of Nebraska in 1912. Located at https://goo.gl/maps/EHArEhZmXwpZRR4EA.
In the meantime, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show became the primary keeper of the pony legend. By the 1890s, when William Lightfoot Visscher began gathering material for his history of the Pony Express, the business records of Russell, Majors, and Waddell had long since vanished, and Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show had been promoting William Cody’s version of the pony’s history for the better part of two decades. Cody was the world’s most renowned showman and westerner, and had made himself far and away the most famous rider of the legendary pony line. He was also a personal friend of Visscher’s. When the journalist’s Thrilling and Truthful History of the Pony Express appeared in 1908, it was less history than hagiography, a devotional recounting of the heroic lives of saints. The author repeated Cody’s stories without any criticism.
(p. 552, n. 11)
Visscher, Thrilling and Truthful History; Corbett, Orphans Preferred, 173-99. For an example of the passage of Cody’s pony tales from show to history, see Bradley, Story of the Pony Express, 127. Bradley lifted his discussion of Cody’s exploits almost verbatim from Root and Connelley, Overland Stage to California, 129-30. Root and Connelley, in turn, lifted their account almost entirely from Cody himself. Cody, Life of Buffalo Bill 97, 103-7.
Louis S. Warren, Buffalo Bill's America, p. 6, and 552, n. 11
Origin of the Mormon Battallion
“Just before leaving for the West [January 1846], Brigham Young wrote a letter appointing Jesse C. Little, a Mormon convert living in New Hampshire, to preside over the church’s Eastern States Mission . . .
“[D]uring May 1846, [Little] held church conferences in the major branches of the mission to ‘take into consideration the most expedient measures for the removal and emigration of the saints in the Eastern States to California.’ . . .
“During one of their meetings [between Little and Thomas Kane], Little mentioned that he hoped the government would help them because otherwise they might be forced to seek aid from another country. Kane immediately advised Little that such a threat would be the strongest possible approach in Washington. Because the Mormons were leaving the confines of the United States, they could pose a serious obstacle to the country’s westward expansion if they set up an independent country or joined with either Mexico or Great Britain. The possibility of joining England was heightened by the fact that more than fifteen thousand English had joined the Mormon church by 1846, and of that number almost five thousand had journeyed to Mormon settlements in the United States. . .
“Understandably, the president [Polk] was not eager to alienate a group with over twenty thousand members on the western borders of the country. . . .
“[Polk] wanted a United States force in California before peace negotiations to further the country’s claim to New Mexico and California.
“The battalion provided over $50,000 in cash payments to church members, much of which was used to help the entire church migrate west. . . . Polk was quite candid in his diary about his motives. ‘The main object of taking them into service would be to conciliate them, and prevent them from assuming a hostile attitude towards the U.S. after their arrival in California.”
W. Ray Luce, "The Mormon Battalion: A Historical Accident?" Utah Historical Quarterly (1974), p. 27 passim
Summer in the Higher Places
About the middle of July there comes into the air of the high places a golden emptiness, a washed look infinitely beautiful but melancholy with a premonition of fall. The early light seems detached from its source; till midmorning the highest slopes are touched with a powder-blue mist, which will intensify and come lower as the brief summer of the peaks runs out. The silver of aspen leaves turns brighter and the cottonwoods begin to be flecked with gold. Above the timberline dwarf oakbrush flies a flag of scarlet which will march down the mountainsides with the gold from now on. The light in the canyons has come through lavender gauze and the woods seem darker, more deserted, more given up to solitude.
Bernard De Voto, Across the Wide Missouri, p. 80
Impolite and Emphatic Language
“. . . a dispute arose between two young men. Impolite and emphatic language was used and two guns were drawn. The quarrel resulted in the mortal wounding of the younger participant.”
— Darley, Reverend G .M., “The End Gate of the Mess Wagon,” The Trail: A Magazine for Colorado, Volumes 1, No. 1 (1908) : 18-19
Impolite and Emphatic Language
"Buffalo Bill" Cody “Buffalo Bill” Cody
“William ‘Buffalo Bill’ Cody claims to have been a Pony Express rider around the Julesburg area, but this is unlikely. In Alexander Major’s autobiography (one of the Pony Express’s founders), Cody is only mentioned as being a messenger for Majors. And evidence shows Cody was in school in Leavenworth during the Pony Express’s operation. What Buffalo Bill did do was showcase the Pony Express in his Wild West Show, popularizing its legend and cementing its legacy.”
[N.B. Cody was 14-years old when the Pony Express started. In his autobiography, He claims not only to have been a Pony Express rider, but to one have ridden 320 miles in less than 24 hours:
“One day I galloped into the station at Three Crossings to find that my relief had been killed in a drunken row the night before. There was no one to take his place. His route was eighty five miles across country to the west. I had no time to think it over. Selecting a good pony out of the stables I was soon on my way. I arrived at Rocky Ridge, the end of the new route, on schedule time, and turning back came on to Red Buttes, my starting-place. The round trip was 320 miles, and I made it in twenty-one hours and forty minutes.” Buffalo Bill’s Life Story, p. 47
No other record of this record-breaking ride exists.]
“The way Latter-day Saints interacted with Native Americans was influenced by their religious beliefs. The Book of Mormon, the main religious text for the Church, prominently features two groups: the Nephites and the Lamanites. At the end of the Book of Mormon the Lamanites rebel against the teachings of Jesus Christ and are considered ‘fallen’ from the light of truth. The Lamanites are believed by Mormons to be ancient ancestors of Native Americans.”
Raelyn M. Embleton, Racial Conflict in Early Utah: Mormon, Native American and Federal Relations, p. 4
Mile 0: The Patee House Patee House, MO
“The Patee House was a 140 room luxury hotel that was built in St. Joseph, Missouri in 1858. Beginning in 1860, its first floor served as the eastern terminus of the Pony Express Company. Mail carriers would ride into the building on their horses to receive the westbound mail!”
It is not known how many, if any, were given to riders in this 1860-1861-time period from the company. Many twentieth century writers claimed that all riders were given a Bible and that they would carry the Bible with them on their rides. The size alone would make it impractical to carry on their rides.
“A composite picture of a wagonmaster, drawn from contemporary writings and reminiscences, would show a man about six feet tall, raw boned and powerfully built, with steady eyes, and a face bronzed by long exposure to the elements, scarred by youthful brawls, decorated with a drooping mustache, and framed in shoulder-length hair. He wore the usual rough trousers, shirt, and high boots of the frontier, donning a coat only in extremely cold weather. At his belt hung two revolvers and a large knife, Mexican spurs jangled at his heels as he walked, and his head was covered by a broad-brimmed hat or Mexican sombrero. Across the pommel of his saddle, or in a scabbard under his thigh, was a rifle. His customary mount was a good saddle mule, though he sometimes preferred horses.”
Henry Pickering Walker, The Wagonmasters (1966), p. 78-79
Take the Trail Where You Find It
“You’d better take your trail where you find it; and, if it’s easy for a while, you’re that much to the good. It’ll be tough enough later on, advised Dr. Neff practically.”
Take the Trail Where You Find It
South Pass, the True Northwest Passage
“South Pass provided the key to a continent and made possible the transformation of the American West in a single generation.”
Will Bagley, South Pass: Gateway to a Continent, Location 329 [Kindle Edition]
No Need for Guides
“In 1846 there was virtually no interest in hiring guides. By now the trails were clearly visible, informative letters from previous overlanders had been published and otherwise widely circulated, and guidebooks were also available. . . .Another important reason for the demise of guide services began to be clearly evident with the 1847 emigration. Many individuals in that year’s caravan were making their second overland trip and were well enough qualified to serve as both guide and leaders.”
John D. Unruh, Jr., The Plains Across, p. 110-111
Twain's Description of Slade
“He was so friendly and so gentle-spoken that I warmed to him in spite of his awful history. It was hardly possible to realize that this pleasant person was the pitiless scourge of the outlaws, the raw-head-and-bloody-bones the nursing mothers of the fountains terrified their children with. And to this day I can remember nothing remarkable about Slade except that his face was rather broad across the cheek bones, and that the cheek bones were low and the lips peculiarly thin and straight.”
Mark Twain, Roughing It, p. 88
Magraw's Philippic Against the Mormons
“When Buchanan requested his cabinet officers to gather correspondence justifying his policy toward Utah, the Secretary old State, old Lewis Cass, could locate only one document in his files, but it was a dandy. It came from W. M. F. Magraw, whose hatred of the Mormons had been heightened by loss of his mail contract to Hiram Kimball. At considerable length Magraw charged the Saints with crimes against the laws of the nation and humanity. According to his letter the Church had destroyed all non-Mormon courts in the Territory, thus leaving the Gentiles to the mercy of ‘a so-styled ecclesiastical organization, as despotic and damnable, as any ever to exist in any country.’ The result was violence and murder by ‘an organized band of bravos and assassins;’ ‘indiscriminate bloodshed, robbery and rapine’ at midnight or in full daylight.’ . . .
Like many anti-Mormons in these years, Magraw possessed an inenviable character. After the mail contract had been taken from him, he became superintendent of a crew constructing a federal road across the Plains, and while serving in that capacity he was guilty of shady practices, if not outright theft of government property.”
Norman F. Furniss, The Mormon Conflict, 1850-1859, p. 63-64, and p. 265 n. 5
Cause of the Paiute War
“The latter author points out that the real cause of this attack [The May 7 attack by Paiute Indians on the station of J. O. Williams, in which seven men were killed and the house burned] is not definitely known, but two stories exist, both of which blame tho occupants of William’ station. One account charges that they seized several young Bannock squaws (allies of the Pah-Utes), leading to a punitive expedition by the red men, and another that the station keeper, J. O. Williams, himself stole a horse of a Pah-Ute leading to retribution on this score. Even before this attack it was reported that 30 horses belonging to the Pony Express had been stolen by the Indians (San Francisco dispatch, April 27, in New York Daily Tribune, May 8, 1860). William B. Russell replied that inasmuch as the Express still operated, there could be no foundation for the rumor.—Leavenworth Daily Times, May 10, 1860.”
George Root, "Pike's Peak Express Companies," Part IV, Kansas Historical Quarterly, Vol. 14, No. 1 (1944) p. 58, n. 373
Women's Struggle on the Trail
“If we are to trust and respect their revelations in their diaries and recollections, the greatest struggle of women on the trail was the struggle to endure the hardship and suffering without becoming bitter and resentful, without becoming the carping wife, without burdening their marital relationship with the bad feelings that burned inside them. If we are to judge them not by our standards but their own, we will not resurrect and applaud every little act of womanly resistance and mean feminine spirit but examine and attempt to understand the powers of endurance that permitted them to act out the role of good wife through the whole hated experience. The women’s materials give us a penetrating look at the feminine psychology of social dependency.”
John Mack Faragher, Women & Men on the Overland Trail, p. 174
Pony Service During the Paiute War
“By the fall of 1860 more than half the Pony Express posts between Carson City and Utah Lake had been destroyed by Paiute ambushes set in every mountain pass along the trail. But except for one short period the mail went through. Never following exactly the same route twice in succession, and avoiding regular mountain passes whenever possible, the riders made their way across the deserts as best they could, depending on the speed of their superior mounts to outrun surprise attacks. But as more and more relay posts were destroyed the advantage of speed was lost, for a horse often had to be ridden a hundred miles to reach a remaining post. Many a rider was wounded bu Indian arrows but, miraculously, only one was killed. The mail was often late, sometimes as much as a week, but no rider ever turned back, and only one refused to make his run.”
Ralph Moody, The Old Trails West, p. 297
Russell's Whining
Russell expected Majors and Waddell to join him in the venture, although he had not consulted them. When Waddell heard about it he was so infuriated that he wrote Russell a series of blistering letters. In reply Russell said,
“My poor from wife Lexington writes she deep that in is my have was and had that partners reported that distress, reckless I gone Peak pronounce them ruinous … into Pike’s to a extent false I my man and and on caluminators return hold any account will liars who me As has slandered have … able falsely oft repeated, regret I I much am you as as that involved, but cannot and help I sir, I it, may must way can … be out the get best able out to get of I I it my on and do return will try to so.”
Settle and Settle, "Napoleon of the West," Annals of Wyoming Vol. 32, No.1, April 1960, p. 25
Sawyers
“Some of the watercraft drafted into use by the increasing pressure of travel [from St. Louis to Independence on the Missouri River] were old and flimsy, and chugging along upstream, were all too easily sprung open by the great snags, or sawyers, in the river—trees whose heavy butts lay sunk in mud, and whose jagged tops swung down with the current. . . .
River craft, especially if of value, were usually tied up at night—sawyers and the ever shifting sand bars were bad enough to encounter in daylight. In dry seasons, it was no uncommon thing to see all the passengers footing it along the bank while the steamer was jacked over a slightly submerged bar by means of ingeniously arranged poles and cables.”
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 7-8
Mile 1870: Reese River
“Below us, ‘Reese’s River’ Valley might have served for a sketch in the African desert: a plain of saleratus, here yellow with sand or hay, there black with fire, there brown where the skin of earth showed through her garb of rags, and beyond it were chocolate-colored hills, from whose heads curled blue smokes of volcanic appearance. Bisecting the barren plain ran a bright little stream, whose banks, however, had been stripped of their ‘salt grass:’ pure and clear it flows over a bed of gravel, sheds in a northerly direction, and sinks at a distance of about twenty miles.”
Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 486
The Wilmot Amendment
“This narrative has remarked that a decisive tum was rounded at some time between August and December, 1846. On August 10, the First Session of the Twenty-ninth Congress adjourned while Senator Davis was discussing a measure, which had originated in the House and bore the name .of David Wilmot, to exclude slavery from the territory to be acquired from Mexico. Senator Calhoun of South Carolina said that the first volume of our political history under the Constitution had been closed and the second opened, that a curtain had been dropped between the present and the future which was to him impenetrable. Prescience woke in the nerves of William Lowndes Yancey, however; he resigned his seat in the House and went back to Alabama; in the second volume of our political history he could predict no future under the Constitution for the Southern states. Likewise, when the Second Session of the Twenty-ninth Congress convened in December, John C. Calhoun was able to penetrate the impenetrable curtain for at least a little way. He was the last survivor of the first period of the Southern politician, and Yancey’s resignation is the signal that the third period of that politician was taking charge. The survivor of a period when there were clearer and more powerful minds, aware that the thing had happened in, the intervening months, aware that a curtain had not been lowered but that at last a curtain bad been raised – John C. Calhoun thought he saw one way of saving the United States. It was a tolerably desperate way: the United States must enter again into the womb and be born a second time. Since the summer solstice of 1788 when by a vote of 57 to 46 the New Hampshire convention brought the number of states ratifying the new Constitution to the nine necessary for adoption – from that June day on, the whole course of the United States had been wrong. In the opinion of Calhoun, we must go back to the preceding September, reconvene the Constitutional Convention that then adjourned sine die, and start all over.
“The United States will conquer Mexico,” Ralph Waldo Emerson had said, “but it will be as the man swallows the arsenic which brings him down in turn. Mexico will poison us.”
The Second Session of the Twenty-ninth Congress convened in chaos and so accurately reflected the nation which, according to the provisions of the Constitution, it was to govern. That chaos was the reason why the United States could provide no government for Oregon till 1849 and none for New Mexico, Deseret, and California till 1850. When what is called the Compromise of 1850 was finally voted in Congress chaos had not been in the least resolved but a channel had been established which would contain it for just ten years.”
Bernard De Voto, The Year of Decision, 1846, p. 491-92
Prairie Fires
“The real menace to the precious grass [in the Platte valley], aside from drouth, was the disastrous prairie fire. . . . According to John Wyeth it was the Indian custom to set fires to the high grass once or twice a year to start the game. James Clyman calculated that most prairie fires were caused by lightening, or ‘electric fluid,’ but there is ample evidence that white travelers did their share of the mischief. Frank Young reported a fire started deliberately by ox-teamsters in a playful mood, while on one occasion stage hands started one at night ‘for illumination.'”
Merrill J. Mattes, The Great Platte River Road, p. 245
Taking-off Points of Emigration
“While the Hastings and Applegate parties were coming east [in spring 1846], the emigrants had mustered, chiefly in the vicinity of Independence. One party, however, was preparing to cross the Missouri about 40 miles south of Council Bluffs and to use what was later called the Nebraska City road. Thus, as early as ’46, there were four possible places of take-off—Council Bluffs, the as yet unnamed point, St. Joseph, and Independence. There was also a military road leading westward from Fort Leavenworth, but this had little influence on the migration. All this plains country was, in fact, so level and open that a wagon could be taken across it almost anywhere. There was even some advantage in being the first. Once the passage of many wagons had broken through the sod, the road was likely to alternate between mudholes and deep dust.”
George R. Stewart, The California Trail, p. 145
Waddell's Gift of Slaves
This [taking up farming] proved to be a fortunate move, for nearby lived Susan Clark Byram, daughter of William and Susan Phillips Byram, a wealthy Kentucky planter, whom he married on January 1, 1829. The bride’s father, with customary generosity, started the young couple off with the gift of Negro slaves, horses, sheep, $1,500, and a feather bed. Now it appeared that Waddell was launched upon the successful, though somewhat prosaic career of a Southern gentleman farmer.
Difference Between Emigrants and Mormons on Trail Improvements
Few California or Oregon emigrants gave a thought to people coming after them, unless the company behind them might pass them and use up the grass. There are recorded instances of their destroying rafts and ferries to prevent their use by other groups. Not so the Mormons. The first thought of the pioneer company was to note good campgrounds, wood, water, grass, to measure distances and set up mileposts. They and succeeding companies bent their backs to build bridges and dig down the steep approaches of fords. They made rafts and ferry boats and left them for the use of later companies-and twice left men with them to make an honest dollar ferrying the Gentiles. They threw rocks off the road on the rough stretch between Fort Laramie and the Mormon Ferry at modern Casper, Wyoming; they cut and grubbed the abominable willows in the East Canyon bottoms. By the improvements they made in it, they earned the right to put their name on the trail they used.
Wallace Stegner, The Gathering of Zion, p 11-12
Mile 1363: Rockwell's Station
“Rockwell’s Station was named after the operator Orin Porter Rockwell. Rockwell earlier served as Brigham Young’s bodyguard (1830’s) and was a Danite (member of the Mormon protection group, organized in Missouri to protect against terrorist activities). On September 9, 1850, Rockwell was appointed Territorial Marshall. The 1856 survey plat shows the old road missing the location thought by some to be the station (just across from the prison). It plats a house and springs about three quarters of a mile south. This had been the location of Rockwell’s Station.”
“Ira J. Willis was one of the volunteers who made up the Mormon Battalion. With him went his brother, Sidney Willis. The two traveled to California with the battalion, thus making what is conceded to be the longest infantry march in recorded history.”
Irene D. Paden, "The lra J. Willis Guide to the Gold Mines," p. 194
Mile 689: Robidoux Pass
“The river lapped at the very base of Scott’s Bluff. The wagons must go inland. This was the more difficult because the bluff is not an isolated rocky formation, but the end of a line of hills. Several more of less parallel canyons break through, and of these Mitchell’s Pass, used by the highway, is the best and shortest and lies nearest the river; but it was not passable to the early migrations. Probably it was obstructed by fallen rock and debris. Instead the wagons toiled through Robidoux Pass, the next canyon to the south. . . .
Robidoux Canyon or Pass is reached from the town of Gering. One proceeds first over a decided rise and then down into a large circular valley of loose sandy loam. The emigrants’ columns raised storms of dust through which exposure of Scott’s Bluff showed fitfully until they reached the canyon and entered its obscuring walls. The dust was bad for lungs and equally so for eyes. Helen Carpenter’s little dog became entirely blinded and caused her mistress some bad hours by getting lost in the billowing clouds that smothered the teams. Many stated that they suffered more acutely from eyestrain and from cracked and bleeding lips than from any other cause.
Graves grew thick and thicker.They were no longer approached on paths worn smooth by enquiring emigrants who trudged up from the road to read the crude marker and learn who lay below. Now the travelers were too intent upon their own discomfort to bother . . . And still the westbound families camped near and, unless the smell was offensive, even on the graves in stoical disinterest.
The diarists raved about the distant beauty of Scott’s Bluff. It gave off romance in practically visible emanations, but they seldom mention being comfortable there.”
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 148-149
The Vehicle of Liminality
“The train had other dramatic possibilities for use in folk and popular culture. It seems to have been for some observers in the nineteenth century in many ways like the passenger airliner is for us today. The train is the vehicle of liminality; once aboard, passengers pass through geography that seems to have little relevance to their immediate condition. One leaves a portion of one’s life behind and moves on to another. But between, one lives, for the moment, on the train – or plane. Few novels of the period, and no folklore that I know of, have exploited the dramatic possibilities of the situation – passengers removed from their home environment and society and cast into a terrestrial limbo. The train becomes, for the length of the journey, the world for its passengers.”
Bruce Rosenberg, The Code of the West, p. 148
Bones for Fires
“Buffalo herds were behind the hills, but we were too full of sleep to follow them. The plain was dotted with blanched skulls and bones, which would have made a splendid bonfire. Apparently the expert voyageur has not learned that they form good fuel; at any rate, he has preferred to them the ‘chips’ of which it is said that a steak cooked with them requires no pepper (The chip corresponds with the bois de vache of Switzerland, the tezek of Armenia, the arghol of Thibet, and the gobar of India. With all its faults, it is at least superior to that used in Sindh.).
Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 48
Mormon Interference with the Mail
“In November [1852, Indian Gent Jacob Holman] was prepared to draw up a broad indictment of the Saints, touching upon a number of general causes of Gentile-Mormon friction. With the Runaways, he believed that the Church was defiant of the Government’s authority and was planing resistance to it. The mails, he further stated, were no longer safe for the communication of important messages, since the Mormons opened and read everything.”
Norman F. Furniss, The Mormon Conflict, 1850-1859, p. 35-26
Union Sentiment in California
The beginning of actual hostilities indeed changed many a wavering person into a strong Union advocate. When news reached California in April, 1861, that Sumter had been fired upon, the feeling against secession was intensified, and the Union sentiment of the great majority of the people became strong and demanded expression. Monster mass meetings were held throughout the State. In San Francisco in February, 1861, nearly 12,000 persons assembled at a Union meeting. In May, 1861, 25,000 were in attendance at a similar meeting, which “was the largest and most complete and emphatic public demonstration that had ever been held on the Pacific Coast.”
(News that Sumter was fired upon reached California “per telegraph to St. Louis; thence by telegraph to Fort Kearny; thence by pony express to Fort Churchill: thence by telegraph to San Francisco.” San Francisco Evening Bulletin, April 24, 1861.)
Imogene Spaulding, "The Attitude of California to the Civil War," Annual Publication of the Historical Society of Southern California , 1912-1913, Vol. 9, No. 1/2 (1912-1913), pp. 122 and n. 4
Breaking Wild Mules
“The average freighter could not afford the time to gentle his animals slowly before introducing them to harness; as a result, the breaking of wild mules was a rough process that sometimes ended in the loss of expensive animals. The unbroken mules were roped, snubbed up close to the wagon wheels, and starved for twenty-four hours. Then a team was hitched to a heavy wagon and whipped when they would not pull and whipped even harder when they ran. After an hour or so of bewilderment, plunging, and kicking they became tractable and were ready for work.”
Henry Pickering Walker, The Wagonmasters (1966), p. 103
Mark Twain Meets Jack Slade
“The exact time of their [Mark Twain and Jack Slade] meeting has been pinpointed to the morning of August 2, 1861, at Rocky Ridge–two stations east of South Pass.”
John B. McClernan, Slade's Wells Fargo Colt, p. 24, note 17
American Desert
“We had now [at the forks pf the Platte] entered upon the outskirts of the American wilderness, which has not one feature in common with the deserts of the Old World. In Arabia and Africa there is majesty in its monotony: those awful wastes so brightly sunburnished that the air above them appears by contrast black; one vast and burning floor, variegated only by the mirage-reek, with nothing below the firmament to relieve or correct the eye. Here it is a brown smooth space, insensibly curving out of sight, wholly wanting ‘second distance,’ and scarcely suggesting the idea of immensity; we seem, in fact, to be traveling for twenty miles over a convex, treeless hill-top.”
Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 63-64
Mile 568: Nine Mile Station
Nine Mile Station was two miles southeast of Chappell, NE. It’s not marked on the Pony Express Bikepacking Route, and I can’t find an exact location for the marker. I’ve found references to a Pony Express Park, but not on Google Maps.
Merrill J. Mattes, The Great Platte River Road, p. 471
Mile 580: Lodgepole Depot Museum
“The famous Pony Express mail delivery route passed through Lodgepole Creek Valley in 1860 and 1861. Two Pony Express stations were nearby. The Pole Creek No. 2 Pony Express Station was in what is now Lodgepole, while the Nine Mile station sat southeast of present-day Chappell. Pony Express historian Joe Nardone so enjoyed this particular stop on the Pony Express trail that he donated several items from his personal collection to the Lodgepole Depot Museum. This museum now houses several artifacts from the Pony Express, including maps, a saddle and a saddle pack. Nardone also gave the depot museum the 1984 Ford Bronco that he used to mark the route to the museum.”
[N.B. The town of Lodgepole of southwest of the XP Bikepacking Route at around Mile 580. To visit would require a detour, either before of after Chapell.]
“[George] Chorpenning and his men left Sacramento May 1, 1851, with the first mail. They had great difficulty in reaching Carson valley, having had to beat down the snow with wooden mauls to open a trail for their animals over the Sierras. For sixteen days and nights they struggled through and camped upon deep snow. Upon reaching Carson valley, Chorpenning staked off in the usual western manner, a quarter section of land and arranged to establish a mail station. The town of Genoa, Nevada, grew up on the site.”
LeRoy Hafen, The Overland Mail: 1849–1869, p. 64
Rugged Individualism and Manifest Destiny
“Over the summer, we camped at small-town public parks and the public corrals dozens of times, across two thousand miles of America. We lived on the public space established by the pioneers. Rugged individualism and manifest destiny, for which the West is still celebrated, are fine things to believe in, but they never existed as abstractions. People were desperate and they needed free land and free places to camp, which government decided to supply, and still does. This national legacy was one of the best discoveries of crossing the Oregon Trail, but we never would have found it without detaching ourselves from the umbiclical cord of the interstates and the motel chains, forcing ourselves to forage every night for a place to stay.”
Rinker Buck, The Oregon Trail, p. 347
Fort Kearny Military Reservation
“It was customary for the War department to set aside a military resrvation of 100 square miles; here, in addition to the usual rectangular ten miles square, the reservation was extended in a strip downstream for an additional four miles to include more Grand island timber.
Although the boundary was neither fenced nor posted, emigrants camping in the vicinity were often politely informed they were on the reservation and could not camp thereon. The fort was located, not in the center of the rectangle, but at a point two miles from its western boundary, or eight miles from the eastern line. Consequently, the largest camping area was just beyond the western line. The military was not often so fussy about camping to the east, and covered wagon camps would sometimes be strung out in that direction for miles.”
Merrill J. Mattes, The Great Platte River Road, p. 202
Selecting a Mule Team
“In selecting a team, there were a number of well-established rules. The largest pair, or span, was selected for the wheelers. This was the span that controlled the direction of the wagon through the wagon tongue and held the wagon back on downgrades. The nimblest and most knowledgeable span were selected for the leaders. It was they who imparted direction to the whole team. On sharp turns, they often had to leave the trail to swing wide and scramble over rocks and bushes. The nigh, or left, leader had to be particularly smart as it was he that received orders from the driver by means of the jerk line and determined the direction for the whole team.”
Henry Pickering Walker, The Wagonmasters (1966), p. 104
This is the Place
The spot where Woodruff’s carriage paused is now marked by Mahonri Young’s fine monument, erected in the centennial year;the highest achievement of Mormon art commemorates the high moment of the Mormon hegira. It is popularly called the “This is the Place” monument, because Brother Brigham is supposed to have said, after remaining a moment lost in a vision, “It is enough. This is the right place, drive on.” It is a great statement, one that gathers up in a phrase history and hope and fulfillment, and it is now an ineradicable part of the Mormon myth. But as Dale Morgani pointed out, the phrase was not part of the original record. It does not seem to have been coined until the fiftieth anniversary of the Church, thirty-three years after the Mormon leader was brought to the brink of the valley. Woodruff’s journal, written at the time of the arrival, reports that Brigham “expressed his full satisfaction in the appearance of the valley as a resting-place for the Saints, and was amply repaid for his journey”; and Brigham’s own journal for that day says only that they had to cross Emigration Creek eighteen times before emerging from the canyon and joining the main camp at 2:00 P.M.
Wallace Stegner, The Gathering of Zion, p 168
Wild Sage
“The most abundant plant in the Great Basin is the artemisia, or wild sage, and as it is seen almost everywhere in the valleys and on the mountains, it gives its peculiar bronze color to the general face of nature. Sometimes this all-prevailing color is modified by the more vivid green of the Sarcohatus vcrmlcularis, or greasewood; sometimes by the yellowish light-green of the Lynogris, or rabbit-bush, both of which are found interspersed not infrequently among the artemisia and on the mountains, not infrequently by the dark color of the scrub cedar, and occasionally of the pine and balsam. This plant, the artemisia, I have seen covering probably as much as nine-tenths of the whole country intervening the east base of the Rocky Mountains (longitude 104°) and the east base of the Sierra Nevada (longitude 119° 40′), or over a breadth of more than 800 miles, beyond winch, east or west, it does not grow.”
James Simpson, Report on Explorations Across the Great Basin of the Territory of Utah, p. 30
Army Discharge Description of Slade
“Said Joseph A. Slade was born in Clinton Co in the State of Illinois, is 18 years of age, 5 feet 6 inches high, dark complexion, black eyes, light hair, and by occupation, when enlisted, a farmer.”
John B. McClernan, Slade's Wells Fargo Colt, p. 40
Pony Express Symbolization
Harper’s may have been read by frontier hearths and even in the occasional outhouse, but the magazine’s real audience was back east. Readers’ lives weren’t generally as dangerous or physically daunting, but they were cutting new trails as well: in commerce, in science, even in how they lived. The line of “real life” heroes stretching back through Hickok and Kit Carson to the founders of the country connected them to the deeper values that their lives were founded on.
They saw that, too, in the Pony Express. People were excited about the service, not just because they wanted information as quickly as possible, but because the service and especially its riders embodied or symbolized some of the things they cared about: courage, physical prowess, the willingness to risk all in a race against Nature and Time.
If gunplay figured into it, so much the better, but you didn’t have to be literally wild to be celebrated. Being tenacious and undaunted in the face of myriad hardships would do.
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Buffalo Bill gets a lot of credit for advertising the Pony Express, and he deserves it. Not only did he include vignettes in his Western shows, he recruited riders and others who had worked for the service and put them onstage with him. He even rescued Alexander Majors from obscurity, retrieving him from Denver, enlisting Ingraham to “help” write his autobiography, and paying Rand McNally to publish the book a year before Majors turned eighty.
Generous though he was, Cody would not have done any of this if the Pony had not already been held in high regard and was at least somewhat famous, if not quite at the level that it would be as Cody’s shows gathered strength. The words Pony Express were synonymous not only with speed, but with adventure and rugged individualism and against the elements and all that. Cody enhanced the legend, but he didn’t invent it.
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It’s often said that the transcontinental telegraph killed the Pony Express. While the service did end the day the line was completed, that was by design; the Pony was always a short-term project.
It’s also said—less often—that the railroad killed the Pony and its ilk. There’s more truth to that, but again, people like Russell and his partners knew that day was coming; they all rode trains, Russell quite a lot. The idea was to sew up a monopoly before the transcontinental railroad came in. Then anyone who wanted to use the railroads-anyone who didn’t live next to the tracks—would have to pay. . . .
But our memory of [the Pony Express] has survived because it was far more. For us, the mystic chords of memory that Lincoln so memorably mentioned at the end of his inauguration address strike notes with deep roots. The tales, even those not entirely provable, are deep into who we want to be today and tomorrow. The values that we see in the Pony riders are values we cherish, even if we’ve never been near a barn, let alone a horse: adventure, speed, determination, endurance. The values of the service itself: dependability against all odds, unflagging commitment to a mission—these are values we too want to emulate, whether or not we’d go to the extreme lengths of Pony Bob or the White Indian.
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The raw ingredients of the Pony story—young men, horses, hardships, and danger—are potent bits for any narrative, whether in a rodeo ring or on the big screen. But there’s more to the Pony Express’s staying power than galloping horses and reckless young men. As important as Bill Cody and his shows were in keeping the memory of the service alive, I think it’s likely that we’d remember it even without the great showman. The Pony is the perfect transport vehicle for the things we still value in America, and for the realities we as a nation continue to face: speed, courage, individualism … distance, time, and, yes, money. If the Pony riders were brave archetypes of the American spirit racing across the American heartland, Russell and his partners were surely nineteenth-century venture capitalists. The fact that they failed so spectacularly is itself thoroughly American. If you’re going to fail, fail big.
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It didn’t make them better than us; we live in different times, with different challenges. But it does make their lives worthy of study and, at their best, emulation. The Pony flashed briefly across the American landscape, a strike of lightning in a sky often dark with danger and ambiguity. In its history, real and sometimes imagined, we see ourselves as we’d like to be: brave, resourceful, racing against nature and all manner of dangers, with determination in our hearts and a smile on our faces.
Jim DeFelice, West Like Lightning, p. 49-50, 252-53, 265-267
Fort Bridger and the Mormons
“The beautiful and fertile valley of Blacks Fork, with Fort Bridger standing squat and picturesque in its midst, was well known to the Mormons. The first small Mormon advance party passed near it in 1847 when, by reason of bloody clashes with their gentile neighbors in the States, they left the Missouri River for an unknown haven near the Great Salt Lake. They were closely followed by the great Mormon migratory caravan, who took careful note of the trading post just east of the passage leading through the Wasach Range. It must be confessed that they also took note of the histrionic Mr. Bridger and recorded him tersely as a man who did not tell the truth.
There he was, however, firmly ensconced in the best piece of pasture land between Salt Lake City and Horseshoe Station, and so situated that whatever the Mormons required from civilization, whether mail, freight, or converts, must pass within a mile or two of his door. The setup was far from satisfactory to Brigham Young. . . .
Distrust and dissension prevailed between Mormon and gentile, aggravated by lack of definite information and the growing gossip concerning polygamy, then an intrinsic part of the Mormon religious custom. The colonists had once been forced, if they wished to continue its practice, to leave their homes, and they felt that their freedom of action was again threatened. Any gentile settlement near them was unwelcome.
The facts and issues are clouded by the passage of many years, but the two conflicting stories are somewhat as follows: Jim Bridger contended that the Mormon leaders had no particular grievance against him but simply coveted his property; that they sent a group of their ‘avenging angels’ to do him bodily harm; that he barely escaped into the willows and, with the aid of his Indian wife, was able to get away, abandoning everything to the Mormons. The Mormons claimed that Bridger was furnishing guns to the dangerous Utes, with whom they were at war. Both are nice healthy arguments and are not at all incompatible. This happened in 1853. The Mormons took over Fort Bridger . . . [which] became a Mormon outpost.
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 248-249
Mile 554: Lodgepole Creek Road
“The Lodgepole Creek Road was unknown until 1857 and was used very little until ’61, when the government routed the new mail stages that way. Within a year or two the Indians grew so belligerent that the mail was rerouted to avoid the Sioux country along the North Platte . . . and the Pole Creek Road stepped out of the staging limelight as abruptly as it had stepped in. In its few years of intense activity, running the gamut of Civil War drama, romance of the mail coach, swarming tumult of the emigrant trail, and the horror of Indian warfare, have won for it a permanent place in history.”
[N.B. The Lodgepole Trail runs (roughly from Ovid (at Mile 554) to Bridgeport (Mile 642) where it rejoins the Ash Hollow Road up from the South California Crossing. (Paten, pg. 145]
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 140
Mile 927: Emigrant Gap, WY
“Our road started uphill and rose higher and higher, but very gently. Wyoming makes less fuss about its elevation than any place I know. To our left was the wide sandy pass used by migrants of the sixties. A later generation of indigenous Casperites have named it Emigrant Gap, one of a long series of Emigrant Gaps that puncture the trail clear to the Pcific coast. The highway uses a parallel pass nearby. Just beyond it we found Poison Spider Creek, all the wrong colors for respectable water and very scummy, but wholesome in comparison with the neighboring supply, for the emigrants now had a new trail bugbear—alkali.
The travelers had seen alkali water along the Platte, but with the river running near by, the discolored pools were little temptation to the cattle. Now the migration wallowed in billowing dust (also tinctured with alkali) that choked and almost blinded the animals. Their ears, ey rims, and nostrils were coated an eighth of an inch thick, and the implacable brassy sun baked it solid. Anyting that looked like water caused a rush in its direction. . . .
And here again, it was all a matter of preparedness. After the enormous migrations of ’49 and ’50 had learned what not to do, later comers handled the fifty-odd miles of semidesert much better. After all the was good water at short enough intervals to preserve the stock if they could be kept from the poison pools between.”
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 202
Emigrants of the 1850s
To the observer with a discerning eye, significant changes had come about in the emigrant parties that assembled along the Missouri River towns of 1852 and 1853. In all the activity of those “jumping-off places” . . . certain changes could be observed. Wagon trains seemed to be made up of larger family units. There were now herds of cattle and sheep, and extra wagons packed with provisions. The companies and their outfits were grander. . . .
These families were more than farmers. They were ready to run a business, raise and sell a herd of sheep, manage a hotel, open a carpentry shop, trade a horse, sell a farm. Their knowledge and their skills were not only those needed for breaking ground, but for trading and selling and relocating. These families were comfortable in the towns as well as on the farms. They had waited prudently before they sold their farms and set out for Oregon or California. No acting from quick enthusiasm here, just the careful determination that the right time had come.
Lillian Schlissel, Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey, p. 80-81
A Successful Failure
“Today, the Pony Express is often referred to as ‘a successful failure.’ The founders realized that the Pony Express, commonly referred to as ‘the Pony,’ would not be financially successful, but they hoped it would prove the success of the central route, and thus, result in additional government contrasts for them. The reality was that the Pony Express lost money and did not bring the failing Russell, Majors [sic] and Waddell successful contracts. It actually drove them further into debt and brought about the financial collapse of what was once considered the biggest and mightiest freighting empire in the West.”
William E. Hill, The Pony Express: Yesterday and Today, p. xv
Mile 841-878: La Bonte to Box Elder Station
“[We] headed for the succession of creeks which the pioneers had crossed in the next three days’ journey.
The first was Wagonhound [near Mile 844]. Few knew the name, but none ever forgot the creek, and it could always be identified by description, for it was red. The soil and the rock were almost audibly red, from the burnt hue of Mexican pottery to the clear vivd tone of a madrone trunk. . . . One woman was impressed by the lurid color and the general look of drastic upheaval that she painfully crawled to the top of one of the ‘mountains of red stone’ and inscribed upon it, ‘Remember me in mercy O Lord.’ . . .
A stream just beyond Grindstone Butte, modernly called Bed Tick Creek, was apparently nameless to the emigrants; but it furnished water and a little much-needed grass. Next came La Prelle, the first large stream after Le Bonte Creek, boasting a natural bridge of rock.
After La Prelle came Little and then Big Box Elder. . . .
Through all the years it was a great moment for the throngs of emigrants as they struggled over the last elevation [near Box Elder Creek]. Behind them, low ridge after low ridge, in serried order, marched the Black Hills. Ahead, the Platte twisted through the lowland, gleaming silvery on the curves: a strange river, blurred gray and untrustworthy . . .”
[N.B. There were Pony Express stations at La Prelle and Box Elder. Both sites, however, are off the Pony Express Bikepacking route]
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 185-191
Mile 1480: Route Alternate
At Mile 1480 (west side of Fish Springs, UT), the XP Bikepacking continues north on the Pony Express-Overland Stage Trail to go around the north end of the Fish Springs Range. There is a road that leads directly west through the range, labelled “Pony Express Pass Trail,” which rejoins the Pony Express-Overland Stage Trail on the west side of the range. The distance across the pass looks to be about 4 miles (as compared to 8) and have about 1,000 feet of climbing.
I found this entry from a hiker:
Our route today does a horseshoe out and around the tip of a descending ridge that juts out into the desert flats. We decide to take a shortcut, considered by some to also have been a route taken by the Pony Express. It goes directly up and over. For lack of a better name, we’ll call it Boyd’s/Butte Cutoff. The climb up is uneventful, easy enough, just steady, with up and more up. Bart muscles his cart along. At the summit, however, and looking down the other side, a scary situation—the trail drops nearly straight off, down and through a boulder-choked, narrow canyon. We look down, then back in the direction from which we just came. Quick decision; we’re not going back. So over the edge we go! No time at all, Bart must off-load his heavy pack from the cart, and shoulder it in order to control his descent. I work my way down, trying to find a way (other than straight down) through the tangle of brush and the jumble of boulders. How the Pony ever got through here, heaven only knows. I manage; Bart manages, but it takes us awhile, quite awhile, before we finally emerge on a two-track above an old abandoned mine. A most fascinating place. Shafts straight down into the echoing darkness. A rock dropped takes three seconds to hit bottom—how far is that? Some interesting photos. Gotta check them out!
“There is perhaps no better register of the growth of our country than the record of the expansion of the postal service. The opening of a post office in some remote section of the West is proof sufficient of the presence of the pioneer. The establishment of a post road is the official marking of the pioneer trail.”
LeRoy Hafen, The Overland Mail: 1849–1869, p. 26
Green River Crossing
“Whether they crossed the Green River Basin by the Sublette Cutoff or the trail to Fort Bridger, the Green River—several hundred feet wide and dangerously swift—lay as a barrier across the emigrants’ path. The Green would be the last large river that California-bound emigrants would have to cross. (Those headed for Oregon would still have to contend with crossing the Snake River.) The challenge of crossing the Green varied with the time of year and the annual snowpack in the Wind River Range. Emigrants arriving at the river in August, after much of the winter snow had melted, sometimes found it low enough to ford. Most arrived earlier, though, in late June or early July, and saw it as Margaret Frink did—running “high, deep, swift, blue, and cold as ice.” At such high water, a ferry was the only safe way to cross. By 1847 several ferrying operations, run by mountain men or Mormons from Salt Lake City, lay scattered up and down the Green River at the common crossing points. Emigrants forked over tolls ranging from $3 to $16 per wagon (roughly $60 to $320 in today’s dollars), depending on demand and river level.”
Keith Heyer Meldahl, Hard Road West, p. 145
Mile 1421: Point Lookout
“Beyond [Faust’s, or Rush Valley Station] was Point Lookout, which was the doorway to the worst desert on the North American Continent. Ahead lay a country of bare, rocky mountain ranges, limitless miles of parched sand, scant herbage, dust storms, shimmering mirages in summer and deadly cold in winter. It was a lonely land devoid of civilized habitations. Even wild animals seemed to shun it.”
Settle and Settle, Saddles and Spurs, p. 139
Prairillon
“As night had closed in, we found some difficulty in choosing a camping-place: at length we pitched upon a prairillon under the lee of a hill, where we had bunch-grass and fuel, but no water. The wind blew sternly through the livelong night, and those who suffered from cramps in cold feet had little to do with the ‘sweet restorer, balmy sleep.'”
[Note: Prairillon: Small prairie, obsolete]
Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 481
Pony Express Rider Bibliography
Interest in individual Pony Express riders began in the late 1940s and early 1950s, when genealogists, antiquarians, and amateur and professional historians conducted research to determine such questions as who the first rider for the Pony Express was, and to list the names of individual riders. For the first rider of the Pony Express controversy see Lee Starnes, “The Pony Express Mystery,” Museum Graphic (Winter 1951). There is no single authoritative list of Pony Express riders or stationkeepers, although many have attempted to develop a comprehensive list. For an early list of riders with biographical sketches, see Kate B. Carter’s Riders of the Pony Express (1947) (reprinted in 1960 as Utah and the Pony Express). This resource is undocumented and also contains an undocumented list of stations and brief histories. Other lists of riders can be found in Raymond W. and Mary Lund Settle’s Saddles and Spurs: The Pony Express Saga (1955); Lee Jensen’s, The Pony Express: Illustrated with a Unique Collection of Historical Pictures (1955); William Harris Floyd, Phantom Riders of the Pony Express (1958); Roy S. Bloss, Pony Express—The Great Gamble (1959); Nolie Mumey’s, Hoofs to Wings: The Pony Express (1960); and Mabel Loving’s, The Pony Express Rides On! (1961), all of which place emphasis on the heroic efforts of the riders against the hardships and danger associated with their jobs.
anthony Godfrey, Historic Resource Study Pony Express National Historic Trail, p. 254-55
Train Numbers
In our train there are a wagon-master, an assistant, two extras, to help in different places, or take the place of sick or injured, and twenty-six drivers—thirty in all. There are three hundred and twelve oxen, besides some spare ones, often broken down. There are twenty-six wagons, divided into two wings —the right and left. As the leading teams have advantages, these wings alternate in starting. . . .
“The men are portioned off in four messes of six or seven, the cooks not having to guard or herd at night, or at the noon halts. The men are divided in five guards, so their watches will vary from before to after midnight, as their turns come, though sometimes they stand all night. The last, though making the duty rarer, was a great hardship, when after a hard day’s work we went supperless to an all night’s guard, after driving the cattle into the river to drink. . . .
“The wagons are narrow tired, weigh eighteen hundred pounds, and carry fiftyfour hundred. They are covered with double sheets and provided with chain-locks.
“Our train, when in close order, was a half mile long, but it often reached from one to three miles.
Thaddeus S. Kenderdine, A California Tramp and Later Footprints, p. 33-34
Two Can Keep a Secret
“In a great many tales of the same type the “curse” on the treasure is human greed. An old proverb, common among prospectors as well as others, reminds us that “two can keep a secret if one of them is dead.” The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is a dramatic enactment of that proverb, as is Chaucer’s Pardoner’s Tale.
Bruce Rosenberg, The Code of the West, p. 43
Friday Departure
“The second [Pony Express] departure for California would be Friday, April 13, and regularly thereafter on Friday, to avoid a delay over the Sabbath of letters from New York and the East. . . .
“Letters would be received up to 3 o’clock Monday afternoon of each week, at the company office, Room No. 8, Continental Bank Bldg., and telegrams up to 7 o’clock Thursday evening at the office of the American Telegraph Co., 2 ó Wall St.”
George Root, "Pike's Peak Express Companies," Part IV, Kansas Historical Quarterly, Vol. 14, No. 1 (1944) p. 50-51 and note 348
The Platte River
“The Platte is a wonderful river. For several hundred miles before it empties into the Missouri it is a very shallow stream, and in many places it has the appearance of being a very sluggish stream. It has a sandy bottom, and the channel frequently shifts from one locality to another. Within sight of Fort Kearney, where the stream ran through the military reservation, there were scores of islands in the early ’60’s. Some called that vicinity ‘The Thousand Islands.’’ In some places the stream is from one to two miles wide, and one can easily wade it except when it is on its annual ‘rise.’
“Along its banks, at intervals of a few miles, in the early days, there were occasional belts of young timber, the cottonwood predominating. There were frequent groves of willows on the islands for hundreds of miles and Willow Island was the name of one of the stage stations about fifty miles west of Fort Kearney. The few resident trappers, pioneers, traders, and ranchmen, followed by the steady march of civilization westward, soon thinned out most of the timber. Farther up the stream, along the north and south forks, was a vigorous growth of sagebrush and cacti, in the early ’60’s, but freighters and pilgrims grubbed out much of the sage-brush for fuel.”
Root and Connelley, The Overland Stage to California, p. 233
75 Ponies
“It took Seventy-five ponies to make the first trip from Missouri to California. The riders of these ponies had ‘shoved a continent behind their hooves,’ and many people recognized this important fact. The crowds cheered ‘Long live the Pony!’ till their throats were sore. When the speeches ended, the bonfires were extinguished, the bells stopped ringing, and the last waltzes were danced, it remained to be seen whether the Pony Express would be a triumph or a failure.”
Anthony Godfrey, Historic Research Study Pony Express National Historic Trail, p. 56
Fort Leavenworth
“In May 1846] legislation authorizing the fixed-post concept finally cleared congressional hurdles . . . Prior to the 1846 measure, Fort Leavenworth—located on the Missouri River in 1827 primarily as protection for the Santa Fe Trail—had been the only military establishment anywhere near the Oregon-California Trial.”
John D. Unruh, Jr., The Plains Across, p. 205
Mile 520: Diamond Springs and California Hill Detour
At this point, the Pony Express Bikepacking Route is still south of the South Platte River. North of the river are two landmarks. To reach these, you’d have to cross the river into Brule (at about Mile 520), and recross to rejoin the route at about Mile 532 through Big Springs (by taking Highway 138, or by taking the dirt road across Highway 30 from the California Crossing marker).
Diamond Springs Station landmark (marked on the Pony Express Bikepacking Route)
California Hill (Not marked on the Route map. A marker stands a few miles west just before the intersection of Road West MF.
“When snugly dry and in order again, the pilgrims left the South Platte for good and all and began to climb the rough, high land between the forks. They called the first steep pull ‘California Hill.’ Deep ascending ruts still mar its surface. A tiny school sits squatly on the rounded hillside like a flea on an elephant [in the 1930s-40s]. Not much else has come to change its look from the days when the drivers cracked their whips like rifle shots to urge the dragging ox trains up the slope.”
“[California Hill] necessitated a climb of 240 feet in just over 1½ miles in order to reach the plateau between the North and South Platte Rivers. Imposing trail ruts are still plainly visible most of the way up the hill. The Nebraska State Historical Society, who owns the resource, invites you to get out of your car and walk in the footsteps of the pioneers. The panoramic views back toward California Crossing are spectacular.”
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 112-113
Freighter Burial
“When a little out of sorts or low-spirited, the old professionals would make things worse by telling what became of the teamsters when they died, that is, in this world; for it is pretty easy to tell where most of the ‘bull-whackers’ went, unless orthodox theology is at fault. These Job’s comforters told how the translated unfortunates were buried in scant roadside graves, in boxes made from the sideboards of their wagons.”
Thaddeus S. Kenderdine, A California Tramp and Later Footprints, p. 18-19
Mile 777: Bitter Cottonwood Station Bitter Cottonwood Station, WY
“Mystery and murder at Bitter Cottonwood Station in Wyoming!
Pony Express station keepers did not lead an easy life. For most, danger lurked around every corner. And sometimes it came from unexpected sources, such as what happened in eastern Wyoming.
Hod Russell was the station keeper at Bitter Cottonwood station. Like most keepers, he purchased meat from local hunters to keep the station stocked for Pony Express Riders. One of these hunters was Bob Jennings, who hunted for six Pony Express Stations in eastern Wyoming. For reasons now lost to history, Jennings killed Hod Russell. Was there an argument that got heated? Was there dispute over prices and/or goods? Did the two just not like each other, or did Russell do something to provoke the attack? We will never know- Jennings was convicted and hanged for the crime in 1865.”
“Usually known as Cottonwood Springs, which by 1863 had a very favorable reputation as a ‘home station,’ and was also a very good camping place for freighters, because of the abundance of cedar.-Ibid., p. 208. This ‘Cottonwood Station is not to be confused with the “Cottonwood Station” in Washington county, Kansas. (See Footnote 803.)”
George Root, "Pike's Peak Express Companies," Part III, Kansas Historical Quarterly, Vol. 13, No. 8 (1944) p. 522, note 307
Twenty-Six Coups
“Directly opposite General Mitchell was Shan-tag-a-lisk, which is translated as ‘Spotted Tail.’ He was the greatest warrior in the Sioux nation, said to be the greatest either past or present. He was said to be able to count twenty-six ‘cooz.’ He belonged to the Brule Sioux. On his right was my friend, ‘Bad Wound.’ On the left were ‘Two Strike,’ and ‘Two Crows,’ and the ‘Big Mandan.'”
Eugene Ware, Indian Wars of 1864, p. 148
Pony Express Finances
Theoretically, the combined assets of the partners exceeded liabilities by about $419,000. But unreported was a catastrophic loss of $150,000 in a herd of freight oxen, caught in a howling blizzard at Ruby Valley, Nevada. It had been decided to speculate the cattle on the California market, rather than return them to Leavenworth from Camp Floyd, Utah, to which they had pulled wagons of Army supplies. The loss reduced their margin of assets to $269,000-and their obligations due in December totaled $250,000. Someone had computed that, through the following June, notes and bills payable would breach the staggering sum of $1,000,000.
Roy S. Bloss, Pony Express—The Great Gamble, 109-110
The Big Blue
“It was at the Big Blue, about ten days out of St. Joe, that the emigrants felt the first flick of the Elephant’s tail. Here was a chance to repair and to reorganize, but here also, where the St. Joe and Fort Leavenworth caravans converged, rode three sinister Horsemen—death by epidemic, death by drowning, and violence at the hands of the Pawnee. At low water the Blue was fordable, but in the emigrant season it was more often on the rampage, and the blockaded trains accumulated into a sizable city of tents and wagons, ‘like the descent of locusts in Egypt,’ without a trace of sanitation. Cholers and other ailments such as measles and smallpox felled the emigrants like a giant scythe, and both banks of the Blue became a cemetary. Uncounted deaths also resulted accidental drownings; but the Pawnee menace at this point was over-advertised.”
Merrill J. Mattes, The Great Platte River Road, p. 147
Cribbing and Butterfield's Frequent Service
THE FOURTH ESTATE of California’s early years was a no-holds barred vocation in which the moral qualities, accuracy and objectiveness of one newspaper were held to be fair game for public ridicule in the columns of a competing sheet. Charges of plagiarism were rife, yet nearly every paper throughout the state copied, as a matter of course, items from other news journals. Cribbing was particularly evident on current out-of-state news, originating largely in letters from paid correspondents. These were employed by the papers which could afford them, in principal cities of the eastern states.
Until the 20-day Butterfield Overland Mail was inaugurated, contributions from correspondents were forwarded via the Isthmus of Panama, making the arrival of every steamer at San Francisco a news event of major proportions. It wasn’t so much the speed of the Butterfield line (approximately equal to that of the Panama route) as it was the stage company’s more frequent, twice-a-week schedule that caused it to find especial favor in the eyes of California publishers. Its overland route was a means of halving the time between news making and news printing.
Roy S. Bloss, Pony Express—The Great Gamble, 55
Brigham Young Express Company
“[A]s early as February [1856] meetings were held in the Salt Lake City Tabernacle for the purpose of organizing a company to transport mail and freight. In one meeting Brigham Young offered to take stock in the concern and equip three hundred miles of the line himself. Others became interested and Brigham Young Express Company was launched. One important item in the plan was to form settlements along the line where reserve animals could be kept, and weary travelers could rest if they wished to do so. To the Mormons these stations would have been of incalculable benefit, for the tide of immigration to Salt Lake Valley was running high at that time. Plans for all these things were pushed with vigor until the severe winter of 1856 compelled a halt to the work. It was begun again in 1857 but was terminated by the forwarding of United States troops to Utah.”
Settle and Settle, Empire on Wheels, p. 72
The Idea of a Pony Express
“Russell was hardly the first dreamer to conceive a horseback relay system for delivering mail across distances: Marco Polo found a similar system in thirteenth-century China, operating with ‘post stations twenty-five miles apart, and stations for foot carriers three miles apart, on the chief routes through his dominion.’ . . .
The idea of a cross-country express appears to have been first conceived by Ben Ficklin, who planted the idea with California’s U.S. Senator, William M. M. Gwin, while the two men traveled across the continent on horseback in 1854. . . . Russell himself came up with a similar idea in the winter of 1857-58 while traveling across the plains to Utah to deliver supplies to Albert Sidney Johnston’s army there, and he subsequently broached the ides in Washington to Secretary of War Floyd and various senators and congressmen.”
Dan Rottenberg, Death of a Gunfighter, p. 158
Delicacies on the Trail
“Though supplementary to breadstuff and bacon, some other articles of food were considered essential: salt, sugar, coffee, and dried fruit. In addition, each family was likely to carry along something in the way of special delicacies—tea, maple sugar, vinegar, pickles, smoked beef. . . .
Though these backwoods people had no knowledge of scientific dietetics, they had folkways which served them well. Aside from actual near-starvation, there seems to have been no dietary trouble in these early years. There is no mention of scurvy. Toward the end of the journey, after the delicacies had been exhausted, the diet was monotonous, and perhaps this is the reason, some emigrants arrived in California with a longing for pickles.”
George R. Stewart, The California Trail, p. 120-121
Pony Express Timetable
[T]he regular time for starting the express from St. Joseph soon changed to Friday mornings at nine o’clock. The run from San Francisco to St. Joseph continued to depart at 5 p.m. on Tuesdays . . . The announced time schedule for the Pony Express nationwide was as follows:
Marysville — 12 hours
Ft. Kearney — 34 hours
Ft. Laramie — 80 hours
Ft. Bridger — 108 hours
Great Salt Lake — 124 hours
Camp Floyd — 128 hours
Carson City — 188 hours
Placerville — 226 hours
Sacramento — 232 hours
San Francisco —240 hours
Anthony Godfrey, Historic Research Study Pony Express National Historic Trail, p. 64
Delivering Mail Over the Sierra Nevada
“Also in late 1858, Chorpenning attempted to dispel the prevalent attitude among congressmen and the postmaster general that scheduled service was impossible over the Sierra Nevada in winter. Accordingly, he negotiated a $2,000 contract with John A. ‘Snowshoe’ Thompson to maintain the road through the Genoa-Placerville passes. A longtime associate of Chorpenning, Thompson had carried mail to Carson Valley between 1854 and 1858. In 1858-59, he used snowplows and sleighs to conduct regular weekly crossings of the Sierra Nevada. When storms closed the passes to sleighs, ski couriers carried the mail across the mountains. To the surprise and disappointment of Chorpenning’s rivals, the Sierra Nevada posed no insurmountable obstacle during a particularly miserable winter.”
John M. Townley, "Stalking Horse for the Pony Express: The Chorpenning Mail Contracts between California and Utah, 1851-1860", Arizona and the West, Vol. 24, No. 3 (Autumn, 1982), p. 246
Mile 311: Susan Haile Grave Site
The following lines rely extensively on the article by Randy Brown in the Spring, 2007, issue of Overland Journal, titled The Grave of Susan C. Haile. When I first visited this area in the late 1960s with Boy Scouts, it was generally known as the “Lone Grave.” Randy Brown writes, “Most assuredly, however, when Susan Haile died in 1852 hers was not a lone grave. This was in the midst of the ‘cholera corridor’, . . . .” Most likely there were dozens even hundreds of graves along the Thirty-two Mile Creek/Platte River Valley stretch, but we know only the Susan Haile grave location. We know of the Haile grave because of the existence of a headstone. Intriguing legends and questions accompany the Haile story. Who was she? How did she die? How was a gravestone transported to the spot?
Often extended family units or clans moved from Virginia and Pennsylvania to Tennessee and Kentucky and then again to Missouri. The Seawells, Susan’s grandparents followed this pattern and eventually settled in Missouri. Susan and R. C. Haile were married in 1836 when she was almost 19. Randy Brown searched for accounts of the journey but concludes, “Unfortunately, there is no contemporary account of the journey. They probably left the Missouri River in the Kansas City area, or they could well have headed northwest . . . to St. Joseph, one of the major outfitting towns of the time. . . . All that is known of the journey is that when they reached the Platte River in south-central Nebraska, Susan C. Haile died.” The legend of the “Lone Grave” began when settlers in the late 1860s discovered the engraved stone marker.
The legends explaining her death are interesting and can be found in many sources. According to the legend, they secured water from the government well approximately six miles southeast of the grave (see images 23, 24, 25). It has been suggested that this water had been poisoned by Indians and thus caused the death of Susan Haile. Scholars take issue with this explanation for several reasons: 1) the Pawnees who traveled in the area were not warlike or hostile, 2) the Pawnees would have used the water themselves, and 3) the Pawnees did not have a poison effective in a well. 1852 was the height of the cholera epidemic on the trail. It is more likely that Susan Haile drank contaminated water that infected her with cholera, a violent intestinal disorder that led to rapid dehydration and then death sometimes in less than a day.
The next part of the legend suggests that the grieving husband returned to St. Joseph and purchased a granite marker which he brought back to the gravesite in a wheel-barrow. Catherine Renschler and Randy Brown have read many sources and conclude that it is most unlikely that R. C. Haile pushed a stone 250 miles across the prairie in a wheel-barrow. But Brown asserts, “Part of the legend may be true. Richard Haile marked his wife’s grave with a headboard and could have returned to the settlements to get a proper marble headstone.. . .The wheelbarrow aspect, however, is undoubtedly an embellishment added in later years by local people.”
Bill Sole (1972) wrote about the “Lone Grave” for the Adams County Centennial Year Publication in 1972. The first marker was, he writes, “. . .chipped to pieces by travelers and relic hunters.” In 1900 children of Waterhouse Sunday School raised funds for a new marker and this one fell victim to souvenir hunters as well. The present stone was dedicated July 30, 1933, by members of the Hastings Outdoor Club.
Following communication with the descendants of Susan Haile and extensive research by Randy Brown and the Oregon California Trails Association, a new OCTA Plaque was installed and the Adams County Historical Society organized a program in Kenesaw followed by a dedication of the OCTA plaque at the grave site.
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In addition to the gravesite, this site is important for other reasons. Susan Hail is buried at the precise spot where the Oregon Trail broke over a small rise and came in view of the Platte River. The Nebraska City-Fort Kearny road passed north of this site about a mile and a half, joining the main Oregon Trail a little more than six miles west, There were several alternate roads in this vicinity. This was one of the great moments in the experience of the emigrants, for the first leg of the journey was now almost complete. Arrival at the Platte River meant that they were within striking distance of Fort Kearny, the first sign of civilization in this remote country. The Platte River was broad and flat, with little or no timber, quite unlike its appearance today. Perhaps because the broad flat treeless valley during spring flood once resembled a sandy seashore, early travelers called this spot “The Coast of Nebraska”. (Also it is noted some writers of the day wrote about the white canvas topped wagons moving through the deep prairie grass resembling “Ships at Sea” as they moved across miles of waving grasses).
Both northwest and southeast of the Susan Hail grave (Sections 18 and 19) are fairly extensive grassed over Oregon Trail traces, made by the passage of thousands of animals and wagons as they descended the low sandy hill towards the river.
Note: It has been recommended as early as 1975 by Historian Merrill Mattes and as recently as a March 1981 comprehensive report on historic sites and trail segment status by the National Park Service, United States Department of Interior, that the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission should seek adequate funding to purchase approximately thirty acres of pasture land. This site which would be an unmanned park administered from Fort Kearny State Historical Park, fifteen miles to the west would be called “Coast of Nebraska” as proposed by Merrill Mattes and the National Park Service.
—The Oregon Trail, Rock Creek Station, Nebraska to Fort Laramie, Wyoming, p. 6
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The site is marked on the XP Bikepacking Route map.
The Upper Crossing of the South Fork of the Platte apparently went by several names including “Laramie Crossing,” “Goodale’s Crossing,” “Morrell’s Crossing,” and later “Julesburg” or “Overland City,” although Julesburg came to be preferred. Julesburg became widely known, the station and stable were then “long, one-story, hewed cedar-log building; there was also a store and blacksmith, shop. . . . The Pacific telegraph line at this point also crossed tho Platte, having been completed through to San Francisco via Fort Bridger and Salt Lake. . . . lt cost ten dollars a wagon t.o get ferried across the Platte [by rope ferry in 1864]. —Overland Stage, pp. 219, 220. Julesburg was named after Jules Beni. (See Footnote 291.)
“The most important items to be obtained from the commissary were grain (when available), bacon, pickled pork, and flour, the price of which fluctuated wildly . . .
After the quartermaster, the most important suppliers of goods and services were the post blacksmith and the post sutler. As the result of inferior materials or accident much of the gear, especially the wheels, reached the fort in a weakened condition, and animals needed to be re-shod. . . .
The post sutler, being a businessman and not a philanthropist, was frequently the cause of complaints about ‘prices extragavantly high.’ . . .Capt. Stansbury noted that ‘the sutler’s store will supply travellers with groceries, cloths, and many useful articles.'”
Merrill J. Mattes, The Great Platte River Road, p. 204-205
Big Dipper Clock
“The herders and guards knew the hour of the night, when there was a clear sky, by the position of the big dipper; the Great Bear was their only clock.”
“We aimed to get two good Missouri oxen for wheelers and leaders, size being required for the former and intelligence for the latter. The next grade were the ‘pointers,’ which were hooked next the tongue. Between these and the leaders were the ‘swing,’ composed of the ‘scallawags’ —the weak, lazy and unbroken. To show how few stood the twelve hundred miles journey, I will state that but two of my twelve got through, the rest having died or given out from time to time. They were replaced by others from returning trains, or by the best in what we called our ” calf yard,” or loose cattle. This was a corruption of the Spanish word caballada, although the ‘Pikers’ did not know it, and, in fact, did not bother themselves about its origin, as ” calf yard ” seemed the natural term for a troop of oxen.”
Thaddeus S. Kenderdine, A California Tramp and Later Footprints, p. 34-35
Failure of Russell, Majors & Waddell
“It has been said again and again that the Pony Express ruined Russell, Majors & Waddell. That is not true. It was a failure as a financial asset from the beginning and made its contribution to the final debacle, but that contribution was both minor and one of many. The Central Overland California & Pike’s Peak Express Company which operated it was a failure as a money-making institution. So were most of the other partnerships which which these men were concerned . . . The freighting business appears to be the only one which paid dividends. Had they confined their efforts to that and been reimbursed for their losses in 1857, the story probably would have been different . . . The day Russell decided to organize the Leavenworth & Pike’s Peak Express Company was a day of doom. That organization and its greater successor did as much to bankrupt the partners as the failure of the government to reimburse them for their losses in 1857.”
Settle and Settle, Empire on Wheels, p. 85
Mile 1075: South Pass
“But South Pass was the halfway mark on the wagon journey [to Oregon], and by now the pioneers had survived two months of Platte River storms, the outdoor cholera wards, and the high-altitude weariness of the Rockies. There had to be something to say about reaching such an important milestone. For the gifted Margaret Frink, who understood that the small, telling detail is everything, the spare surroundings at South Pass presented few problems. In her Journal of the Adventures of a Party of California Gold Seekers, she reported finding the first post office in almost a thousand miles along the trail, and in the disance she heard live music at the summit . . .”
Rinker Buck, The Oregon Trail, p. 328
Sabbath Day
Another thing he insisted upon was resting on the Sabbath day, not only because to do so was Divinely commanded, but because his trains made better time in the long run than those which traveled seven days a week without rest. The bullwhackers liked it too.
Settle and Settle, "Napoleon of the West," Annals of Wyoming Vol. 32, No.1, April 1960, p. 12-13
Mile 82: Log Chain Station
“David M. Locknane’s station (Log Chain of later accounts) was located on a branch of the Grasshopper river, and was termed by Burton ‘Big Muddy Station.’ It is said that an early settler who lived nearby made good money during the spring months by renting his log chains to freighters whose vehicles became mired in the mud of this cr0ssing (interviews of George A. Root with old settlers). This was the home of “Old Bob Ridley” (Robert Sewell), a very popular stage driver on the eastern division between Atchison and Fort Kearny.–Overland Stage, pp. 193-195.”
George Root, "Pike's Peak Express Companies," Part III, Kansas Historical Quarterly, Vol. 13, No. 8 (1944) p. 515, note 297
Cholera Symptoms and Treatment
“Although some who contracted the disease lingered for many days, it usually struck suddenly, and often the victim was dead within hours, usually after ‘great agony.’ Diarrhea was such a common forerunner of cholera that many emigrants speak of death by cholera of diarrhea as if they were synonymous. Sore throat, vomiting, and bowel discharge seemed to be the most common symptoms. . . . An illuminating account of cholera symptoms and treatment is given by Dr. Lord of New York:
The cholera is a rapidly fatal disease, when suffered to run its course unrestrained, & more easily controlled then most diseases when met in time. . . . It commences with diarrhoea in every case. A single dose of laudunum, with pepper, camphor, musk, ammonia, peppermint or other stimulants usually effect a cure in a few minutes. If pain in the bowels was present, another dose was required. If cramp in the calves of the legs had supervened, a larger dose was given. If skin had become cold, and covered with sweat (which did not happen unless the disease had run several hours or days) the doses were frequently repeated until warmth was restored. The medicines were aided by friction, mustard plasters, and other external applications. If to all these symptoms vomiting was added, there was no more to be done. Vomiting was the worst symptom, and every case proved fatal where vomiting, purging, cramp and cold sweating skin were present . . . ‘”
Merrill J. Mattes, The Great Platte River Road, p. 86
Skull Varnish
“Near Dallas, almost on the Missouri-Kansas state line, stands the settlement known in trail days as Little Santa Fe. The dragging bull trains returning from the summer trade in Mexico reached it a full day before arriving at Independence; and the thirsty packers sought relief without too much regard as to whether they drank real liquor or the pink-elephant mixture of new whisky and molasses known as skull varnish.”
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 18
Inactivity of Pro-Union Public in California
The main danger in regard to the Pacific Republic movement was the inactivity of the loyal element of the population. General Sumner in April, 1861, wrote to the War Department that there was a strong Union feeling in the state, but that “the secessionists are much the more active and zealous party, which gives them more influence than they ought to have from their numbers.” The State Legislature, however, promptly and emphatically condemned the project to form a Pacific Republic—both branches adopting the following resolution, May 17, 1861: “Resolved by the Senate, the Assembly concurring, that the people of California are devoted to the Constitution and Union now in the hour of trial and peril. That California is ready to maintain the rights and honor of the national government at home and abroad, and at all times to respond to any requisition that may be made upon her to defend the republic against foreign or domestic foes,” Each latest arrival of intelligence from the East added fresh impetus to the feeling of loyalty for the Union, so that within a few months after the outbreak of the war, all discussions of a Pacific Republic ceased. “So it was that this digging, delving, half-foreign, rich young state was not after all able to keep out of the quarrel between the North and South. As the mails brought the reports of the disunion speeches of proslavery senators, and the disloyal acts of the Southern people, her nerves tingled and her blood was up. Disunion? Never! A Pacific Republic? Never.”
Imogene Spaulding, "The Attitude of California to the Civil War," Annual Publication of the Historical Society of Southern California , 1912-1913, Vol. 9, No. 1/2 (1912-1913), pp. 111
Daily Freighting Drives
“The first drive in the morning would probably be until ten o’clock, or later, owing to the weather and distance between favorable camping grounds. Cattle were then unyoked and the men got their first meal of the day. The cattle were driven in and yoked for the second drive any time from two to four o’clock, the time of starting being governed by the heat, two drives of about five to seven hours being made each day. The rate of travel was about two miles an hour, or from twenty to twenty-five miles a day, the condition of the roads and the heat governing.”
George P. Martin, "Bull-Whacking Days," Proceedings and Collections of the Nebraska State Historical Society, 1902, p. 228
Mile 642: Bridgeport
“After Bridgeport, Nebraska, the landscape changed dramatically, from grasslands to spare, dry sagebrush country, and the soil turned from sandy brown to pink. We were entering the magic, pastel geology of western Nebraska that was celebrated by the pioneers and became familiar to Americans through the paintings of William Henry Jackson and Albert Bierstadt. Today the only route along the south banks of the Platte is the two-lane Highway 92, a prime example of the Oregon Trail adapted for modern use by paving the ruts with asphalt, but I was delighted to see that the prospect from the wagon seat was virtually unchanged.”
Rinker Buck, The Oregon Trail, p. 229
Growth of Trading Forts
“In 1840 Fort William [at the confluence of the Platte and Laramie Rivers], operated by the American Fur Company, was the lone American enterprise near the trails.
The next year, there were three. One, Fort Platte, still clearly reflected the fur-trade era . . . Constructed within two miles of Fort William, [Fort Platte] specialized in dispensing illicit whiskey to facilitate Indian trading. In response to this challenge, the American Fur Company promptly commenced a new adobe fort to replace the deteriorating Fort William. The proprietors designated the new structure Fort John but almost everyone called it Fort Laramie, by which name it became famous. The third post begun in 1841, Fort Bridger, was the first definite response to the emerging era of overland travel.”
John D. Unruh, Jr., The Plains Across, p. 244-245
Mile 1478: Fish Springs
“At Fish Springs, whose water was filled with small, perch-like fish, two men had charge of the usual number of horses and mules. The water was warm and had a sulfurous taste, but those who lived there had become accustomed to it. Along the road for many miles past this place the ground was so thickly encrusted with alkali that it looked like snow.”
Settle and Settle, Saddles and Spurs, p. 140
Folsom Becomes the Western Terminus
“In July [1860], the railroad was completed to Folsom, California. It then became the western terminus for the mail & Pony Express. Mail could be taken by train [to or from Sacramento and San Francisco].”
William E. Hill, The Pony Express: Yesterday and Today, p. 67
Atchison Becomes the Eastern Terminus
“[Due to] concern over riots and strong Southern sympathies in St. Joseph as well as with the new ownership and management, Atchison became the eastern terminus of the Pony Express. It was about fifteen miles further west, and by then, it was also served by the railroad and the telegraph.”
[N.B. re: ownership and management: “On April 26 [1861], Russell was asked to resign [as president of California Overland Central and Pike’s Peak], and Bela Hughes became president of the C.O.C & P.P. Hughes was Benjamin Holladay’s cousin.”]
William E. Hill, The Pony Express: Yesterday and Today, p. 71
Mile 151: Hollenberg Pony Express Station State Historic Site
“The Hollenberg Pony Express Station State Historic Site has been painstakingly restored and is open for visits from March 14th – October 13th.
Be sure to make a quick stop and take a walk inside. It’s a pretty incredible experience so early on the trail.”
“‘Mormon’ had in fact become a word of fear; the Gentiles looked upon the Latter-Day Saints much as our crusading ancestors regarded the ‘Hashshashiyun,’ [Hashshashin, Order of Assassins]whose name, indeed, was almost enough to frighten them. Mr. Brigham Young was the Shaykh-el-Jebel, the Old Man of the Hill redivivus, Messrs. Kimball and Wells were the chief of his Fidawin, and ‘Zion on the tops of the mountains’ formed a fair representation of Alamut [region in Iran]. ‘Going among the Mormons!’ said Mr. M— to me at New Orleans; ‘they are shooting and cutting one another in all directions; how can you expect to escape?'”
Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 2
Black's Fork
“Emerging from the river plain we entered upon another mauvaise terre, with knobs and elevations of clay and green gault, striped and banded with lines of stone and pebbles: it was a barren, desolate spot, the divide between the Green River and its western influent, the shallow and somewhat sluggish Black’s Fork. The name is derived from an old trader: it is called by the Snakes Ongo Ogwe Pa, or ‘Pine-tree Stream;’ it rises in the Bear-River Mountains, drains the swamps and lakelets on the way, and bifurcates in its upper bed, forming two principal branches, Ham’s Fork and Muddy Fork.”
Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 174
Highly Dangerous Work
Whatever the pay rate for riders, carrying the mail was highly dangerous work. They worked in a hard unsafe environment, where many of them suffered and/or were even killed by accidental occurrences along the route. One Pony Express rider that left San Francisco for St. Joseph on April 18, 1860, met such a fatal accident. Traveling at a great speed at night, the rider’s horse “stumbled over an ox lying in the road, throwing the rider, and the horse fell upon him, so badly crushing him that it was feared he would soon die,” which unfortunately he did. 23 In July 1860, another rider was thrown from his horse and killed while crossing the Platte River. The mailbags he carried were never recovered. A month later, in August 1860, east of Carson City, another rider was thrown from his horse and presumed dead when his horse arrived at the station riderless. In addition to these accidents, there were other misfortunes. In December 1860,an inexperienced rider of German ancestry lost his way near Ft. Kearney and froze to death. Other less serious accidents occurred as well. For instance, in November 1860, five miles west of Camp Floyd, a Pony rider’s horse fell and broke its neck. The rider escaped serious injury in the incident, but he had to pack the express to Camp Floyd on foot.
Anthony Godfrey, Historic Research Study Pony Express National Historic Trail, p. 62
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 2 percent of those people-620,000-lived in the sprawling and largely unsettled West and Southwest. California, with a population of 380,000 (up from about 18,000, not including Indians, before the gold rush), was home to two-thirds of those Americans.
Christopher Corbett, Orphans Preferred, p. 31
Yclepted
“On August 22 [1849] the Missouri Republican correspondent ‘Nebraska’ told of a fiasco ‘of our last Indian war, in which the chivalry of Missouri, yclepted the Oregon Battalion [out of Fort Kearny], was arrayed on one side, and the squaws, pappooses, and decrepit warriors of the Pawnee nation, on the other.'”
Merrill J. Mattes, The Great Platte River Road, p. 170
Mile 1707: Mountain Springs Station
“This station is very well signed, very easy to find and see.” Note that this is a short distance off the Pony Express route. Jan reports a cattle trough at the site of Mountain Springs.
“On October 3 [1857], Wells and his advisors reached a number of important decisions under the threat of Alexander’s rapid advance. First they resolved to destroy Fort Bridger and Fort Supply, lest these two settlements prove of service to the expedition. . . . As more aggressive moves Wells divided his calvary into several units, under Smith, Burton, Rockwell, and McAllister, and sent them to harass the army. . . .
With forty-three men Smith left Fort Bridger on October 3 as one of the sent out to follow the expedition. After he had met and turned back a supply train of the army, he divided his small forces into two units, retaining twenty-two men under his command and sending the others to steal Alexander’s mules. In the early morning of October 5 Smith and his weakened company came upon the camp of two more trains, each with twenty-six wagons, halted along the Green River. Although the teamsters, had they known it, cold have held the Mormons off until help arrived from Alexander’s forces nearby, in the darkness they were uncertain of their enemies’ strength . . . The teamsters, furthermore, were civilians, not soldiers, and they had no stomach to die in defense of government property. Thus without a shot the raiders were able to fire the two trains. Later the same day the Major met a third train on the Big Sandy and destroyed it with equal ease.”
Norman F. Furniss, The Mormon Conflict, 1850-1859, p. 143-144
Free to Own Another Man
The Emancipation Proclamation appears to have been the catalyst that launched the unfortunate slave on a journey to his doom. That spring, according to Owens’ letter, the slave’s master, afraid he would lose his slaves as a result of the war, but ignoring the federal prohibition against slavery in the territories, took his valuable human property and joined the Great Migration. The little party departed for the frontier with the belief that way out West a man could still be free to own another man without government interference.
Todd Guenther, “‘Could These Bones Be From a Negro?’” Overland Journal 19, no. 2 (Summer 2001), 48
Virginia Slade's Past
“There has been much speculation but little of actual record concerning the life of this striking, high-spirited woman prior to her marriage to Slade. The conjecture of her contemporaries—and it was not pharisaical, but casual, matter of fact, and therefore tenable by us—was that she had been a dance hall girl (‘hurdy-gurdy’ was yet to come from the Barbary Coast). Other writers of western lore claim that Slade met Virginia when she ran a faro game (it was called ‘bucking the tiger’ in those days) in a gambling house, and that when he got in a shooting scrape, she pulled her guns, ordered everyone out of the gambling establishment, and cared for the wounded Slade until he recovered.”
Virginia Rowe Towle, Vigilante Woman," p. 124
Performance of the Daily Overland Mail
“During the summer and autumn of 1861 the service was satisfactorily performed, despite the difficulty occasioned by accumulations of mail at the eastern end. The paper mail was usually carried through in twenty-eight days and the letter mail in twenty.
However, as winter approached, greater difficulties were encountered. . . Friends of the Ventral route were liberal ad blamed the unusual weather without condemning the route . . . On the other hand the champions of the southern route were quick to declare the service a failure . . .
But after making allowances for sectional bias, the fact remains that the service was slow and very irregular during the first winter. The Alta California admitted in the latter part of January that it had been about a week since the last mail came in from the east. . . .
During March and April there was little or no improvement . . .Between the snow and the mud the stage-coaches had a difficult time. . . . Sleighs were often employed over the heaviest snow stretches . . . Deep, still mud in paces made the empty coach a full load for the team, and passengers were compelled to walk. Mail bags full of government documents were frequently employed to fill in ‘chuck-holes’ in the worst patches of the road . . .
It was August however, before all the back mails of March and April which had not been destroyed, were delivered at the places of designation.”
LeRoy Hafen, The Overland Mail: 1849–1869, p. 224-228
Buffalo Chips
“Having been the mainstay of the Indian for generations, the buffalo, at the last of their career, made one outstanding contribution to the white race. Practically speaking, they made emigration possible. It is hard to see how the overland journey could have been successful in the early years without them. In the Platte Valley, just where herds were thickest, there was a stretch of two hundred miles without one stick of timber—no dry grass, no sage, no anything that would serve as fuel except buffalo chips. Often nearly white with years of exposure, dry to handle, and light as feathers, this age-old deposit of the herds burned like charcoal with little blaze and less smoke. It boiled the night guard’s coffee, warmed the baby’s milk, heartened them all with hot meals night and morning. It was of such importance to the domestic economy of the emigrants that the canny mules learned to pull up and stop hopefully at any spot where the droppings were thick, and even the most finicky of the women vied with one another to collect the driest. . . .
[Emigrants], young and old, carried bags and, no matter what else the did on the long day’s walk, they industriously gathered fuel. Never was manna in the wilderness more truly a godsend than this remarkable substitute for wood, which providentially appeared only where wood was not.”
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 91-92
Name of the Pony Express Company
Another error that has gained wide acceptance is that there was a company called the Pony Express company organized for the purpose of founding and operating that institution. Technically and legally the company which organized and managed the Pony Express was the Central Overland California & Pike’s Peak Express Co., which was incorporated, financed, and mostly owned by the members of the firm of Russell, Majors & Waddell. There never was an organization called “The Pony Express Company,” although the name was sometimes loosely used in referring to the express company.
For the posing of contrary biased opinions does not necessarily result in truth, not does the citing of a charge with its counter-charge, or a pious delusion with the facts that debunk it.
Wallace Stegner, The Gathering of Zion, p 313
Alexander Majors' Oath
“This oath was the creation of Majors, who was a very pious and rigid disciplinarian; he tried hard to enforce it, but how great was his failure it is needless to say. It would have been equally profitable had the old gentleman read the riot act to a herd of stampeded buffaloes. And he believes it himself now.”
J.W. Buel, Heroes of the Plains, p. 247
Contemplation on the Trail
“Hours of contemplation, however, are not wanting to any traveller, and so far these would not be different from many nights at sea; but this whole period was one in which, if ever, one might feel the truth of the poet’s ‘suave mari magno,’ &c., as I have often felt its falsity. One seemed cut off from all the din and turmoil of the world, and the hopes and fears of a life in it, as much as if one had been a denizen of the happy valley. There was the daily work to do and the daily bread to eat (bad luck on it, there was no fresh buffalo meat!); so it was yesterday, so it would be to-morrow . . .
“At any rate, it is neither unpleasant nor uninstructive to have a few such months, like the small space of blue sky that often appears between the clouds that have passed and those that are coming up, and seems the very ideal of tranquillity. True this life was not to last very long, but while it did last one looked upon the future as through a wall of glass very thick.”
William Chandless, Chandless, W. (1857). A Visit to Salt Lake, p. 84-85
End of the Cattle Empire
“In 1862 the Federal Homestead Law was passed; in 1874 the first piece of barbed wire was sold in the United States. These two facts combined to break the even tenor of the cattleman’s way. …
“The story of the effects of barbed wire on human life in the Great Plains is one that has not been and cannot be adequately told. Its effect on the cattleman has been partly told. The advent of barbed wire was an important factor in the decline of the cattle kingdom. It brought about the disappearance of the open, free range and converted the range country into the big-pasture country. It sounded the death knell of the native longhorn and made possible the introduction of blooded stock. With barbed-wire fences the ranchman could isolate his cattle and, through segregation, could introduce blooded stock. Barbed wire put an end to the long drive, made the cattle trail a “crooked lane,” and the cattleman to patronize the railroads whether he would or not. Barbed wire has made stock-farming rather than ranching the dominant occupation on the Great Plains.”
Walter Prescott Webb, The Great Plains, p. 230, 312-313
Mile 1695: Bates's/ Butte/ Robber's Roost Station
“While the Shoshonee is tracking and driving the old mare, we will glance around the “Robber’s Roost,” which will answer for a study of the Western man’s home.
It is about as civilized as the Galway shanty, or the normal dwelling-place in Central Equatorial Africa. A cabin fronting east and west, long walls thirty feet, with port-holes for windows, short ditto fifteen; material, sandstone and bog ironstone slabs compacted with mud, the whole roofed with split cedar trunks, reposing on horizontals which rested on perpendiculars. Behind the house a corral of rails planted in the ground ; the inclosed space a mass of earth, and a mere shed in one corner the only shelter. Outside the door the hingeless and lockless backboard of a wagon, bearing the wounds of bullets and resting on lintels and staples, which also had formed parts of locomotives, a slab acting stepping-stone over a mass of soppy black soil strewed with ashes, gobs of meat offals, and other delicacies. On the right hand a load of wood; on the left a tank formed by damming a dirty pool which had flowed through a corral behind the “Roost.” There was a regular line of drip distilling from the caked and hollowed snow which toppled from the thick thatch above the cedar braces.
The inside reflected the outside. The length was divided by two perpendiculars, the southernmost of which, assisted by a halfway canvas partition, cut the hut into unequal parts. Behind it were two bunks for four men : standing bedsteads of poles planted in the ground, as in Australia and Unyamwezi, and covered with piles of ragged blankets. Beneath the frame-work were heaps of rubbish, saddles, cloths, harness, and straps, sacks of wheat, oats, meal, and potatoes, defended from the ground by underlying logs, and dogs nestled where they found room. The floor, which also frequently represented bedstead, was rough, uneven earth, neither tamped nor swept, and the fine end of a spring oozing through the western wall kept part of it in a state of eternal mud. A redeeming point was the fireplace, which occupied half of the northern short wall: it might have belonged to Guy of Warwick’s great hall; its ingle nooks boasted dimensions which one connects with an idea of hospitality and jollity; while a long hook hanging down it spoke of the bouillon-pot, and the iron oven of hot rolls. Nothing could be more simple than the furniture. The chairs were either posts mounted on four legs spread out for a base, or three-legged stools with reniform seats. The tables were rough-dressed planks, two feet by two, on rickety trestles. One stood in the centre for feeding purposes; the other was placed as buffet in the corner near the fire, with eating apparatus tin coffee-pot and gamelles, rough knives, “pitchforks,” and pewter spoons. The walls were pegged to support spurs and pistols, whips, gloves, and leggins. Over the door, in a niche, stood a broken coffee-mill, for which a flat stone did duty. Near the entrance, on a broad shelf raised about a foot from the ground, lay a tin skillet and its “dipper.” Soap was supplied by a handful of gravel, and evaporation was expected to act towel. Under the board was a pail of water with a floating can, which enabled the inmates to supply the drainage of everlasting chaws. There was no sign of Bible, Shakspeare, or Milton; a Holywell-Street romance or two was the only attempt at literature. En revanche, weapons of the flesh, rifles, guns, and pistols, lay and hung all about the house, carelessly stowed as usual, and tools were not wanting hammers, large borers, axe, saw, and chisel.”
Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 469-70
Mile 321: Dogtown
“In the trail days there was a utilitarian, if ugly, settlement at this junction [of the Nebraska City Road with the Oregon Trail] bearing the vulgar title ‘Dogtown.’ As late as 1865, it was the first town west of Marysville, Kansas, a journey of nearly a hundred fifty miles. It is likely that the name originated in the ‘town’ of ‘village’ of prairie dogs nearby. There were several prairie-dog settlements settlements along the Platte, each of some acres in extent, looking, so the emigrants fancied, like an immense field of sweet potato hills. The dumpy little creatures barked hysterically at the first wagons of each season, but grew more philosophical as the steady processions flowed by them.”
[NB. There appears (on Google Street View) a very small historical marker. It is off the Pony Express Bikepacking Route, a few hundred feet down Lowell Road. to reach it, continue south on Lowell Road past the turn off to Skeeter Creek Road, just before Mile 321]
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 82-83
Midpoint Between the Missouri River and Fort Laramie
“Fort Kearny was the true beginning of the Great Platte River Road, for it was here that various trail strands joined to become one grand highway for the western migrations. . . . Fort Kearny was recognized as the port of call of the Nebraska Coast, the end of the shakedown cruise across the prairie and the beginning of the voyage across the perilous ocean of the Great Plains, a place to pause and reflect, to recuperate, to reorganize, to get your bearings. For the fainthearted it was a good opportunity to change their minds, make a 180-degree turn, and go back where they came from before they became committed to California and later, somewhere out in the Great American Desert, reached the point of no return. . . .
Fort Kearny and the head of Grand Island were nearly synonymous in terms of general location. They were both reckoned at midpoint between St. Joe (the number one jumping-off point on the Missouri River) and Fort Laramie, at a distance of some 600 miles plus. As to the merits of the fort’s location, many elements were considered other than the equidistance from the Missouri River to Fort Laramie, the relative proximity of the 100th meridian (the theoretical dividing line between prairie and plains), or the quantity of timber on Grand Island.
Merrill J. Mattes, The Great Platte River Road, p. 193-194
First Stagecoach Service
“John M. and Isaac Hockaday advertised a monthly passenger-coach service to Salt Lake in 1854 in association with [William] Magraw. They began laying the groundwork for what become the first effective stage service on the Oregon-California Trail.”
First Stagecoach Service
Mile 937: Avenue of Rocks
About nine miles west of Emigrant Gap, the Oregon Trail wound through a narrow gap between two ragged ridges of sandstone and shale rocks, upended strata we now would call hogbacks.
British travel writer Sir Richard Burton, traveling by stagecoach to Utah in 1860 to interview Mormon leader Brigham Young, called the formation “the Devil’s Backbone.”
W.H. Stephens of Winnebago County, Illinois, left his name at Rock Avenue July 5, 1849. A day later, he carved his name at Independence Rock. Richard Collier, Wyoming SHPO.“It is a jagged, broken ridge,” Burton wrote, “of huge sandstone boulders, tilted up edgeways, and running in a line over the crest of a long roll of land … like the vertebrae of some great sea-serpent or other long crawling animal; and, on a nearer view, the several pieces resolve themselves into sphinxes, veiled nuns, Lot’s pillars, and other freakish objects.”
More common were the names “Rock Avenue,” “Avenue of Rocks” and “Rock Lane.” The pioneer Mormon companies of 1847, first to make the trek to the Salt Lake Valley, seem to have been the ones who coined “Rock Avenue.”
“[T]here is a steep descent from a bluff and at the foot there is a high ridge of sharp pointed rocks running parallel with the road for near a quarter of a mile, leaving only sufficient space for wagons to pass,” official Mormon diarist William Clayton, traveling with the first of those companies, wrote June 19 of that year. “At the sought [south] point there is a very large rock lying close to where the road makes a bend, making it somewhat difficult to get by without striking it. The road is also very rough with cobble stones.”
The following year Clayton condensed his description when he published it in his guidebook: “Rock avenue and steep descent. The road here passes between high rocks, forming a kind of avenue or gateway, for a quarter of a mile.”
In these stretches, the road was generally good, “though rather too hard and gravelly for the cattle,” wrote another diarist, Israel Lord, in July 1849. The country was dry in all directions, and what little water the travelers found was potentially deadly.
“Passed through a very singular defile, called ‘Rock Avenue,’ wrote J. Goldsborough Bruff July 23, 1849. Bruff, with 25,000 other forty-niners, was headed to the gold fields of California that year of extremely heavy traffic on the trails. “After emerging from the Defile, the road descended a very steep hill (had to double lock the wheels), here a wagon broke the fore-axle, and 4 of the mules exhausted, so they had to camp on a barren waste until morning, without feed or water. At base of these hills was the ‘Alkali Swamp & Spring,’ 2 miles from the Defile, and 7 1/2 from the Mineral Spring.” Bruff here is using the place names from Clayton’s Mormon Guide, as it was generally known, thus his use of quotation marks. Its more formal title was The Latter-Day Saints’ Emigrants’ Guide.
“The water here—strong alkali was the color of coffee,” Bruff continued. “And piled around were hundreds of dead animals, chiefly oxen.”
A month earlier diarist Jonas Hittle had noted, “It is very warm. We moved on and passed several oxen given out. We passed through Rock Lane which is two lines of Rocks rising perpendicular out of the ground … They are about 40 yards apart. At the far end of this I cut my name dated June The 24th 1849.”
The Hittle inscription no longer exists, though his was one of a great many that once existed along this stretch of trail. Unfortunately, many were lost when portions of the rock formation were blasted away in the 1960s to upgrade the county road. The entire left-hand section of the ridge, or wall, was obliterated. Several miles of pristine trail ruts were destroyed by pipeline construction around the same time.
Trails historian Aubrey Haines called the destruction “calculated vandalism,” in a report he wrote for the National Park Service in 1972. More recently, road graders knocked off the end of the right-hand bluff near the road, taking most of the remaining inscriptions with it.
Nonetheless, sections of the county road, following closely the route of the older trail, still offer a glimpse into the past uncluttered by modern visual intrusions.
Miller felt the release that all travelers felt here. The fort was oasis, hermitage, hostelry, coolness and greenness after a weary land. And Fontenelle had a consummate refreshment for his guests, crocks of milk. And now Miller acquires primary importance for history. This was the original Fort Laramie which had been christened Fort William, as the Fort Laramie that succeeded it was christened FortJohn. We saw its sill laid bySublette’s men in 1834. Miller reaches it in 1837. Three years later Lancaster P. Lupton, who already had a post on the South Platte, built another one on the North Platte about a mile and a half from Fort Laramie. This is the ‘Fort Platte’ of the literature, a commodious and strongly built establishment that later passed to another Opposition firm, Sybille, Adams, and Company, and later still to Pratte, Cabanne and Company, also in opposition. The building of Fort Platte stimulated the Company to rebuild Fort Laramie, whose timbers were beginning to decay. It did so in 1841, moving to a new site farther up Laramie Creek. 14 They built the new post of adobe. Miller’s sketches therefore show the original fort at its original site. They are the only known pictures that do, though as a note points out Elliott Coues says that he has seen a sketch which he does not further identify. And Miller’s notebook entries are an addition to the small number of first-hand descriptions.
Bernard De Voto, Across the Wide Missouri, p. 319
Mabel Loving and the Pony Express Riders
The year after Pony Bob died in a cold-water flat in Chicago, a St. Joseph, Missouri, housewife with little formal education began one of the most enterprising efforts on behalf of the memory of the Pony Express. Her name was Mabel Loving and she was an amateur poet. She was an amateur historian, too, who in the end unearthed some of the most valuable information about the Pony Express. Mrs. Loving started tracking down the surviving riders. No one had actually thought to do this.
Christopher Corbett, Orphans Preferred, p. 203
Riding Half-Asleep
“Tired out and cramped with cold, we were torpid with what the Bedouin calls El Bakl—la Ragle du Désert, when part of the brain sleeps while the rest is wide awake.”
Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 488-491
First Overland Mail to Oregon
“We may consider that ’48 established a ‘first.’ Some three hundred letters, addressed to people in Oregon, had piled up at Independence, but there was no mail service. The postmaster arranged with an emigrant named Bayley to transport these letters, with the understanding that he could collect forty cents apiece from each person to whom he delivered one. (This would seem to be part of the Oregon story, but it worked out differently.) . . .
[T]he mail had got through. Bayley had finally decided to come to California. He carefully kept the letters. Once arrived, he found that large numbers of men from Oregon had come to California after gold. They were so eager for letters that they gladly paid the postman two dollars apiece for their safe delivery.”
George R. Stewart, The California Trail, p. 195 and 207
Prairie Fever
“Refreshed by breakfast and the intoxicating air, brisk as a bottle of veuve Clicquot—it is this that gives one the ‘prairie fever’—we bade glad adieu to Seneca, and prepared for another long stretch of twenty-four hours.”
Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 22
Territories
“In the space of twenty years, 1848-1868, twelve huge territories were created, and, as the process went on, each territory was changed, divided, and subdivided ad infinitum. . . .
Oregon (1848), Utah (1850), Washington (1853), Kansas (1854), Nebraska (1854), North Dakota and South Dakota (1861), Nevada (1861), Colorado (1861), Idaho (1863), Montana (1864), and Wyoming (1868).”
John B. McClernan, Slade's Wells Fargo Colt, p. 15, and note 35
Gwin's Conflict of Interest
The majority of the people of Cal., as I have mentioned in the preceding volume, preferred the central to the southern route for mail transit. The central route was gradually opened, first from Salt lake to the Missouri river, then by wagon from Placerville to Carson valley, and finally to Salt lake, connecting there with the mail to St Joseph. George Chorpenning owned the western division, but his means were limited and the management bad. Broderick endeavored to procure the adoption of the central route by the government in place of the southern or Butterfield route, established in 1857, and thereby incurred the hostility of Gwin and the southern influence. The exposure of Grwin s methods had the effect to cause him to withdraw his opposition to the central route, but he did so then only when he fancied he saw an opportunity to make capital for himself out of it. Senator Hale, of N. H., introduced a bill which could have been passed, which would have given California a daily mail over the central route. But Gwin had several motives for preventing the passage of this bill. One was that he was retained in the interest of the steamship company; another that he would do nothing so pleasing to the republicans as to allow this republican bill to pass, thus overshadowing him; and again, that he reserved to himself the glory of appearing as the author of the contract for a tri-weekly mail over the cen tral route. He introduced another bill to embarrass Hale s, and allowed neither to pass. But this plank, on which he hoped to stand when the next U. S. senator should be chosen in Cal., slipped away from him when, going to Postmaster-general Holt, after the close of the session, that official flatly refused to carry out the terms of the bargain between them. In this manner Cal. was deprived of mail service, except over the Butterfield route, until the secession of the southern states and a change of administration caused the suspension of this line, and the establishment of the central route. Sac. Union, June 15, 26, and July 23 and 28, 1860. Latham offered some amendments to Hale s bill when it was before the senate, but they were defeated with the rest. He presented some figures which are interesting. From Sept. 1858 to and including March 1860, there were 685, 960 letters sent over the Butterfield route, the postage on which was $71,378.63; and over the route via Salt lake 15,725, the postage on which was $865.51. The Butterfield contractors received $600,000 for tri-weekly service. This was one of the profitable contracts given to southern men by the consent of California senators, but the service performed was never complained of. The Pacific Mail Steamship company in 1860 refused to carry express packages containing mail matter, or to carry the newspaper mails, which could not go over land, the object of the refusal being to force congress, with the help of California’s senior senator, to give the mail contract to Vanderbilt s company.
H. H. Bancroft, History of California, Vol. VII, 262, note 19
Bullboats
“The very early fur traders’ parties and the exploring expeditions had their own method of crossing which was entirely useless to wagon caravans. They made bullboats. The rules were like the old recipe for rabbit stew which began, ‘First you catch your rabbit.’ The main essential was fresh, or ‘green’ buffalo hides, which necessitated first catching a few buffalo bulls—the bigger the better. The green hides were sewed together and put, while still soft, over the bed of a cart (if they had one along) or a framework of green willow poles, conveniently bent by driving both ends in the ground. The hides were then allowed to dry and shrink. This process supplied a large strong boat that would carry several men and their dunnage, and drew only a few inches of water.”
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 109
Mile 1075: South Pass South Pass, WY
“The air is so dry out here that it takes forever for wood to rot. Some of these structures have been around for well over 100 years and haven’t been touched. They’re pretty cool to see.”
At the beginning of his climactic volume Francis Parkman says, “The most momentous and far-reaching question ever brought to issue on this continent was: Shall France remain here or shall she not?” No, not quite. The most momentous and far-reaching question ever brought to issue on this continent was, “whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure.” Yet there was another question that linked these two together, a question which the continent itself asked – and was to answer. It was: Are there geographical units here to which political units must correspond? It was asked so quietly that down to today many have never realized that it was asked at all, though by the time Canada surrendered many had heard it. None knew the answer then for more than half the continent remained unknown.
Men had to get about answering it in conditions that had changed altogether: the issue that Parkman phrased had turned the world upside down. Unquestionably, of the changed conditions the most important was that the English colonies had become, though not yet a nation, a people of themselves, an imperial people. Whether the Americans had completed ,or were just completing their separateness counts less than that they had entered on an imperial expansion. As both a dream and a fact the American Empire was born before the United States.
It was important too that the colonies no longer had an enemy at the north to fear, to fight, or in any way to take into account. But the thing more immediately important was one part of the peace settlement [of the French and Indian War]. In the distribution and rearrangement of lands conquered during the war Cuba, which had become British, was restored to Spain, who paid Florida for that redemption. Canada became British except for two minute specks off the coast of Newfoundland, St. Pierre and Miquelon. So did everything that lay east of the Mississippi River, except some 2800 square miles which included the mouth of the river and the town of New Orleans. This master key to the continent, this portal to the heartland, had been secretly ceded to Spain before the final peace treaty was written. With it Spain had also acquired everything west of the Mississippi and south of Canada that had been French.
From then on that was Louisiana: North America south of Canada, west of the Mississippi as far as its drainage might extend, but not including what had been Spanish territory before the cession. That was Louisiana; Louisiana was now Spanish. It comprised an entirely new pattern of forces, which would exert a constantly increasing torque. And nobody knew how far west Louisiana extended.
Bernard De Voto, The Course of Empire, p. 227-228
Two Weeks' Hard Going Through the Snowbound Sierra
What does “two weeks” hard going mean?
“The first week of May, 1851, George Chorpenning, with a party of seven picked up 200 pounds of sacked mail at the Sacramento office and started east. The initial mail was delivered without incident. After two weeks’ hard going through the snowbound Sierra Nevada, Chorpenning arrived in Carson Valley.”
“It took [Chorpenning’s party] sixteen days to make their way to Carson Valley having had to beat down the snow with wooden mauls to open a trail for their animals over the Sierras. They left May 1 1851 from Sacramento. On the third day they encountered snow drifts in the Sierra Nevadas some fifteen miles above Placerville. It was on the 22nd day that they reached Carson Valley (about 180 miles on the then traveled route). When they reached the snow line, they dismounted put part of the mail from the mules on their own horses and walked for about two weeks. They trampled and beat the snow for the animals—traveling two, six to eight miles per day. For sixteen days they traveled and camped on deep snow.” (quoted in Ralph L. McBride, Utah Mail Service Before the Coming of the Railroad, 1869″ (M. A. thesis, Brigham Young University), p. 20)
The party again had to resort to “forcing paths through deep snowfields in the Goose Creek Mountains,” before reaching Salt Lake City on June 5, 1851.
John M. Townley, "Stalking Horse for the Pony Express: The Chorpenning Mail Contracts between California and Utah, 1851-1860", Arizona and the West, Vol. 24, No. 3 (Autumn, 1982), p. 230-231
Russell's Guilt
“[Godard Bailey, a clerk in the Interior Department, whose wife was related to Secretary of War Floyd] confessed [to Russell] that the bonds he had given Russell belonged to the Indian Trust Fund of the Department of the Interior of which he was merely a custodian . . . In plain, everyday terms, Bailey was an embezzler in the amount of $150,000. . . .
One who has followed Russell’s unique, colorful and sometimes brilliant business career from the beginning regrets to face the remainder of the story concerning the bond transactions. Next day Bailey . . . delivered $387,000 worth of Missouri, South Carolina, and Florida Trust Fund bonds to Russell . . . By this act Russell fully shared Bailey’s guilt. Whether he was morally guilty in the first instance might be debatable, but certainly not in the second. By his own frank, straightforward confession he convicts himself of receiving and using for his own purposes property he knew was stolen.”
Settle and Settle, Empire on Wheels, p. 98-100
Historic Examples of Pony Express
The idea of a courier carrying messages on horseback over long distances was old when Columbus pointed the prows of his tiny vessels toward the Wes tern Hemisphere. In the 12th century Genghis Khan, Mongolian conquerer of Northern China and Central Asia, organized a vast, empire-wide network of military communication lines over which relays of fast riding horsemen sped messages to the capital. The idea was not new, even with him, for horses in the West and camels in the East had been employed in travel and communication since time immemorial.
Post roads were common is England and on the Continent long before the Pilgrims exiled themselves in Holland in 1608. At Scrooby, where the band of expatriates originated, William Brewster, like his father before him, was keeper of the inn, and supplied horses for both stage coaches and post riders on the London-York road. Postmen with relays of horses were known in America as early as 1692, when Thomas Neale was authorized to take charge of the colonial postal business. During the Revolution, military expresses rode continually between the various armies in the field and Congress in Philadelphia. As the frontier moved westward, postmen on horseback rode the wilderness trails farther and farther west.
In 1825, David Hale, a New York newspaper editor, used fast horsemen to carry news from various parts of the state, and five years later Richard Haughton, of the New York Journal of Commerce, used them to collect election returns. James Watson Webb, of the New York Courier and Enquirer, in 1832, established a pony express between Washington and New York.
During the War with Mexico, expresses regularly traveled the nine hun· dred miles along the Santa Fe Trail between Fort Leavenworth and Santa Fe, and Colonel Alexander W. Doniphan sent at least one back from Chi· huahua. He also sent another from that city to General Zachary Taylor at Monterey seven hundred miles to the south. In 1848 Francis X. Aubry made the first of his four famous rides from Santa Fe to Independence, Missouri. On the last of these he covered the distance in five days and sixteen hours, using relays of horses. Alexander Majors, who saw him on o.ne of these rides, said those long journeys greatly influenced him and his partners in founding the Pony Express. In 1853, when an important Presidential message reached San Francisco by steamer, the Adams and Wells Fargo Express Companies agreed to make a race of delivering it to Oregon by relays of fast riding horsemen. The Adams Company won the race.
During the Mormon War in Utah, express men carrying reports by General A. S. Johnston regularly rode the twelve hundred miles between Camp Scott and Camp Floyd, and Fort Leavenworth. As previously shown, Morehead and Rupe made the trip in midwinter of 1857-58, and Majors himself rode to Utah and back in the latter year, arriving at Nebraska early in January, 1859. Travel over the Central Route was so common there was not the slightest doubt in Russell’s mind or the minds of his partners that a pony express could be successfully operated the year round. Majors and Waddell never questioned the possibility of that. They did, however, doubt that it would be a money-making enterprise.
The experiment of carrying the mail from the Pacific Coast to Salt Lake City by muleback was made by George Chorpenning with his “Jackass Mail” in 1851-58. Throughout the venture he simply loaded the pouches onto the backs of mules and made the trips without relays. In 1858 he arranged for swift riders, perhaps also mounted upon mules, to carry President Buchanan’s annual message to Congress in as short a time as possible. This was done in midwinter, and the document was delivered in California in seventeen days, eight and one half hours. It should be observed that this feat, which at that time was regarded as amazing, was accomplished at about the time that Morehead and Rupe were bucking the snow on their way to Fort Leavenworth, and more than a year and a half before Colonel Bee went to Washington. Both Russell and his Salt Lake City associates no doubt heard about it.
Settle and Settle, "Orgin of the Pony Express," Missouri Historical Society Bulletin Vol. 26, No.3, April 1960, p. 206-207
Mail "Avalanche"
“An incident we occasionally experienced, and which was a pleasing one, was the meeting of the mail stage, or being passed by the same on its western way The vehicle itself was a cumbrous affair, and was known by the ‘Pikers’ as an ‘avalanche,’ which was as near as they could be expected to come to ‘ambulance.’
Thaddeus S. Kenderdine, A California Tramp and Later Footprints, p. 47-48
Mile 1792: Sulphur Springs Station
“Sulphur Springs is commonly listed as a Pony Express Station. However, it could not have been one of the original stations built in the spring of 1860. In reviewing the literature, there is no mention of this station prior to the Overland Stage and Mail Express maps of 1863. Sulphur Springs was probably built in July of 1861 to facilitate the opening of the Overland Stage. Since it was on, or at least near, the Pony Express Route it was probably used as a way station for horse changes from the time of the station’s inception to the demise of the Pony. It was used as an Overland stop until 1869.
“At Sulphur Springs, which is now fenced in, and across the road there are several types of ruins. There is one remnant of a log wall, several stone foundations, and many pieces of old artifacts. This is possibly the site of the Overland Stage Station. The site is 1-2 miles N of the Pony Express Trail and about 2 miles S of the Sulphur Springs Ranch which has since been renamed the Diamond Star Ranch. The site is on private land owned by John Trowbridge.”
“[In the Black Hills of Wyoming], Lydia Waters wrote: ‘ The hoofs of the cattle became so worn they had to be shod. Now the amateur blacksmiths had to show their skill. George became quite proficient shoeing both horses and oxen—To shoe the cattle a trench the length of the animal and the width of the shovel was dug. The animal was then thrown and rolled over so that its backbone lay in the trench and all four legs were up in the air. In this position it was helpless and the shoes were nailed on readily.’ In very bad cases protectors made of buffalo hide were tied clear up over the hoofs like bags. Even dogs had leather moccasins. A few owners hardened their animals’ hoofs with alcohol and omitted the footwear.”
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 185-166
Type of Mail Carried
“It is assumed by many that the mail carried by the Pony Express was comprised of letters from ordinary people to their friends and loved ones. That is not accurate. That’s not to say that it never happened, it is just that it was generally too expensive for most people. When it began, rates were $10.00 per ounce or $5.00 for a half ounce or less. For that reason, even business communications were generally short. Later, rates were lowered to $2.00 per ounce and $1.00 for a half ounce or less, but they were still expensive for ordinary people . . . The charge for letters sent by sea or by stage cost much less, only ten cents per half ounce, the cost of the stamp.”
William E. Hill, The Pony Express: Yesterday and Today, p. 19
Oxen Pulled Freight Wagons
“[O]xen were strong, inexpensive, and—as one early Santa Fe trader discovered in 1851—served three useful purposes: ‘1st, drawing wagons; the Indians weill not steal them as they would horses and mules; and 3rdly, in case of necessity part of the oxen will answer for provisions.'”
Dan Rottenberg, Death of a Gunfighter, p. 65
Pony Express Stations
Stations had already been provided from Leavenworth to Denver by the Leavenworth & Pike’s Peak Express Company. These were used by the Pony Express as far as Julesburg at the California Crossing.
When completed there were 119 stations on the route from St. Joseph to Sacramento, California. These consisted of two types, “Home Stations,” where families sometimes lived and where meals were served, and “Swing Stations,” where horses were merely changed and a crude shelter was built for stocktenders.
Settle and Settle, "Napoleon of the West," Annals of Wyoming Vol. 32, No.1, April 1960, p. 31-32
Army of the West on the Plains
“They left the high grass behind and timber with it, so that part of the duty of the soldier was to collect buffalo chips during the last hour of marching. This was another strangeness and some thought the fires stank abominably but others found that they gave a welcome tang to the salt pork and corned beef. So many things were strange: jack rabbits, antelopes, and especially the buffalo, the great legend now gaped at by these rural youths, who tried to hunt it and some times succeeded. The country was unimaginable, plains on a scale they had not dreamed of diminishing one to a dot that seemed to travel on the bottom of a bowl, the vast heave of the swells that seemed like the swells of the ocean they had read about, many miles long. Most of all the sun. Missouri sun is nothing amateurish but the sun of the plains flattened the life in you, filled your eyes with the color of blood, and baked you to the bone with sudden overheated winds and violent dust storms making it worse. The boys kept going and began to stink.”
Bernard De Voto, The Year of Decision, 1846, p. 254
The Finger of God
“Medical missionary Samuel Parker traveled overland to Oregon in 1835, and in his Journal of an Exploring tour beyond the Rocky Mountains intimated that if an elderly minister of the gospel could make it to Oregon, anyone could. When reviewing Parker’s book, the American Biblical Repository rejoiced in the knowledge that there was indeed an easy road to Oregon ‘excavated by the finger of God.'”
John D. Unruh, Jr., The Plains Across, p. 29
Pilgrims
“We divided some of the meat with a party of ‘pilgrims’ as they were called, who overtook us going west. Everybody traveling west in those days was called a ‘pilgrim.'”
Eugene Ware, Indian Wars of 1864>/em>, p. 42
Spread of Army Posts
“By the annexation of New Mexico and the regions to the west as far as the Pacific Ocean [in 1848], the United States shouldered the heavy responsibility of keeping in subjection the fierce tribes who inhabited these areas. This task involved the establishment of permanent military posts with year-round garrisons. By 1849 there were seven of these with troops totaling 987. Ten years later the number of posts had risen to sixteen. Every one, situated as they were in barren regions incapable of supporting them, had to be supplied with goods hauled in wagons from the Missouri River.”
Settle and Settle, Empire on Wheels, p. 4
Mormon History Cult
Any people in a new land may be pardoned for being solicitous about their history: they create it, in a sense, by remembering it. But the tradition of the pioneer that is strong all through the West is a cult in Utah.
Wallace Stegner, The Gathering of Zion, p 3
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 from the territory of Colorado, under the name of the Holladay Overland Mail and Express Company.”
George Root, "Pike's Peak Express Companies," Part IV, Kansas Historical Quarterly, Vol. 14, No. 1 (1944) p. 91
Army Subcontracts Freighting
Probably at the suggestion of Q. M. Capt. L. C. Easton of Fort Leavenworth, the experiment of contract freighting of military supplies was made in 1848. On May 17 he signed a contract with James Brown of Pettis county, Missouri, for the transportation of 200,000 pounds of government stores to Santa Fe, N. M., for 11% cents per pound. So anxious was the government to try the experiment that Quartermaster Easton sold him the wagons in which to haul the goods on credit.The experiment was as closely watched by the civilian freighters of western Missouri as it was by the quartermaster at Fort Leavenworth and War Department officials in Washington. When Brown returned in the fall after a highly successful, uneventful trip a ripple of excitement ran through freighting circles. All of them hoped that a new source of comfortable profit had been uncovered.
Encouraged by Brown’s successful venture, the authorities in Washington instructed the quartermaster at Fort Leavenworth to continue the experiment in 1849, probably calling for bids. Having become convinced good money was to be made in freighting government supplies to military posts in the West and Southwest, Russell and James Brown formed a partnership that year, called Brown & Russell, and contracted to deliver an unspecified amount of stores in Santa Fe for $9.88 per 100 pounds. Their surety bond of $150,000 was signed by John S. Jones, William B. Waddell, Robert B. Bradford, and others. The firm of Bullard & Russell, again in partnership with E. C. McCarty in 1849 sent a train loaded with merchant’s goods to the same destination. Both undertakings were completely successful.
The enigma begins at St. Joseph. In all the huzzas and hurlyburly that accompanied the send-off, no one apparently thought to record for posterity exactly the place in the city where the grand race began, or the identity of the expressman who had the distinguished honor of carrying the initial mochila.
Roy S. Bloss, Pony Express—The Great Gamble, 42
The Need for Freight Wagons
“Moreover, no goods were manufactured west of the Mississippi; everything used there had to be shipped from the East. The manufacturing states east of the Mississippi routinely moved goods along navigable rivers, barge canals, and, increasingly, railroads; yet none of these conveniences existed west of the Mississippi. In that whole western expanse, only the Missouri River could be used by steamboats for any great distance, and the Missouri was hazardous as well as indirect. From St. Louis its path meandered 3,175 miles far to the northwest, so that even steamboats capable of braving its unpredictable shallows to its distant headwaters at Fort benton still found themselves at least 1,000 miles north of California or New Mexico or Salt Lake. In effect only one means existed for moving bulk supplies and heave machinery across the Great American desert: the freight wagon.”
Dan Rottenberg, Death of a Gunfighter, p.63
The Emigrant Train
“These people were greenhorns: what the West came to call tender feet. Most of them were schooled in the culture that had served American pioneering up to now. The unfitness for the West of that experience shows at the beginning of the journey. The Oregon and California emigrants had a much harder time of it than they would have had if they had understood the conditions. They did not have to face the cholera that made the Gold Rush and certain later passages hazardous; or the Indian troubles that began in the fifties and lasted as long as there were Indians along the trail. But they experienced hardships, disease, great strain, and aimless suffering of which the greater part was quite unnecessary. The mountain men avoided it almost altogether.
We have already seen them breaking up and without trail discipline. A caravan of mountain men passing this way was an efficient organization. The duties of every member were stated – and attended to in an awareness that both safety and comfort depended on their being done right. The fur caravan was a co-operative unit, the emigrant train an uncohesive assemblage of individualists. The mountain men had mastered the craft of living off the country, finding grass and water, managing the stock, making camp, reading buffalo sign and Indian sign. All such matters were hidden from the emigrants, who besides were tired men at the end of any day and prone to let someone else do the needful tasks. So their wagons were not kept up, horses and oxens strayed, and many hours, counting up to many days, were squandered. This added to the delay and we have already seen them moving much too slowly even at the beginning of the trip. The passage must be made with the greatest possible speed consonant with the good condition of the animals – but the movers dallied, strolling afield to fish or see the country, stopping to stage a debate or a fist fight, or just wandering like vacationists. It was necessary to press forward, not only because the hardest going of the whole journey was toward the western end and would be far worse if they did not pass the mountains before snowfall, but also because every day diminished the food in the wagons, wore down the oxen by so much more, and laid a further increment of strain on man and beast. They lingered. And also, expert as they might be at living healthfully in the oak openings, they did not know how to take care of themselves here. The mountain men suffered bountifully from scalping but you seldom hear of one who is sick, and when you do he is suffering from a hangover or a decayed tooth. Whereas from the first days on, the emigrants are preyed upon by colds, auges, and dysenteries that are their own damned fault . . . All this has its part in the stresses put on human personality by emigration.
The train is moving along the Oregon trail. But the movement must not be thought of as the orderly, almost military procession of spaced wagons in spaced platoons that Hollywood shows us, and the trail must not be thought of as a fixed avenue through the wilds. The better discipline of the freight caravans on the Santa Fe trail did impose a military order of march. On the southern trail wagons moved in something like order ; in single file where the route was narrow, in columns of twos or fours when there was room for such a formation and it was needed for quick formation of the corral in case of Indian attack. Every night they were parked iu a square or circle, the stock was driven inside after feeding, guard duty was enforced on everyone in his turn. Wagons which had led a file OtJ. one day ( and so escaped the dust) dropped back to the end on the riext day and worked their way up again. Regular messes were appointed, with specified duties for everyone. Wood, water, herding, hunting, cooking, and all the routine of travel and camp were systematized and the system was enforced. But that was the profit motive; men with an eye on business returns managed it. And they had no problems of family travel and few of cliques.
Every emigrant train that ever left the settlements expected to conduct itself according to this tested system. None except the Mormons ever did. Brigham Young had a disciplined people and the considerable advantage that his orders rested on the authority of Almighty God – and even so, among a submissive and believing people on the march, he had constantly to deal with quarrels, dissension, rebellions, complaints, and ineffectiveness. Among the emigrants there was no such authority as God’s or Brigham’s. A captain who wanted to camp here rather than there had to make his point by parliamentary procedure and the art of oratory. It remained the precious right of a free American who could always quit his job if he didn’t like the boss, to camp somewhere else at his whim or pleasure – and to establish his priority with his fists if some other freeborn American happened to like the cottonwood where he had parked his wagon. Moreover, why should anyone take his appointed dust when he could turn off the trail? Why should he stand guard on the herd of loose cattle, if he had no cattle in it? . . . They combined readily but with little cohesiveness and subdued themselves to the necessities of travel only after disasters had schooled them. They strung out along the trail aimlessly, at senseless intervals and over as wide a space as the country permitted. So they traveled fewer miles in any day than they might have, traveled them with greater difficulty than they needed to, and wore themselves and the stock down more than was wise. They formed the corral badly, with too great labor and loss of time, or not at all. They quarreled over place and precedence that did not matter. They postponed decisions in order to debate and air the minority view, when they should have accepted any decision that could be acted on. Ready enough to help one another through any emergency or difficulty, they were unwilling to discipline themselves to an orderly and sensible routine.”
Bernard De Voto, The Year of Decision, 1846, p. 151-154
Replacing Animals With Humans
“The [handcart] system resulted in the largest loss of life in the three decades of overland wagon travel on the Oregon, California, and Mormon trails, killing in its first year at least five times as many men, women, and children as perished with the Donner party. Ultimately, it was a system that replaced draft animals with human beings and put ‘a few dollars . . . in competition with the lives of human beings.'”
Will Bagley, South Pass: Gateway to a Continent, Location 3212 [Kindle Edition]
Brown's Defense of the Butterfield Route
Brown now undertook to justify his action, which seemed unlawful, and which had earned for him the hostility of the Northern press, of the contractors, and of the residents of upper California. He prepared a defensive article in which he attacked the South Pass route on the ground that snows precluded carrying mails over it during a fourth of the year.
Curtis Nettles, "The Overland Mail Issue During the 1850s," The Missouri Historical Review, XVIII, no. 4 (1924), 525
Reason for the Pony Express
The reason that the Pony Express was organized is of far more importance than the question of who conceived the idea for it. In attempting to explain that reason, the history of mail to the Pacific Coast must be briefly reviewed. The necessity of communication with that far-off portion of the continent was introduced to the American public when Jason Lee and his fellow Methodist missionaries settled in Oregon in 1833. In 1836, Marcus Whitman arrived with a party of Presbyterians. Before long the American population of that region increased until there were sufficient people to organize the Oregon Territory in 1848. This, plus the Gold Rush of 1849, made it imperative that an overland mail line be authorized. Bills providing for that service were introduced in Congress in 1855, but failed of passage.
Settle and Settle, "Orgin of the Pony Express," Missouri Historical Society Bulletin Vol. 26, No.3, April 1960, p. 208
Colonel Johnson at Fort Bridger
“The little known Rocky Mountain country could be terrifying in winter. While Johnson’s men were still east of South Pass the temperature dropped below zero, and blizzards set in. There was reasonable safety in the numbers and equipment of the troops; but, even so, the animals died in droves (five hundred in one night, it is said), and progress was almost halted. Meanwhile the Mormons had burned Fort Bridger and retreated west to the new fortifications in Echo Canyon, leaving only the stone wall of their own construction standing empty and alone in the valley of Blacks Fork. It took the troops fifteen days to worry through the last thirty-five miles, but eventually, like a slow tide, they reached and overflowed the ruins of Fort Bridger.”
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 251
Winter Range for Oxen
“About the mid-century . . . it was found that [oxen[ could be wintered on the free grass of the western ranges and would fatten in the process. . . . Alexander Majors made it a regular practice to winter much of his stock on the Laramie Plain or along the Chugwater River in central Wyoming. . . .
[T]wo seasons of work were all that was expected of the oxen.”
Henry Pickering Walker, The Wagonmasters (1966), p. 108, 113
Green River Buttes
“Throughout the Green River Basin, many “elevated buttes of singular configuration” rise from the rolling plains, sticking up like flat-topped warts on a sagebrush skin. They stand several hundred feet high, with eroded edges that descend in irregular steps. A closer look reveals that the jutting ledges are made of layers of beige sandstone and off-white limestone, while the soft slopes are comprised of tan, green, and rusty-brown mudstone. To Edwin Bryant, the buttes looked like islands. “The plain appears at some geologic era to have been submerged, with the exception of these buttes, which then were islands, overlooking the vast expanse of water.” Bryant was wrong about the islands, but right about the water. The Green River Basin was once the site of an immense lake. The buttes are the eroded remains of once-continuous sedimentary layers that blanketed the lake’s floor.”
Keith Heyer Meldahl, Hard Road West, p. 148
Difficulties Faced by Chorpenning
“The actual difficulties to be surmounted, and the dangers, real and fancied, that beset the whole line, are too numerous to recount, and beyond the powers of imagination to correctly paint. In the winter, upon that portion of the route which passes over the Sierra, the snow fell from fifteen to twenty feet on a level, and in the cañons and mountain gorges drifted to the depth of forty or fifty feet. In the spring the Carson and Humboldt Valley’s were sometimes flooded, and swimming was the only means of passage, as there were no bridges. From Stone-house Station, east, the whole country was infested by bands of hostile Indians.”
Thompson and West, History of Nevada (1881), pg. 103
Slade's Death
“Virginia, grief-stricken and bitter as she gazed on her dead husband, shrieked at those around the death-bed: ‘Why, oh, why didn’t one of you shoot him, not let him endure the shame of being hanged? If I had been here, I would have done it. No dog’s death should have come to such a man. He did not deserve to die on the scaffold.’
She was so bitter against Montana, Virginia City, and especially the Vigilantes, contending her husband was a charter member of the Vigilantes, that she refused to allow him to be buried in Montana soil. She had a zinc coffin especially built and ironically had the body preserved in alcohol, and then had the coffin temporarily buried across the road from the stone house in Meadow Valley, placing the grave where she could gaze on it from her largest window. This was in February, and it was not until summer that she was able to take the body to Salt Lake City for burial. He was buried on July 20, 1864, in the old Salt Lake Cemetery.”
[N.B. According to another author, “An elegant casket was made lined with tin.” Perry Jenkins, “Kiskadden-Slade,” Annals of Wyoming, Vol. 21, No. 1 (1949), p. 90]
Virginia Rowe Towle, Vigilante Woman," p. 145
Settlements in the Platte River valley
“The news from Pike’s Peak in 1858 precipitated plans for ranches along the Platte to accommodate the new wave of gold-seekers. There is evidence of a start on such establishments, as well as new mail stations to Salt Lake, late that year. However, as far as overland travelers were concerned, it was not until 1859 that there was any semblance of serious settlement along the Platte except for Fort Kearny itself and two ramshackle trading posts of uncertain vintage, Morrow’s Post at the forks and Beauvais’ post at California, or Ash Hollow, Crossing. Prior to that date the valley was largely an unspoiled wilderness . . .”
Merrill J. Mattes, The Great Platte River Road, p. 262-63
Dobytown
“Two miles west of Fort Kearney was the worst place on the entire overland route. A town had been laid out and christened ‘Kearney City. (It was called ‘Dobytown’ for short.) It was a place of perhaps half a dozen sod structures, just outside of the fort reservation limits at the west. The buildings were occupied almost exclusively by the worst kind of dives, and a number of the people were disreputable characters of both sexes. The soldiers quartered at the post who drank bought their whisky at “Dobytown,” and the large numbers of ox and mule drivers going across the plains seldom failed to stop there a few moments, to fill up on ‘tanglefoot,’ thus making it an immensely profitable business for those keeping such places. Freighters (the owners of the freight, especially) were always glad to get out of ‘Doby town’ and did so as soon as possible. There was a great amount of thieving done in the vicinity, and ox and mule drivers and those who had any money and who spent a night there, would be frequently drugged with the vilest liquor, robbed, and often rendered unable to go on westward with their trains the following morning. Hence, freighters would try to arrange their journey so they would never be obliged to camp in the vicinity of that disreputable place.”
Root and Connelley, The Overland Stage to California, p. 207
Indian Botheration
“But sagely thus reflecting that ‘dangers which loom large from afar generally lose size as one draws near;’ that rumors of wars might have arisen, as they are wont to do, from the political necessity for another ‘Indian botheration,’ as editors call it . . .
Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 2
Central Overland's Mail Monopoly
“The effect of the Pony Express on Washington was immediate and profound. Five weeks after the Pony was launched, a special Congressional committee recommended building a railroad along the Platte River route to Salt Lake City. On May 11, also just five weeks after the Pony Express got under way, Postmaster General Holt abruptly annulled George Chorpenning’s semi-monthly mail contract between California and Salt Lake and awarded the annual $83,241 fee to the Central Overland instead. For the first time, William Russell’s company help a monopoly on U.S. mail service over the entire central route, enabling it to compete head-to-head with Butterfield’s southern route for the primary transcontinental federal mail contract.”
Dan Rottenberg, Death of a Gunfighter, p. 195
Russell's First Mistake
“On June 19 [1857], Captain Thomas L. Brent, quartermaster at Fort Leavenworth, called upon Russell and served notice that the firm would be required to transport three million pounds of supplies to Utah [in support of the war effort] in addition to what had already been sent elsewhere. Russell’s reply was that their [wagon] trains were already upon the road, the time for getting ready was too short, and that to comply with the request would ruin Majors & Russell [the name under which the partners of Russell, Majors & Wadell contracted to supply the army]. Captain Brent admitted the truth of what Russell said but urged him to undertake the task anyway. . . . Russell at length agreed, with the understanding that Captain Brent would assist him in making up and p[resenting a claim to Congress for additional renumeration.
What Majors & Russell should have demanded, and got, was a new contract covering the circumstances. In this vitally important matter both Russell and the War Department were at fault. . . .Failure to write a new contract was a grave mistake. In fact it was the beginning of a series of mistakes which brought ruin upon the firm.”
Settle and Settle, Empire on Wheels, p. 18
Traffic on the Platte River Route
“Intermingled with the westering cavalcade of the Great Migration was the shuttle-weave of stagecoaches, freighting trains, mail wagons, fur trade caravans. U.S. Army troops, supply trains, and dispatch riders. There were also occasionally large numbers of cattle and sheep, herded westward to Utah or California markets, and sometimes a horse herd from California to Missouri.
As to emigrant outfits, there were some strange contraptions among the orthodox covered wagons and infrequent packers. Not uncommon on the north side, or Council Bluffs Road, were the Mormon handcart expeditions. . . . In contrast . . . some affluent emigrants [were noted] traveling up the California Road in horse-drawn carriages . . . Perhaps the strangest spectacle in all the procession was the funeral cortege, led by William Keil, that went all the way from Missouri to Oregon with a casket in which were embalmed the mortal remains of his son Willie.”
Merrill J. Mattes, The Great Platte River Road, p. 43-44
The Emigrant Trail
“In general, the route from Independence lay along the Santa Fe trail some forty miles, to the present site of Gardner, Kansas, where the famous sign pointed its finger northwest with the legend, “Road to Oregon.” It crossed to the Waukarusa and then to the Kansas, which it forded near the present Topeka and followed some miles farther before striking overland to the Little Vermillion and then the Vermillion. On to the Big Blue, the Little Blue, and so to the Platte, which was usually reached at or near Grand Island. Here was the great conduit to the West and for many days the wagons groaned up the long slope which became increasingly arid. The valley was an oasis in what seemed to be truly the Great American Desert, the scenery got more alarming as the going got dryer, and the river was one of the most preposterous in the world, a bottomland through which a mile-wide trickle of water you had to chew made its way along cottonwoods and quicksands. Where the river forked, the trail struck up the South Platte, then crossed to the North Platte by several alternative routes. The Lower California Crossing was near the modern town of Brule, Nebraska, and trains which crossed there usually reached the North Platte at the famous Ash Hollow. The Upper California Crossing was thirty-five miles farther up the South Platte. Once it reached the North Platte, the trail followed it to well beyond Fort Laramie, then left it for good and struck fout for the Sweetwater.”
Bernard De Voto, The Year of Decision, 1846, p. 155
Mile 680: Scott's Bluff
“The third of the soft stone landmarks is Scott’s Bluff, slightly more than twenty miles from the Chimney. Scott’s Bluff owes its name to an incident of the fur-trapping days. Scott, it seems, was employed by the American Fur Company, and fell sick on his way home from the mountains. . . . [I]n order to make speed, the leader of Scott’s group went ahead with his men, leaving only two to bring Scott down the North Platte in a bullboat. It was agreed to meet at this distinctive bluff.
The boat was wrecked, and there was no way to take Scott along. The two men deserted him, expecting that he would obligingly die quietly where they left him. In fact they reported to their party that he had done so, and the entire company left the bluff and returned to civilization.nThe unfortunate Scott, meanwhile, struggled along toward the assigned meeting place, a distance of some sixty miles. After untold agony of body and mind he arrived to find unmistakable evidence of their departure. Hope was gone. He relinquished his soul to its maker and his outraged body to the wolves; but his bones remained—his bones and some identifying trifles by which they were recognized the next summer anf the whole sordid story was exposed. A memorial tablet has been erected near the spring where he spent his last hours.”
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 147-148
Van Vliet's Mission
“After the first elements of the [Utah] expedition had left Fort Leavenworth in July the Adjutant General’s office ordered [General William] Harney to send ‘a discreet staff officer’ to the Territory on a special mission. By July 28, [Stewart] Van Vliet, an assistant quartermaster in the army, had received his instructions. With a small detail he was to hurry past the column already on the road to Utah and to go ‘with utmost dispatch’ to Salt Lake City, where he was to make arrangements with the Mormons for the arrival and provisioning of the army. . . .
[Van Vliet] left Utah a sober man, greatly concerned for the safety of the army. . . .The Mormons, he wrote [to Harney], would resist the entry of the army into Utah to the death, although they would probably confine their campaign as long as possible to the burning of grass and other bloodless harassments. If confronted with superior forces, they would destroy everything, and using three years’ supplies of food already cached would hide in the mountains, where they could annihilate any force sent against them. In light of this ominous situation, ad because of the lateness of the season and the nature of the terrain, Van Vliet urged Harney to consider the possibility of ordering the troops to winter near Fort Bridger.”
Norman F. Furniss, The Mormon Conflict, 1850-1859, p. 106-107
First Westbound Mail on the Pony
“Forty-nine letters wrapped in oiled silk to exclude moisture, five telegrams, and a few special editions of New York newspapers for Salt Lake City, Sacramento, and San Francisco made up the mail for this first trip. When the pouch containing it reached Hannibal it was placed upon the first railroad mail car ever built in the United States.”
Settle and Settle, Empire on Wheels, p. 81
First Army Contract
Russell got his monoply on military freighting under a two year contract for 1855 and 1856. An office was opened in Leavenworth, at that time a mere squatter village on the Delaware Indian Reservation. Charles R. Morehead, Russell’s nephew, was installed as Manager and John W. Russell, his eldest son, as bookkeeper. They spent $15,000.00 for warehouses and other buildings, opened a lumber yard, a packing plant to supply meat to the trains, built a sawmill, and opened two stores.
Settle and Settle, "Napoleon of the West," Annals of Wyoming Vol. 32, No.1, April 1960, p. 15
Mormon's Motivations for Unruly Activities
“If Gentiles in the 1850s found abundant reasons for antagonism toward the Church, the Mormons also had strong motivation for unruly activities. In their early history they had been treated with a cruel intolerance, the memories of which they carried with them to Utah. After struggling against famine in their new home, and at times reduced to eating the animal skins used as shelter, they had at last built the basis for economic survival. Then had come new trouble wit their opponents, indicting that their patient suffering had not after all taken them beyond persecution. Federal officials had meddled in their affairs, apparently with the intention of overthrowing their carefully devised political system. The uncertainty of their title to the land, the cancellation of their mail contract—these and other important events seemed to them proof of the Government’s intention to oppress them even in the remoteness of the Salt Lake Basin. . . .
The leaders of the Church never let the people forget their past misfortunes. . . .
The tendency toward emotionalism on the part of the Mormons, so unsettling in relations between Utah and the nation, was heightened by a religious revival during 1856. . . .Violence of language had been characteristic of the Saints in the past. During the reformation, when the leaders of the Church shared the excitement of their congregations, speech from the pulpit became even more frenetic. . . .
It was inevitable that the reformation, as its emotional frenzy increased, should not affect not only the lives of the people but their relations with the United States, for it made the Saints more intolerant of Gentiles in Utah and more unresponsive to the Government’s authority during 1856 and 1857. Some writers have blamed the Mountain Meadows Massacre upon the hysteria let loose by the revival. . . .
At any rate there can be no doubt that the revival, by increasing the hostility of the Saints toward the Gentiles and their Government, helped precipitate the Mormon War of 1857.”
Norman F. Furniss, The Mormon Conflict, 1850-1859, p. 91-94
Steering Oxen
Unlike horses and mules, oxen are not directly controlled with bridle, bit, and reins handled by a driver seated in the wagon behind them. Instead, the drover walks to the left of his teams while giving direction with voice, bodylanguage, and the whip. “The drover does not follow the oxen, as some writers seem to think,” Ford points out. “The oxen go where they think the drover wants them to go. They know they are expected to give him the room he needs to maneuver by watching the direction of his travel, his whip signals, or his silent body language, such as turning or changing pace. A properly trained nigh ox knows he must keep pace with and stay at arm’s length from thedrover on his left side.” And those are just the requirements for the “undergraduate” ox degree.
Dixon Ford and Lee Kreutzer, "Oxen: Engines of the Emigration," Overland Journal, V. 33. No. 1 (2015), p. 11
Climateric
“The commerce of the world, the Occidental Press had assured me, is undergoing its grand climacteric: the resources of India and the nearer orient are now well-nigh cleared of ‘loot,’ and our sons, if they would walk in the paths of their papas, must look to Cipangri and the parts about Cathay for their annexations.”
Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 1
Mail to Denver
With the L & PPE’s regular mail service, Auraria and Denver City residents anxiously waited in line for a letter from the states six to seven days old. Previously, Fort Laramie was the closest United States mail connection to Auraria and Denver City. Jim Saunders created the first express line from Denver City to Fort Laramie in November 1858, retrieving the newly formed communities’ mail, often six weeks old, and sending mail for the townspeople. He charged fifty cents for letters and twenty-five cents for newspapers; this was in addition to the three cents United States postage for a letter. Since the L & PPE was not an official United States mail carrier, it too charged a private carrier fee of twenty-five cents for letters and ten cents for newspapers. Although these were steep prices, the recipients and senders willingly paid the price to communicate with the states. By the spring of 1860, Auraria Town Company merged with Denver City creating one town called Denver.
Heather King Peterson, Colorado Stagecoach Stations, p. 22
A freight train consisting of eight wagons loaded with hardware for Denver, was attacked Sunday morning, August 7, 1864, by a party of Cheyenne and Arapahoe Indians. Five men were killed instantly, a sixth was mortally wounded, and the wagons were burned. (Brown, 2007) The bodies and smoking wagons were found by two young couples out for a Sunday morning ride from Thirty-Two Mile Creek station and on Monday morning Overland Stage Line employees from the station arrived. The wounded teamster was able to give a few details of the attack before he died. The men were buried beside the trails 140 yards south of the OCTA marker. This is the only known burial site of white men who met death in Adams County due to hostile Indian activity. The Nova-Color OCTA marker was installed in 1996 on the south side of the road at the edge of a broad and deep ditch. Franzwa’s Maps of the Oregon Trail shows ruts southeast of the markers, but with the installation of a center pivot irrigation system several years ago, they are no longer visible. The next image shows the flat marker indicating the burial site.
“Before 8 A.M. we were under way, bound for Smith’s Creek. Our path stretched over the remainder of Reese’s River Valley, an expanse of white sage and large rabbit-bush which affords fuel even when green. After a long and peculiarly rough divide [Smith Creek Summit], we sighted the place of our destination. It lay beyond a broad plain or valley [Smith Creek Valley], like a huge white “splotch” in the centre, set in dirty brown vegetation, backed by bare and rugged hills, which are snow-topped only on the north; presently we reached the ‘splotch,’ which changed its aspect from that of a muddy pool to a yellow floor of earth so hard that the wheels scarcely made a dent, except where a later inundation had caused the mud to cake, flake, and curl—smooth as ice without being slippery. Beyond that point, guided by streams meandering through willow thickets, we entered a kanyon—all are now wearying of the name—and presently sighted the station deep in a hollow. It had a good stone corral and the usual haystack, which fires on the hilltops seemed to menace.”
Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 486-487
Apostate Press in Nauvoo
Though these difficulties affected only a few, and did not immediately show their full effects, the excommunication of the Laws and Foster was the beginning of the end of Nauvoo, for as Fawn Brodie points out, Law was no ordinary trouble-maker or apostate. Even excommunicated he was still a believer. His purpose was not to denounce Joseph and the Church, but to bring them back to health, and so he did not pull out of Nauvoo, but stayed on, in constant fear of his life from the Sons of Dan, to see what he could accomplish in the way of reform. Oearly there was no road to reform that did not involve direct attack on Joseph. Accordingly Law and his associates prosecuted the attack with energy. One of the somewhat disreputable Higbee brothers who had been smeared in the Bennett scandals of 1842 sued Joseph for slander; Foster and Joseph H. Jackson had little trouble persuading the Mormon-hating grand jury of Carthage to indict the prophet for false swearing; and William Law himself got him indicted for adultery and polygamy. While they were waiting for the law of Illinois to take its course, the rebels ordered a printing press, intent upon airing within the holy city itself the smell of Joseph’s sins. Joseph responded not by denying the charges but by assuming their absurdity, and by a vicious vilification of his enemies-murderers, thieves, fornicators and bearers of false witness. In the midst of that the press arrived and was set up, and the first issue of the Nauvoo Expositor appeared on the streets on June 7, 1844. It did not vilify or fulminate. It kept its temper and a reasonable tone. But it rocked Nauvoo to the deep foundations of the temple, for it denied Joseph’s right to the autocratic power he wielded, accused him of abusing the city charter, doubted his political revelations, charged him with using Church money for land gambles. . . .
The Expositor’s first issue was its last . . .
Wallace Stegner, The Gathering of Zion, p 27-28
Indian Tax
“Almost from the very first, the perceptive plains Indians had recognized the threat the overland caravans represented to their way of life. Therefore, one of their first responses was to demand tribute of the passing trains. This tactic was employed at least as early as 1843. An 1845 overlander, speculating on the origins of this Indian tax, believed the practice to have begun with frightened emigrants willing to promise almost anything to travel safely. But it seems clear that tribute demands, which were most widely experienced by overlanders during the gold rush period, were grounded in more than simple repetition of a previous chance success. Emigrants continually reported that the Indians who came to demand tribute explained also why they were requesting the payments. The natives explicitly emphasized that the throngs of overlanders were killing and scaring away buffalo and other wild game, overgrazing prairie grasses, exhausting the small quantity of available timber, and depleting water resources. The tribute payments were demanded mainly by the Sac and Fox, Kickapoo, Pawnee, and Sioux Indians—the tribes closest to the Missouri River frontier and therefore those feeling most keenly the pressures of white men increasingly impinging upon their domains. . . .
[E]migrants differed in their responses to this form of native entrepreneurship. What [emigrants who threatened force] did not acknowledge was the cumulative impact of a series of such arrogant actions. . . .
The bridge tolls and tribute payments demanded by the Indians were insignificant when compared to the ferry and bridge charges asked by mountain men and traders farther west along the trails. Clearly, however, it was not the money as much as the idea that Indians had any ‘right’ to claim payments which infuriated many emigrants. Indignantly refusing compliance, these emigrants willingly instigated skirmished, which in turn elicited Indian retaliation on subsequent overlanders.”
John D. Unruh, Jr., The Plains Across, p. 169-173
Russell's Retail Experience
At 19 years of age Russell appears to have been manager of the store [Aull’s in Lexington, MO]. The extent of the firm’s business is seen in the fact that it had an interest in three Missouri river steamboats, operated a ropewalk in Liberty, owned a saw and grist mill, and engaged in the Santa Fe and fur trade. It also contracted to furnish supplies to Fort Leavenworth, Indian missions, emigrating tribes, and United States troops.”
Although only fragmentary studies of this giant pioneer firm have been made, it is clear that during the early 1830’s it was the largest and most influential business enterprise on the western Missouri frontier. As such it not only constituted excellent training ground for Russell, but to a very great degree provided a blue print for his career in days to come. In breadth of vision, energy, daring, and remarkable skill in organization, he was destined to operate in a similar though much wider field and by far surpass his old employer and mentor.
“About 20 miles west of the Continental Divide, the main road forked at a spot called Parting of the Ways—a point of decision. From there, travelers could either follow the Sublette Cutoff heading due west toward the trading post at Fort Hall, or take the original, better-watered route southwest toward Fort Bridger and Utah. “
“We at once started for his corral, two miles distant, where we found the gentleman. He asked where our traps were. We told him, and also assured him that we would report for duty the following morning.
[“Traps”–personal belongings; baggage]
Charles E. Young, Dangers of the Trail, p.23
Freighters on Sighting Indians
“We had not been molested by Indians so far. We had met parties of twenty or thirty at diff erent times, but had been cautious. When they came riding near us, we would double up our train and prepare for them, and they would soon ride away apparently friendly. . . .
Monday morning we moved on. In the afternoon we saw quite a large party of Indians riding toward us. The boss stopped the head team and commenced to corral. The extra men came charging back, ordering us to corral as quickly as possible, for the Indians were coming upon us. Every man hurried his team up, and we got them corralled with the cattle inside. Then every man got his gun, and got inside the corral, ready for them, except Rennick and the mounted men.
But before the Indians got to us they began to slow up. They came up and appeared friendly. Whether it was because we were so well prepared for them or not, we never knew. They chatted awhile with the boss and rode off.”
William Clark, "A Trip Across the Plains in 1857," Iowa Journal of History and Politics, 20 (1922), p. 183, 186
Spare Parts
“Since tongues, spokes, and axles were subject to breakage, spare parts were carried whenever possible, slung under the wagon bed. Grease buckets, water barrels (or india rubber bags), whips or goads, heavy rope, and chains completed the running gear accessories. If grease was not applied liberally to wheel bearings, a ‘hotbox’ developed. When store-bought grease was exhausted, boiled buffalo of wolf grease served.”
Merrill J. Mattes, The Great Platte River Road, p. 43
Prairie Horizontality
“Differing from the card-table surfaces of the formation in Illinois and the lands east of the Mississippi, the Western prairies are rarely flat ground. Their elevation above sea-level varies from 1000 to 2500 feet, and the plateau’s aspect impresses the eye with an exaggerated idea of elevation, there being no object of comparison mountain, hill, or sometimes even a tree to give a juster measure. Another peculiarity of the prairie is, in places, its seeming horizontality, whereas it is never level: on an open plain, apparently flat as a man’s palm, you cross a long groundswell which was not perceptible before, and on its farther incline you come upon a chasm wide and deep enough to contain a settlement. The aspect was by no means unprepossessing. . . .
“These prairies are preparing to become the great grazing-grounds which shall supply the unpopulated East with herds of civilized kine, and perhaps with the yak of Tibet, the llama of South America, and the koodoo and other African antelopes.”
Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 17, 18
Mile 48: Kennekuk
“Frank A. Root writes in The Overland Stage (pp. 190, 191): ‘Kennekuk was the first ‘home’ station out from Atchison, and here drivers were changed. It was a little town of perhaps a dozen houses, having a store, blacksmith shop, etc. The Kickapoo Indian agency was one of the most prominent buildings. . . The old stone mission . . . visible for many miles . . . was less than a mile northwest of the stage station, adjoining the now thriving city of Horton. . .
The St. Joseph road here intersected the military road from Fort Leavenworth.”
George Root, "Pike's Peak Express Companies," Part III, Kansas Historical Quarterly, Vol. 13, No. 8 (1944) p. 514, note 294
Russell's First Business Failure
In 1838 he resigned his position at Aull’s, and in partnership with James S. Allen and William Early opened a retail store under the name of Allen, Russell & Company. Whether this was in “Old Town” or the new addition is not known, although it probably was the former. . . .
The only thing which seems to have marred this period of prosperity [1838-1845] was the failure of Allen, Russell & Company in 1845. This was his first experience in that sort of thing, but it was by no means his last.
“The bill of indictment agains Magraw contained innumerable petty and some amusing complaints. His critics claimed that the superintendent was well known on the plains apparently had an old quarrel to settle with every trader on the road. Moreover, he had breathed anathemas and bitter denunciations against the Mormons, but as he approached Brigham Young’s domain his courage failed him. The disgruntled branded him as a coward. The crowning absurdity of his tyrannical egotism, they reported, was his urging each traveler headed east to take a personal letter introducing him to Magraw’s crony, the President of the United States, and advising the emigrant that the best possible introduction to Buchanan was to appear with the smell of good alcohol on the breath.”
W. Turrentine Jackson, Wagon Roads West, p. 360, n. 22
Mountain Grasses
“The mountain region westward of the sage and saleratus desert, extending between the 105th and 111th meridian (G.) a little more than 400 miles will in time become sparsely peopled. Though in many parts arid and sterile, dreary and desolate, the long bunch grass (Festuca), the short curly buffalo grass (Sisleria dactyloides), the mesquit grass (Stipa spata), and the Gramma, or rather, as it should be called, ‘Gamma’ grass (Chondrosium fcenum) which clothe the slopes west of Fort Laramie, will enable it to rear an abundance of stock.”
Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 7
Cook's Accomplishment
[Cook by 1779] forever destroyed two shining myths, erasing the Southern Continent and the Northwest Passage from the map of human ignorance. He added great stores of knowledge to the intellectual estate of mankind. Not the least item among them were the calculations that made him the first man who had ever known for certain how wide North America is.
Bernard De Voto, The Course of Empire, p. 283-84
Mile 917: Upper of Mormon Ferry
“Twenty-eight miles from /Deer Creek was the Upper or Mormon Ferry on the North Platte, near modern Casper. The eaarliest travelers found it, of course, in a state of nature and were utterly dependent on their own efforts. Tradition tells us that the crossing selected in pre-prairie-schooner days was three miles down from the later ferry site.
It was a favorite with the Indians, who would make rafts of their lodgepoles, pile them with household goods and attach thongs of buffalo hide, with which swimming braves towed them across the river. The fur traders usually waited for a favorable day and crossed with their goods packed in bullboats, floating the heavy carts.”
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 195
Fort Bridger
“Fort Bridger was quite a gay rendezvous on the Sunday we reached it, for besides ourselves and two companion trains, the place was enlivened by a score or two of mountaineers, and a band of Indians with ponies for sale; the ‘sell’ being usually completed by the ponies disappearing the next night.”
William Chandless, Chandless, W. (1857). A Visit to Salt Lake, p. 118
The Importance of the Pony Express as a Carrier of News to the People of California
“The importance of the Pony Express as a carrier of news to the people of California was heightened by the presidential campaign of 1860. By October of that year there was intense anxiety in that state concerning the result of the Pennsylvania election, which was held a month early, because of its bearing upon the spirited contest in California. When the news arrived by telegraph and Pony Express it created a sensation, making the Republicans exceedingly jubilant and encouraging them to put forth their greatest efforts to carry the state for Lincoln.”
George Root, "Pike's Peak Express Companies," Part IV, Kansas Historical Quarterly, Vol. 14, No. 1 (1944) p. 61
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 on this continent, perhaps the finest sport hunters have enjoyed anywhere. Every variety of big game, from elephants to grizzlies, has its own devotees, but everyone who ever hunted buffalo on horseback in the West (except the skeptical Richard Dodge) found it the consummation of the sportsman’s life. This was not because the buffalo was cunning or crafty, for it was the stupidest of mammals, nor because it was hard to come by, for it existed in far greater masses than any other large animal on earth, nor because it was dangerous in itself. What gave the hunt an emotion equivalent to ecstasy was the excitement, the speed, the thundering noise, the awe-inspiring bulk of the huge animal in motion, the fury of its death, and the implicit danger of the chase. Since for forty years this was a notable and unique American experience, we may pause to describe the sportsman’s way of hunting buffalo.
[Detailed description follows for pages]
Bernard De Voto, Across the Wide Missouri, p. 36
Platte Valley Plantlife
From the station [Latham, CO] south it was a level, gravelly, sandy plain as far as the eye could see. It was practically the same all along the south fork of the Platte, except at intervals there were clusters of cottonwood and willows. Some of the gulches extending at right angles to the river had an occasional small cedar grove, the trees being badly stunted. Freighters and pilgrims by the Platte route used to cut the cedars and use them for fuel in cooking while camping; so they were soon all gone. Buffalo, or bunch-grass was abundant all along the valley, and this made the finest pasturage. Stock grew fat on it. Cattle would leave the taller grass along the banks of the stream and gradually move back on higher ground to the nutritious buffalo-grass, which appeared the natural feed for them. It was practically the same nearly all the way from Latham up the Cache la Poudre.”
Root and Connelley, The Overland Stage to California, p. Note, p. 319-20
Russell Admits the Firm is Weak
Russell’s “great faith” in winning the coveted mail contract was obviously from a more modest viewpoint than as the reigning lord of the Central. A few days after Godard Bailey broke confidence and shattered his world of financial sophistry, he [Russell] conceded to Waddell that a through mail line to the Pacific Coast was beyond the company’s means—”the whole line will require too much additional capital and we have it not.” Such a doleful admission of failure! So that flamboyant gesture, the great wager that sent scores of young lads racing across the prairies, had come to naught. What now was he thinking of the gloried Pony Express? How ironical that his pains to prove the Central Route feasible should benefit an arch rival!
Roy S. Bloss, Pony Express—The Great Gamble, 125
Platte Valley
“The valley of the Platte from Fort Kearney to the South Crossing has an average width of six or eight miles, closed in N. and S. by low bluffs from 200 to 300 feet high; while the river divides the level between pretty evenly, having itself a width of little less than a mile. Cedar-wood is sprinkled thinly over the bluffs, and now and then (but rarely), you may find a copse on the river-side, half impervious through the tangled masses of the wild vine; their grapes, though small and acid, are wholesome and refreshing, and an excellent remedy for either hunger or thirst.”
William Chandless, Chandless, W. (1857). A Visit to Salt Lake, p. 66
Food via Brigham Young's YX Express
In the snow, which was from eighteen inches to three feet deep, hunting on foot was an exhausting grind, for they wallowed, were easily spotted by the game, and as of ten as not missed out of sheer nervousness or exhaustion when they did get a shot at something. The wolves had killed three of their four saddle ponies. Jones judged that none of the men, unless possibly himself, was strong enough to make a desperation dash to the Platte bridge to see if there might be help there. He was just about to try what would have been a very desperate chance indeed when the Lord intervened again. This time His messengers were the Danite Bill Hickman, later notorious as a strong-arm man and self-confessed murderer second only to Porter Rockwell, and several companions. They were bringing through the first installment of mail for Brigham Young’s new Y.X. Express, which had obtained a contract to carry the mail between Salt Lake City and Independence. The Devil’s Gate boys had just put the pack saddle on to simmer, but seeing meat on the, express men’s pack mules, they took it out of the pot and consented to drink buffalo broth instead. Hickman and the other express men were a long time getting over that dinner they saw on the fire. For years they called Dan Jones the man that ate the pack saddle. He always denied it, but admitted that if they hadn’t arrived just when they did he might have been talked into taking a wing or a leg.
Wallace Stegner, The Gathering of Zion, p 266
Emigrating from Eastern Forests to Westerns Forests
“In the first place, we have in the Oregon migration, which was pretty well developed by 1843, an example of a frontier jumping nearly two thousand miles over an unoccupied country. There has been no other phenomenon like this in American history, and it is doubtful if world history offers a parallel case. It is significant that the immigrants went all this distance to a wooded and well-watered environment similar in practically all respects to that which they had known in the East; in fact, they passed over the fertile Prairie Plains of the Middle West, where, as time has proved, the agricultural opportunities were far better than they were on the Pacific coast. They were bound for the land where the simple plow, the scythe, the ox, and the horse could be used according to the tradition that had been worked out in two centuries of pioneering in a wooded country.
It has been estimated that each mile of the two-thousand-mile journey cost seventeen lives – a total of thirty-four thousand lives. It has been customary to consider the trip over the Oregon Trail as a heroic act, and it was; but in one sense it registered a lack of sufficient heroism to lead the people to undertake to live in the vast country that they traversed. They were in reality seeking the familiar and shunning the necessity of working out new ways in the Plains. The heroism lay in getting to Oregon and not in living there. The deserts, the waterless drives, the sand storms, the treacherous quicksands of the rivers, the prairie fires, the hostile Indians, the stampeding buffalo found on the Plains – all were a part of that great obstacle.
Walter Prescott Webb, The Great Plains, p. 149
'Tis Better Thus
“Perhaps, as the lady journalists of the fifties would have phrased it, ‘Tis better thus.’ If the hundreds of persons who kept trail diaries could have an inkling of the erudite institutions that would some day cherish them in fireproof vaults, nine-tenths of them would have forestalled the attention by personally burning the diaries in the last campfire.”
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 197
Panic of 1837
By the early 1840s, the post’s vast system of 150,000 miles of mail routes had unified an ever-expanding America, but the institution was one of many enterprises, both private and public, to find itself in deep financial trouble. A burst of wild economic excess and speculation had culminated in the great Panic of 1837, which set off a recession that dragged on for seven years. A third of the states defaulted on loans for building railroads, canals, and other overly ambitious projects. Many banks closed, the real estate bubble burst, businesses failed, and unemployment climbed. By 1842, the catastrophe’s ripple effect had left even the U.S. Treasury nearly penniless.
Winifred Gallagher, How the Post Office Created America, p. 80
Mile 1732: Jacob's Well Station
“Today nothing remains but a few old stones from which the old well has long since caved in with rock and dirt. It was not only was a change station for the Pony Express until its demise as well as the Overland Stage Line until 1869, but it later served the Hill Beachy Road to Hamilton and the White Pine Mines.”
“Since American scholarship has virtually enshrined the continent-wide westward movement, it is only natural that must of the speculation concerning the overlanders’ motivations has revolved around the so-called ‘pioneer instinct’ of restless frontiersman. . . . Those overlanders who chose to record the stimuli they believed to be impelling them westward, however, usually mentioned such prosaic factors as financial difficulties, the hope of economic improvement in the Far West, the search for better health, or political or patriotic considerations, before admitting to a general restlessness or a desire for adventure. Occasionally noted was also was the desire to get away from the increasingly virulent passions surrounding the Negro and slavery, the wish to flee the artificialities and restraints of society, the possibility of of evading capture for indiscretions ranging from theft to murder, the willingness to undertake missionary work among the Indians, the attempt to forget a romance gone sour. Some even claimed to be moving because of the better fishing reported in Oregon.”
John D. Unruh, Jr., The Plains Across, p. 91
Cost to Send Mail With the Pony Express
Majors recalled that the weight of the mail was never to exceed ten pounds and the cost or sending a letter across the country on the back of a Pony Express mount was not cheap-five dollars in gold (about a hundred dollars today) for a half ounce—paid in advance (the cost of sending a letter would gradually be reduced until it was only a dollar).
Christopher Corbett, Orphans Preferred, p. 86-87
Mile 1328-1396: Salt Lake City to Callao, Utah Still from the video
“A little video I made of the first two days on the Pony Express trail from Salt Lake City to Callao, Utah. Unfortunately, due to time constraints that were too tightened for comfort by weather I had to call my ride to Sacramento on Ibapah, UT, right at the Nevada border.
I had hoped to document via video the whole route from Salt Lake to Sacramento and scout some more challenging options for the route. I am planning another trip later this summer, so I might still get that chance.”
Colter reached the equator of the Missouri, the mouth of the Platte and there met a big party coming upriver, bound for the rich beaver country which the return of Lewis and Clark had publicized. It was commanded by the veteran St. Louis trader Manuel Lisa, the shrewdest mind in the business and by far the most successful bourgeois the American trade was to have during its first period. Lisa had hired George Drewyer as his guide and principal dependence in the new country. He had also hired the John Potts and Peter Wiser who had been with Lewis and Clark, and now he got another member of the great company. For again Colter turned back to the wilderness, and this time he marched into American legendry. Where the Big Horn River empties into the Yellowstone, a site that had been duly recommended by William Clark, Lisa built the first post of the Western fur trade. Thence he sent Colter to find the Blackfeet and bring them in to trade. Without companions Colter made a journey so remarkable that it makes one’s breath catch. His route has been much disputed and will never be confidently established, but he went up the Big Horn and found the Stinking-Water River (more gently the Shoshone in these days) and the neighboring bitumen springs and thermal phenomena that were called “Colter’s Hell” thereafter – and were laughed at by greenhorns back home as a damned amusing lie. He crossed the Divide, the first white man to do so after the expedition, and traveled across part of the more spectacular hell that is now Yellowstone National Park. Before he met the Blackfeet he met their implacable enemies the lcrows and traveled with them. So when the enemies met he had to fight with the Crows, killing some Blackfeet.
Some writers have held that this encounter sealed or perhaps created the murderous hostility to American trappers that the Blackfeet maintained for many years. Probably it was more complex than that, and perhaps a great part of it was the natural belligerence of the Blackfeet who never kept the peace with anyone for very long, not even with themselves, but there is no doubt that the anti-American policy existed. And in the next year and a half Colter helped a good many Blackfeet find the sunset trail.
Bernard De Voto, The Course of Empire, p. 491-92
Importance of Pony Express to Keeping California in the Union
It is of course a well-known fact that California never did secede, and that soon after the war began, she swung definitely and conclusively into the Union column. The danger of secession was wholly potential. Yet potential dangers are none the less real. Had it not been for the determined energies of a few loyalists in California, led by General E. V. Sumner and cooperating with the Federal Government by means of the swiftest communication then possible—the Pony Express—history today, might read differently.
Glenn D. Bradley, The Story of the Pony Express, p. 79
Buffalo
“The morning brought with it no joy. We had arrived at the westernmost limit of the ‘gigantic Leicestershire’ to which buffalo at this season extend, and could hope to see no trace of them between Cotton-wood Station and the Pacific. I can not, therefore, speak ex cathedra concerning this, the noblest ‘venerie'” of the West: almost every one who has crossed the prairies, except myself, can. Captain Stansbury will enlighten the sportsman upon the approved method of bryttling the beasts, and elucidate the mysteries of the ‘game-beef,’ marrow-bone and depuis, tongue and tender-loin, bass and hump, hump-rib and liver, which latter, by-the-by, is not unfrequently eaten raw, with a sprinkling of gall (‘Prairie bitters’ made of a pint of water and a quarter of a gill of buffalo gall are considered an elixir vita by old voyageurs), by the white hunter emulating his wild rival, as does the European in Abyssinia.”
Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 50
Mormon Trail through the Wasach
“The Mormons were the first after the Donner party to take the [Hastings] cutoff route from Fort Bridger, but their experiences were quite different. Beyond the Weber River Canyon they found that the panicked Donner party had hacked its way blindly. Camp was pitched, and a thorough survey of the mountains made, in which the route that is now Highway 30S was discovered. The entire battalion set to work, and within less than a week had opened a clear passage to Salt Lake.”
Ralph Moody, The Old Trails West, p. 286
Tissue Paper for Mail
“For the Pony special thin paper was used, especially for the newspapers in order to keep the weight down. [Alexander] Majors noted the cantinas ‘were filled with important business letters and press dispatches from eastern cities and San Francisco, printed upon tissue paper, and thus especially adapted by their weight for this mode of transportation.'”
William E. Hill, The Pony Express: Yesterday and Today, p. 19
Mile 1280: Echo City, UT
“Exhibit A is Pulpit Rock, where, so the townspeople told us, Brigham Young stood to preach yo his followers in 1847 on the way to their new home in the Salt Lake Valley.”
[N.B. The historical marker is in the town, less than a mile from the Pony Express marker just before town. Also note, the Pony Express Bikepacking Route left the original Pony Express route around Mile 1232 (just past the Bear River station), and rejoins it in Echo.]
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 294
Idea of a Pony Express
The idea behind the Pony Express, soon affectionately abbreviated to “the Pony,” was not new, even in America. Postmasters general John McLean and Amos Kendall had sent horsemen racing day and night to speed market information between certain cities for several times the price of normal postage. These express services had indeed cut delivery times—between New York City and New Orleans, say, to half the fourteen days required by stagecoaches—but they were soon replaced in the East by the faster, cheaper railroads.
Winifred Gallagher, How the Post Office Created America, p. 129
Jimson/Jamestown/Stinkweed
” . . .and though ‘Jimsen weed’ overruns the land, he [Native Americans] neglected its valuable intoxicating properties. . . .
“Properly Jamestown weed, the Datura stramonium, the English thorn-apple, unprettily called in the Northern States of America ‘stinkweed’ It found its way into the higher latitudes from Jamestown (Virginia), where it was first observed springing on heaps of ballast and other rubbish discharged from vessels. According to Beverly (‘History of Virginia,’ book ii., quoted by Mr. Bartlett), it is ‘one of the greatest coolers in the world;’ and in some young soldiers who ate plentifully of it as a salad, to pacify the troubles of bacon, the effect was ‘a very pleasant remedy, for they turned natural fools upon it for several days.'”
Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 111 and note
Violence of the Iroquois
This hard fact is what recent essays in the economic interpretation of the Iroquois Confederacy fail to account for. Professor Hunt, for instance treats the Iroquois as if they were Economic Man implementing a business policy with the detachment of Standard Oil organizing a new territory, and he ridicules Parkman’s idea that they had a natural liking for war. But they did. The murderous raiding that we perhaps inaccurately call war, though that is what the Indians called it, was metabolic and interstitial in the Indian way of life. Killing was sport, it obtained religious grace, and it was a way to social and political distinction. It is idle to represent murder and the collection of scalps as a trade device for cornering a market or increasing the markup on goods. Economic Man would not torture and kill the customer nor would economic diplomacy sanction the murder of an ally. The Iroquois did not torture or kill the customer to get his trade but because religious belief and magical antisepsis required it, and because they enjoyed torture and killing. What led the Iroquois to repeatedly make war on the tribes they were trying to bring into a peaceful alliance was not the shortcomings of their political institu576 • Chapter V: Notes tions nor their mistakes in economic theory but the fact that there are stronger motives than the economic one. In a neolithic society which exalts killing the elders may understand the desirability of curbing them temporarily in the interest of prosperity but there are always the young men.
Bernard De Voto, The Course of Empire, p. 575, n. 6
Gwin's Manoevers
Gwin, in hopes of extricating himself, struck a bargain with the Administration. It was agreed that he was to obstruct the Colfax bill and to allow the session to expire without action; afterwards he was to be rewarded by an order from the Postmaster General improving the service on the South Pass route. Gwin fancied himself returning to California to boast that his personal influence had secured what the combined force of the Republicans in Congress had failed to effect. . . .
To his dismay, Postmaster General Holt, a determined enemy of overland mails, refused to spend another dollar on the route. Gwin then called upon the President. In the interview that followed, Buchanan found himself in an embarrassing position. Gwin was one of his chief supports in the Senate. Holt, who was indispensable to the Cabinet, threatened to resign if his policy in his Department were reversed at the bid of an outsider. Buchanan attempted to persuade Gwin to drop the matter. But the fate of the overland mail meant more to Gwin than the soothing words of the President.
Curtis Nettles, "The Overland Mail Issue During the 1850s," The Missouri Historical Review, XVIII, no. 4 (1924), 533
Gives Vent to His Spleen
“” A mean streak will come out in the Plains.’ N.A. Cagwin cautions a man when he ‘gives vent to his spleen’ or ‘fans the spirit of discord.'”
Merrill J. Mattes, The Great Platte River Road, p. 71
Telegraph Meets at Fort Bridger
Crews were spread out along the entire route of the telegraph, stringing wire simultaneously in several places. The wires were finally joined at Fort Bridger in what was then Utah on October 24, 1861.
Christopher Corbett, Orphans Preferred, p. 120
Mile 1678: Egan's Station
“In the early part of October [1860] a war party of eighty Pah Utes descended upon Egan’s station while Mike Holt station keeper, and a rider by the name of Wilson were at breakfast. Leaping to their feet they grabbed their guns and began firing upon them. The Indians had no guns, but filled with confidence of victory due to overwhelming numbers, they swooped in for the kill. Holton and Wiison fought heroically and kept them at bay until their ammunition was exhausted. Then, as the Indians broke through the door they heard the chief utter the one word ‘bread.’
“Hoping to satisfy them, and thus escape death, the white men piled all the bread in the station on the table. To their dismay the chief remained unsatisfied. Pointing to the sacks of flour piled in one corner he ordered them to build a fire and bake more. Throughout the day Holton and Wilson continued to supply bread to their ravenous, unwelcome guests. As they worked they talked about William Dennis, rider from the west who was due to arrive late in the afternoon. When he did not come they concluded the Indians had killed him.
“About sundown, the stock of flour having been exhausted, the chief ordered Holton and Wilson taken outside and tied to a wagon tongue which had been driven into the ground. Having done this they proceeded to pile sage brush at their feet with the expectation of roasting them alive. Then, they set it afire and began to dance and yell like demons.
“But the Indians had not gotten Dennis. As he approached the station he saw the savages from the distance, whirled his horse around, and raced back the way he had come. They were so busy celebrating the torture of Holton and Wilson they did not see him. About five miles back he had passed Lieutenant Weed and sixty United States dragoons on their way east to Salt Lake City. Upon being informed of what was going on at the station they swept ahead full tilt, roared down upon the scene, and caught the merrymaking savages by surprise in time to prevent injury to the captives. When it was over the Indians had lost eighteen warriors and sixty horses.”
[Note: Other sources give the date of this event as July 15 or 16, 1860. See, e.g., Historic Resource Study, p. 183-84; Burton (p. 169) gives the date as August]
Settle and Settle, Saddles and Spurs, p. 159-160
Freighters' Pace
“From this time [along the Platte River] we began to travel in earnest, sixteen to twenty miles a day—’only,’ one unacquainted with ox-teams might add; but this distance is quite as much as cattle are fit to continue at. Their pace being seldom over two miles an hour, a journey took from morning till night, for small accidents often occur, and a large train is greatly delayed by any bad place in the road, as the foremost waggons cannot go on ahead but must wait for the rest to come up.
Desertion having made drivers scarce, I again had a team; three yoke, being new cattle, were only unchained, not unyoked, at night for some time.”
William Chandless, Chandless, W. (1857). A Visit to Salt Lake, p. 55
Emigrants and Indians
The emigrants’ fear of the Indians was equaled only by their ignorance of the Indians’ ways. They seldom knew, for example. that it was common custom among many tribes to offer strangers a token of hospitality, and Indians often expected such tokens from those who were traveling through their lands. Emigrants almost always wrote of the Indians who came up “begging” to their wagons, and they found the habit “disgusting.”
Lillian Schlissel, Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey, p. 118
Eye Witness Account of Slade's Hanging
“J. M. Venable, mining man of Boise, Idaho, is the only living witness [in 1928] of Slade’s hanging. He knew him well and describes him as weighing about 160 pounds, five feet eight inches with dark red hair and dark hazel eyes.”
Florabel Muir, "The Man Who Was Hanged for a Song," Liberty Magazine, June 30, 1928, p. 45
Casper to Independence Rock
They would learn, and their guides and experienced wagonmasters would warn later corners, that the fifty miles between Last Crossing and the Sweetwater were the worst stretch of trail between the Missouri and the Salt Lake Valley—would kill more cattle and sicken and depress more people and collect more abandoned equipment than any comparable reach of road. Except for one good but miry spot at Willow Springs, campsites were few and bad: if there was good water, there was no wood or grass; if there was grass there was bad water, or none. Even after the road topped the summit of “Prospect Hill”—a spot that Brigham remarked would be a fine place to set up a summer mansion and keep tavern showed them the Sweetwater Mountains across a broad irregular plain, the road was rougher than it looked from a distance, and the last ten miles before Independence Rock was very heavy, unpleasant with the smell of the alkali lake it crossed. Lorena Young and others gathered pailfuls of the efflorescent white bicarbonate of soda—”saleratus”—for the women to try out in baking but it made bread of a suspiciously green cast and had to be used in moderation. The water that sat on these glaring flats in shallow lakes tasted not very salty, but “sickly,” and was said to be poisonous, and to “burst” cattle that drank it. For lack of anything better the cattle of more careless or more uninformed trains than this did often drink it, and all during the years of the emigration part of the trail was marked by hundreds of cattle carcasses, bloated and loathsome, or scattered by wolves, or dried to racks of hid covered bones.
Wallace Stegner, The Gathering of Zion, p 149-150
Bond Scandal Witnesses
“The various complications of the ‘Great Robbery’ led to numerous articles and dispatches
for several months. Jerome B. Simpoon, vice-president of the ‘C. O. C.’ and in general charge of the New York office of the Pony Express, who had carried on the marketing of the bonds on the New York curb, quickly disappeared, and could not be located. Several witnesses later testified that he had gone to Europe ‘for his health.'”
George Root, "Pike's Peak Express Companies," Part IV, Kansas Historical Quarterly, Vol. 14, No. 1 (1944) p. 87, n. 503
Imagining Pony Express Orphans
I can’t begin to imagine what life was like for many of the orphaned Pony riders without a mother. I wonder if they ever lay awake at night and pondered who their mothers were and tried to imagine their gentle faces. While a boy may have been expected to reach physical manhood by the age of sixteen back in 1860, I doubt that his heart had yet become as callused as his hardworking hands. How comforting it is to me, here on the vast prairie, to envision my mother and know that she is alive and well.
Jerry Ellis, Bareback!, p. 106
Fort Bridger
“[T]his establishment of Fort Bridger in ’43 may be considered symbolic of new conditions. Jim Bridger was one of the most famous of the mountain-men. He realized, however, that the old days were over, that trapping no longer paid much, and that the emigrant trains offered a new source of income. So, with Louis Vásquez as a partner, he built himself a little stockaded post in a pleasant meadow where Black’s Fork split into several small channels. This was in the country of the Snakes, who were friendly. There was good hunting roundabout. Horses and cattle could pasture on the meadowland.”
George R. Stewart, The California Trail, p. 43
Lodgepole Creek
“Our Camp at Pole Creek the night’ of November 4, 1864, was very bleak and dreary. Pole Creek was a vast trough in the plateau. It had a bed wide enough for the Mississippi River at St. Louis. Through this bed the arroyo of the stream ran, a bed of beautiful tawny sand about a hundred yards wide, and cut down from ten to fifteen feet. Sometimes the arroyo was wider, and sometimes narrower, but from Julesburg to the crossing, thirty-five miles, there was nothing, as before stated, in the shape of a tree or bush. It was absolutely devoid of any vegetation except the grass. And above the arroyo the ‘flood plain’ of the stream, if it could be so called, was as level as a floor for distances out of sight. Occasionally in the arroyo there were little clumps of drift roots and brush, sometimes a small, dead, drifted pine. Lodgepole Creek was said to have a well-defined bed for two hundred miles, and to head at the Cheyenne Pass, in the Rocky Mountains.”
Eugene Ware, Indian Wars of 1864, p. 364
Early Leavenworth
“[Leavenworth City] was on the Delaware reserve, and was not open for settlement; indeed the U.S. Government had warned all squatters off it by proclamation, under heavy penalties. But these were ‘paper penalties’ only, i.e. never enforced, and were treated as non-existent ; especially as it was known that nearly the whole of the reserve would be thrown open in the fall.
“In 1855 the “city,” now a great centre of the rich wheat-growing district in which it stands, consisted of a few frame buildings, two or three small stores, and the ‘hotel’ I put up at. The Leavenworth Democrat represented the majesty of the ‘Fourth Estate,’ and was edited, printed, and published in a small shanty under a big cottonwood-tree by Major Euston, an out-and-out Southerner, and a typical specimen of the South-western fighting editor. He was the quickest man with his six-shooter I ever saw, even in a country where it behoved every one to be on the alert.
“The little place was full of gamblers, as all frontier settlements were in those days.”
R.H. Williams, With the Border Ruffians, p. 75
Fastest Pony Express Time
“Perhaps the greatest feat of the Pony Express service was the delivery of President Lincoln’s inaugural address in record-breaking time. In order to surpass all previous performances, each horse along the line was led out from the different stations, and each traveled a stretch of only about 10 miles. Every precaution being taken to prevent delay, a transit was accomplished in the unprecedented time of seven days and seventeen hours over the 1,950-mile course.”
George Root, "Pike's Peak Express Companies," Part IV, Kansas Historical Quarterly, Vol. 14, No. 1 (1944) p. 64
Mile 1455: Dugway/Dugout Station
“Water for Dugway Station had to be hauled from Simpson’s Springs. Although three wells were dug over several years, one reaching a depth of 120 feet, no water was found. Noted as a “substation” by Horace Greeley, nothing very permanent was ever constructed at the site. In 1860 a shelter was placed over a dugout and an adobe chimney installed. In the 1890’s, the location was utilized as a halfway stop by the Walters and Mulliner Stage Co. on the route between Fairfield and Ibapah. A monument is located at the site today (See Photo 28). Physical evidence at the station site is limited to a disturbed area containing poorly preserved metal objects (possibly from a corral or blacksmithing area north of the wash) and some concentrated stone.”
“On the Morning of July 23, 1864, we left our camp at the mouth of Lodgepole Creek and started up the valley. It was one of the most beautiful mornings that ever was seen in what was then an empty and inhospitable country. The air was so pure and unvitiated that it was a delight to breathe it. It was a blessing to be alive, and be able to start with the cavalcade up Pole Creek valley.”
Eugene Ware, Indian Wars of 1864, p. 260-61
Mile 753: Crossing Fort Laramie
“Most travelers approached Fort Laramie from the main Oregon and California roads along the south bank of the North Platte River. This required fording a tributary, the Laramie River, just east of the fort. Today, dams have tamed the Laramie, but in the mid-1800s the river’s spring current sometimes toppled wagons and drowned emigrants and livestock. Looking for the safest places to ford, travelers used at least nine different crossings of the Laramie, and bridges and ferries eventually served some locations.
In the early years of the emigration, the terrain on the north side of the river was thought to be impassable west of Fort Laramie. Mormon emigrants and others entering Wyoming on the north-bank road were forced to ford the deep, swift North Platte near the fort. Starting in 1850, north-side emigrants had the option of loading their wagons onto a ramshackle flatboat and pulling the contraption along a rope stretched across the river — unassisted, and at the outrageous fare of $1 per wagon. The price of passage drove some offended emigrants to blaze a new trail, Child’s Cutoff (also called Chiles’s Route), which continued west on the north side of the river. Travelers who stayed on the north bank via Child’s Cutoff could avoid crossing the North Platte altogether, while those following the original south-bank road had to cross upstream, near today’s city of Casper. By 1852, most wagons arriving on the north side continued up Child’s Cutoff, though many travelers still crossed the river to visit Fort Laramie. A graceful iron military bridge, built in 1875, still spans one of four emigrant crossings of the North Platte near the fort.”
At the Pony Express Monument marked on the XP Route map just past Mile 1794, there are two possible routes.
The first turns southwest and heads more or less straight to Robert’s Station. The distance is about 10 miles. This is the route followed by the official XP Bikepacking Route and marked on the BLM route of the Pony Express Trail (around Mile 67–https://ridewithgps.com/routes/34091538). This is the route the Simpson Expedition took (Jesse G. Petersen, A Route for the Overland Stage, p. 61).
Jan’s “True as accessible” route at Mile 1676 (https://ridewithgps.com/routes/34516845?privacy_code=ESM1W5E3dAJJhaEI) continues straight at this point (northwest on Highway 278 through Garden Pass Canyon) to go north over Mt. Hope before turning southwest to Robert’s Station. This route is 14 miles, and seems to include more climbs than the southern route. It also may offer access to numerous springs, as yet unscouted. This route is marked on the US Topo map as the Pony Express Route.
If Burton’s mileage estimates are reasonably accurate, the historical route seems to go north around Mt. Hope.
Cross Moonshine [Diamond] Valley. After 7 miles a sulphurous spring and grass [future site of Sulphur Springs Station?]. Twelve miles beyond ascend the divide [Sulphur Springs Ridge, according to Peterson]; no water; fuel and bunch-grass plentiful. Then a long divide. After 9 miles, the station on Roberts’ Creek, at the E. end of Sheawit, or Roberts’ Springs Valley [Kobeh Valley]. 28 Miles
Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 512
Lexicon: “Simpson indicated that the natives of the area called the stream She-o-wi-te, which he understood to mean Willow Creek, and that is what he decided to call the stream.” It later came to be known as Roberts Creek, after Bolivar Roberts (Jesse G. Petersen, A Route for the Overland Stage, p. 62).
Mile 1795: Route Alternate
Daniel Boone's Grandsons
Irving says that two of Daniel Boone’s grandsons were with this party. But a grandson of Daniel Boone was by now standard equipment for any adventure story.
Bernard De Voto, Across the Wide Missouri, p. 423, n. 4
Women's Influence on the Decision to Emigrate
Faragher writes of his sample of women’s diaries: “Not one wife initiated the idea [of migrating]; It was always the husband. Less than a quarter of the women writers recorded agreeing with their restless husbands; most of them accepted it as a husband-made decision to which they could only acquiesce. But nearly a third wrote of their objections and how they moved only reluctantly” (Women and Men on the Overland Trail, p. 163). On the other hand, Julie Roy Jeffrey found not only that women participated effectively in the decision-making process, but that “evidence corroborates female power to affect decision making. . . . Whatever ideology had to say about the necessity of female submission, women felt free to disrupt male emigration project and … had bargaining powers.” (See Frontier Women, pp. 30-31.) The debate on the participation of women in the decision to go West is an important one Insofar as it presents a major testing of the relationship between husband and wife in America at mid-century .
Lillian Schlissel, Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey, p. 74, n. 22
Holladay & Russell
Obviously, he [William Finney] was a man of resourceful initiative. How much easier it would have been, in the face of the frightful Pah-Ute attacks, to close up shop and await the outcome of the fighting. He must have had to swallow a choking lump of company and personal pride to wire Sacramento for public financial aid. Not that he was unaccustomed to a shortage of money. Earlier, when his operating funds had given out, he had gone to Ben Holladay in San Francisco and persuaded him to accept drafts for operating capital. Holladay was there on the persuasion of Finney’s boss in an entirely different venture. Finney probably called on him at the Sacramento and Leidesdorff Street office of Holladay & Russell, brokers of “riding, work and pack” mules for travelers to the Washoe mines.
Roy S. Bloss, Pony Express—The Great Gamble, 93
Yoking Up
“Corral was but an elliptical space of fifty yards by thirty, not a superfluity of room for four hundred and twenty head of cattle, and forty men seeking their own in the melee. At the hour of yoking up it was always a strange scene, and echoed with strange shoutings . . .
“But this day all was at its worst. Men, some voluntarily entering the mire barefoot, some emerging shoeless, some cursing a steer they could not hold, some upset and uttering curses deep-in mud; ‘keys’ lost, chains entangled, lariettes thrown in vain, yokes turned upside down, all to the eye in hopeless confusion, like revolutions on the Continent; and yet the work did go on, if the progress were slow, and at last, after two hours, we got clear of the mire.”
William Chandless, Chandless, W. (1857). A Visit to Salt Lake, p. 53-54
Dobytown
“Two miles west of Kearny, the setlement of Dobytown sprouted, where entrepreneurs sold goods and liquor at inflated prices to plains travelers, traders, stage and freight drivers, and soldiers. They also provided gambling and ‘soiled doves’ or ‘scarlet women’ for entertainment. . . .
Dee brown , in Wondrous Times on the Frontier, 10 lists a dozen synonyms for frontier prostitutes, including ‘Calico Cats.'”
Robert Huhn Jones, Guarding the Overland Trails, p. 67 and n. 5
600-Mile spread of Emigration
“[James] Clyman continued eastward [in 1846], meeting wagons for ten days, recording their numbers, and making additional notes. His is thus an unusual picture—the migration as seen from west to east. From his record the total spread can be calculated as nearly six hundred miles, that is, when he met the first emigrants some miles west of the crossing of the North Fork, the last emigrants still had five or six days to go to reach the crossing of the South Fork.”
“Numerous efforts were now began to be made to secure Mr. Chorpenning’s interest and position in the work, but failing in this by direct purchase, influences were brought upon the Post Office Department, and under the most shameful and positively false pretexts his contract, still having over two years to run, and his pay just on the eve of being increased from $190,000 per annum to $400,000, was annulled, and all his life’s earnings, with ten years of most arduous and severe labor, confiscated to him, and absolutely given to persons, who had never been in the country a day, and had never contributed one dollar’s worth of means or labor in its opening and development.”
Henry H. Clifford (comp.), Mail Service, Settlement of the Country, and the Indian Depredations, p. 9
Alexander and the Soda Springs Route
“We now moved camp every day or two on account of grass.
In about two weeks Colonel Alexander1 came up with one thousand soldiers, but with no orders. The Mormons burned the grass ahead of us for several miles. After the teams had all arrived, Colonel Alexander concluded, as the Mormons had Echo Canyon route so well fortified, he would have to take the Soda Springs route, down Bear River and in by the northern settlements. So he ordered us to move up to Soda Springs, eighty miles north. . . .
We moved on, and in a few days reached Soda Springs. It was now quite cold, and we had some snow before reaching the Springs. In a day or two after eight or ten inches of snow fell and it was very cold weather.
After we had been there about a week an express messenger from Colonel Albert Sydney Johnston came riding into camp with orders for us to move back to the crossing on Ham’s Fork, and stay there till he arrived. We started back. It was very cold and our cattle were weak. We could make but eight or ten miles a day. We left some of our poorest cattle at each camp, they not being able to travel.
We arrived at the crossing in eight days. Two days afterwards Colonel Johnston came in with his men. Some of them rode out to old Fort Bridger, and, after looking it over, came back and ordered us to move on to Bridger, and they would go into winter quarters there. . . .
A company of Dragoons came up to camp before we started. This made about two thousand five hundred men-soldiers and teamsters.
It was a bitter cold day that we started. The train was six miles long. The last of the train did not leave camp till noon, and it was dark when they got into camp that night. It was a very cold night and the herders could not stay with the cattle. In the morning we found we had lost one hundred and sixty head which had strayed off in the storm, and sixty head of government mules had died in camp. This weakened our teams so that we could move only a part of our train at a time, many of the cattle left being too weak to work. We were six days getting this train twenty-six miles to Ford Bridger.”
William Clark, "A Trip Across the Plains in 1857," Iowa Journal of History and Politics, 20 (1922), p. 194-195
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 town on Cherry Creek. Among other things they discussed was the possibility of operating a stage line to the new diggings. Before the interview was over it was understood that Russell should have one share in the town company. This gave him about thirty acres in the heart of what was later known as Denver, Colorado.
Settle and Settle, "Napoleon of the West," Annals of Wyoming Vol. 32, No.1, April 1960, p. 24
Mile 1193: Fort Bridger
“The majority of the migration arrived at Fort Bridger in the month of July. . . . The valley of Blacks Fork is beautiful out of all reason, like a charming but improbable stage setting, for which the snow-topped Uinta Mountains provide a magnificent backdrop. Apparently from sheer altruism the river divides near the head of the valley and sends its cool waters through this lovely flat land in several clear-flowing channels which unite again some miles below, forming a group of islands. On the westernmost of these we found the fort.
When, in the early forties, Jim Bridger built his first rude cabins at this garden spot and fenced them in with a stockade of small logs, he executed quite a stroke of business. . . .
There is evidence that he had completed something in the way of building by the summer of 1842, because an eccentric minister, Williams by name, returning from Oregon, passed on July 3rd of that year and made mention of reaching Bridger’s fort. . . .
Dirty little log outposts of civilization such as this, chinked with mud and roofed with sod, were the first exponents of a new type of business, the emigrant trade, which rolled merrily along throughout all the years of the migration, amassing fortunes for those who embraced its opportunities. Fort Bridger was the first trading post west of the Missouri built especially to cater to this business, and it was a blow when the opening of Sublette’s Cutoff to wagons drew thousands of prospective customers away. In the summer of 1849 Bridger’s partner, Louis Vasquez, with a retinue of Indians camped at South Pass, trading with the emigrants and trying to persuade them to go by way of Fort Bridger.”
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 246-247
Burnt Thighs
“The word Brulé, which is a French word, means ‘sun-burnt’ ; it was derived from the Indian name which in the Indian tongue meant ‘burnt-thighs.’ Their thighs exposed to the sun were sunburned in their constant riding on horseback. The words meant more than at first appeared; for, Indians who walked on the ground did not get their thighs burned more than other parts, especially as the Indians went practically naked when the sun was hot. Hence the words ‘burnt-thighs’ meant that the Brule Indians were riders; that they belonged to the cavalry, that is, the Chivalry ; in other words, they were of the equestrian class. The words constituted a boast that they were better than others and were the Rough-Riders of the plains. Such was the tradition of the name.”
Eugene Ware, Indian Wars of 1864, p. 149
The Gratification of Slaying an Enemy
“In his correspondence with Einstein, Freud argued that each of us derives a very basic and profound gratification from slaying an enemy, however imaginary the act, and from viewing him prostrate at our feet. In movies, in Western literary fiction, we are the gunfighter and we ritually slay our adversaries again and again. We are our projected selves who destroy, with an imagined bullet, our frustrations, our obstacles, our guilt, and we slay them with anger, hostility, and relief. The scenario is a simple one, one against one. We can confront the enemy, can meet him face-to-face, and can destroy him in front of us. No long-range shots are necessary. The enemy is slain in front of our eyes, we see the bullet entering his body (or imagine we do) we see the body suddenly and violently hurled backward with the impact of the bullet’s blow, and then we see it crumple to the ground before us. When our frustrations are thus eliminated, we are relieved, our anxieties alleviated, however temporarily.
One of the most appealing parts of this murder is that it is painlessly and simply done. It is a victimless killing. There is no blood and no pain, and yet we derive that great satisfaction of experiencing the obliteration of feelings in ourselves that call for destruction. The experience is cathartic, renewing.”
Bruce Rosenberg, The Code of the West, p. 162
Grattan Massacre
“On August 18 [1854] a lame cow wandered away from Mormon emigrants hurrying westward. When the stray cow reached the Sioux encampment it was quickly butchered. From this trivial occurrence ensued a tragic series of errors for which fort [Laramie] commander Hugh B. Fleming and Lieutenant John L. Grattan bore almost complete responsibility.
Although the Sioux chief offered generous payment—a horse—for the emigrant animal, somehow the circumstances were utilized to force a major confrontation the next day. Grattan, a firm believer in severely punishing Indians for all their mistakes, demanded the arrest of the offending Miniconjou Sioux brave—who was a guest at the Brulé village. Grattan ineptly attempted a show of force with his contingent of twenty-eight men, refusing a mule as compensation for the now-important cow. A few shots were fired and an Indian was wounded, but the chiefs cautioned their wariors not to return the fire, hoping the whites had now had their vengeance.
But Grattan was not to be denied, and he ordered another volley in which the Sioux chief was killed. Reprisal came swiftly. All twenty-one soldiers and their interpreter were killed; their bodies, especially Grattan’s were badly mutilated. The enraged Sioux raided trading posts around the fort and that fall made a series of attacks on mail carriers, killing at least three.”
John D. Unruh, Jr., The Plains Across, p. 214-215
History of the Mormon Trail
From the Missouri west, despite the assertion of many journals and many histories that the Mormons were breaking a new road, the trail was known and traveled before they came. Both sides of the Platte valley, that almost inescapable level highway into the West, had been an Indian travel route for generations. Traders between Fort Laramie and the Missouri River posts had sometimes traveled the north bank. The missionaries who in 1844 built a mission to the Pawnee on Loup Fork had used it. The Stevens Party of 1844 had gone that way. According to George R. Stewart, there had been wagons up the north bank as early as 1835.
Wallace Stegner, The Gathering of Zion, p 10
Change to Fifteen Day Schedule
From the Leavenworth Daily Times, December 1, 1860. PONY EXPRESS! CHANGE OF SCHEDULE. ON and after the first day of December next, the Schedule Time of the Express will be changed and run as follows: Fifteen days between St. Joe and San Francisco; eleven days between Fort Riley and outer telegraph station Utah. This Schedule will be continued running as new semi-weekly trips during the winter, or until] Congress shall provide for a tri-weekly Mail Service, which alone will enable the Company to return to present or a shorter schedule, the present mail service between Julesburg and Placerville being only semi-weekly, which is not sufficient to keep the route open during winter. Wo. Russet, Secretary
“During the Congressional short session of 1860-61, advocates of the Central route renewed their efforts for an adequately subsidized mail service on their favorite line. They at last succeeded and the law of March 2, 1861, provided for a daily overland mail on the Central route and a semi-weekly Pony Express, the compensation for the joint undertaking to be $1,000,000 per annum.”
“[The secession of of seven states] perhaps helped Congress to decide the features embodied in the above law, but the Civil War was not responsible for the establishment of the daily overland mail on the Central route. As noted above, Hale’s bill in 1860 provided for such a daily service. The defeat of all overland mail legislation during the first session only stimulated greater effort in the next.
The feature of this legislation of March2, 1861, that was affected, if not produced by the secession and its probable consequences, was the provision for the transfer of the Butterfield line to the Central route.”
LeRoy Hafen, The Overland Mail: 1849–1869, p. 188-189 and 213-214
Federal Patronage in California for the South
The entire Federal patronage and power on the coast, including the military arm, was absolutely in the hands of Southern sympathizers. California’s representatives in Congress: Senator Milton S. Latham, Senator William M. Gwin, Representatives John C. Burch and Charles L. Scott, all favored the idea of the State’s remaining neutral, in the event of war breaking out in the East. Senator Gwin, who in the United States Senate had affirmed that the Southern States could secede violently or peaceably, “violently if necessary,” and successfully establish an independent government in California in which he was to figure prominently. (Mr. Gwin said: “I say that a dissolution of the Union Is not Impossible, that It Is not Impracticable, and that the Northern States are laboring under a delusion If they think that the Southern States cannot separate from them either violently or peaceably; violently if necessary. They can take possession of all the public property within their limits, and prepare against any aggression from the non-slaveholding States, or any other Power that may choose to infririge upon what they conceive to be their rights.” ) Scott, in the House of Representatives in Washington, wrote to Charles Lindley, chairman of the State Central Democratic committee: “If the Union is divided, and two separate confederacies are formed, I will strenuously advocate the secession of California, and the establishment of a separate republic on the Pacific. If California links her destiny with the northern government, crippled and ruined as she must necessarily be by the separation and withdrawal of her southern allies, California, instead of being benefited and receiving aid from the northern Confederacy, will be heavily taxed to carry on the machinery of their government.”
Imogene Spaulding, "The Attitude of California to the Civil War," Annual Publication of the Historical Society of Southern California , 1912-1913, Vol. 9, No. 1/2 (1912-1913), pp. 109 and n. 3
BLM Land
“It was immediately clear that after nearly a thousand miles of travel across the trail we had found the one asshole in a hundred who lacked the hospitality we had found everywhere else. The protocols for crossing the vast rangeland across the West are quite flexible, and for a good reason. Most ranches spread out from a relatively small parcel of deeded land along a source of water to the much larger leased grazing parcels owned by the BLM. This patchwork of ownership often makes it impossible for outsiders to recognize the boundaries between private and public land, and the BLM discourages private property owners from denying access between its allotments, which would make them landlocked and thus of little use. This is particularly important along the National Historic Trail route we were following, because the BLM and the park service are also charged with guaranteeing access to valuable historic sites.”
Rinker Buck, The Oregon Trail, p. 317
Freighter Meal
“‘Bacon was the r e l i a b l e meat,’ and flap jacks, beans, crackers, and sour dough fried in a skillet and flooded with molasses was the most regular menu for the cook’s ‘guests.’ . . .
“The breakfast menu varied to the extent of having coffee, and fried bacon sandwiched between thick cornmeal bread covered with syrup.”
Floyd Bresee, Overland Freighting in the Platte Valley 1850–1870, p. 50, 52
End of the Spanish Empire
Toward the end of the Columbia’s winter stay the Americans had witnessed the incidents that produced the “Nootka Sound Controversy.” Vancouver Island, which was not yet so named, was Spanish and all ships that touched there did so by favor of His Catholic Majesty. (This was quite clear and the East India Company acted in accordance with it, sending its first ventures there under the flag of Portgual, which had treaty privileges.) In 1788 Meares built some earthworks and a shack on a site which he claimed to have bought from the local chief for two pistols, and announced that he was setting up in business. In the spring of 1789 the Spanish commandant seized the shack, searched, seized, and released several British ships, and ended by again seizing several – one of which belonged to Meares – and keeping them.
Since the great value of the Northwest trade was now understood, the British government demanded restitution, reparation, and recognition of the right to trade. Spain answered with a demand that her sovereignty be acknowledged. It was an explosive situation in a jittery world and would have led to war – but the beginning of the French Revolution had cut off the possibility of French help and Spain had no choice but to accede to the British demands. . . .
Thus Spain abandoned her claim to exclusive sovereignty over Nootka Sound. In effect she relinquished the rights she had asserted ever since Pope Alexander VI drew his demarcation line in 1493, and the breakup of the Spanish Empire had begun. The Spanish concession had the utmost importance for the United States. California remained entirely Spanish but how far north did California extend? The Republic began to engross the Northwest trade and, as the wars of the French Revolution developed, went on to appropriate a steadily increasing part of the world’s carrying business. Though it was so weak a political and military power that the crises of the I790’s seemed likely to break it up, it was becoming a great maritime nation. The biggest business it was engaged in was the triangular trade with China. This was based on the Northwest coast, and the Northwest coast was the width of the continent away from the seaboard cities. From now on no American statesman and no continental thinker could forget for a moment that Spanish Louisiana lay between the western boundary of the United States and Captain Gray’s river.
Bernard De Voto, The Course of Empire, p. 331-32
Digger Indians
“And here [along the Humbolt River], if you were going to, you encountered the Diggers, their half-gram brains vibrating with the remembered murders of hundreds of kinsmen and with desire for oxen and other plunder.
“The term “Digger” is an epithet, not a classification. It was properly applied to Indians who, being unskillful hunters or residing in country where game was scarce, lived on roots. But it came to mean certain degenerate bands of various tribes who can be exactly described as the technological unemployed. Unable to stand competition with hardier Indians, they had been pushed into the deserts and, living there on the subsistence level, had lost their culture. Many of them were physically decadent. The weapons of all were crude. Mostly they lived in caves or brush huts. Some had lost the use of fire. Some “Diggers” were Bannack or Shoshoni in origin; those in Great Salt Lake Valley were Paiute and Gosiute; fragments of other neighboring tribes also degenerated, and the Indians who harassed the Donners probably belonged to the Kuyuidika band of the Paviotso. But the whites who used the term meant no particular tribe; they meant only that they hated skulking, theft, and malicious mischief. From Ewing Young and Joseph Walker on, they had massacred Diggers idly, for fun, or in punishment for theft. The Diggers remembered . . . If they had not, they might have succored the Donners in the snow.”
Bernard De Voto, The Year of Decision, 1846, p. 347
Mile 1382: Dugout/Joes Dugout/Joe Butchers Station
“In conjunction with the Express and stage operation, Joseph Dorton operated a small grocery store. Clients were generally the soldiers from Camp Floyd. He also built a two-room brick home and log barn and provided a dugout for an Indian boy helper. Besides well water (Photo 16), water was hauled from Utah Lake and sold for twenty-five cents per bucket. Use of the station after 1861 is unknown. It may have continued in use as a stage station.
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 of Ephraim, if: if they started on time, if their carts were well-made, if they did not try to hurry, if they had relief supplies somewhere west of Fort Laramie, if they had enough wagons to carry food and to relieve the sick or feeble, and if the priesthood didn’t get overzealous about testing their charges. But just about the time when these conditions began to be acknowledged and met, the pattern of the emigration was abruptly changed. After 1860 there were no more handcarts, and very few of the old-fashioned kind of wagontrains.
Everything on the trail was changing. The tenth handcart company, during its eighty days in transit, several times met or was passed by the overland stage carrying mail and passengers behind four good and frequently changed horses, and periodically the Pony Express riders scoured by their carts at a furious gallop. Both Pony Express and Overland Stage looked lovely and fast and comfortable from down in the roadside dust, but as the swift changes of the 186o’s developed, neither was to last much longer than the handcarts. The Pony Express, that most brilliant and romantic of mail services, came and went like the clatter of advancing and then receding hoofs: it was dead the moment Edward Creighton carried his Overland Telegraph through to the West Coast from Omaha. The Overland Stage would die of an overdose of railroad in 1 869. But until then, it would share the trail with the final form of Mormon transport, the so-called Church Trains.
Wallace Stegner, The Gathering of Zion, p 289
St. Joseph and Aunt Jemimah
The World’s Columbian Exposition introduced the midway and the Ferris wheel to the American lexicon, and it featured, too, everything from Scott Joplin’s ragtime to the compositions of Antonin Dvorak and the marches of John Philip Sousa. The dancer Little Egypt was on hand. Aunt Jemima, the pancake mix, made its debut there (like the Pony Express, born in St. Joseph). The largest demonstration of electricity in the nineteenth century took place.
Christopher Corbett, Orphans Preferred, p. 167
Mile 238: Map of The Narrows
A map of The Narrows, from Root and Connelley, Overland Stage, p. 864.
Root and Connelley, The Overland Stage to California, p. 864
Colt's Revolvers
“From 1836 to 1842 Colt had manufactured about five or six thousand of his patent revolvers, the first successful repeating firearms. Bad financial management – outside Colt’s control – had forced the closing of the factory and he had gone on to experiment with electrically controlled submarine mines and had laid the first successful submarine electric cable. But his revolvers had been tested in the Seminole War and had worked into the possession of the Texas Navy and the Texas Rangers – and of Santa Fe traders, such mountain men as Kit Carson, and other practical men who had to deal professionally with the Plains Indians. They had promptly worked a revolution in warfare comparable to and more immediately important than that heralded by the American light artillery at Palo Alto. They had proved themselves the first effective firearm for mounted men, and had given the Texans and other frontier runners the first weapon which enabled white men to fight with Plains Indians on equal or superior terms. Nearly all of the primordial five or six thousand had, by 1846, gravitated to the place where they were needed, the Western frontier. Most of the journals quoted in this book speak admiringly of their use and value in the West; nearly every writer who discusses outfits for emigrants recommends them.”
Bernard De Voto, The Year of Decision, 1846, p. 219
Brigham Young Express
Brigham Young hoped to use the federal mail contract he won late in 1856 using Hiram S. Kimball, a merchant who acted as his agent, to build a major overland freighting company. The venture began as a private business initially proposed in January 1856 to compete directly with the government mail service. Later that month, the Utah Territorial Assembly incorporated the Deseret Express and Road Company. The first of two mass meetings in Salt Lake revealed the proposed corporation’s expansive vision of ‘establishing a daily express and passenger communication between the western States and California, or, more extendedly, between Europe and China.’ Both Mormon and non-Mormon leaders in Utah supported the proposal. . . .
The government terminated Brigham Young’s mail contract shortly after it ordered troops to Utah. Like Burnt Ranch, all the buildings of the Y.X. Express went up in smoke. ‘Nearly $200,000 was expended during the winter of 1856–57 to establish way stations, purchase teams and wagons, hire help, and to buy equipment and other supplies,’ historian Leonard Arrington wrote. ‘The resources of the Church were almost exhausted in this venture.’ Brigham Young would not be the last entrepreneur to lose a fortune trying to dominate western trade and transportation.”
Will Bagley, South Pass: Gateway to a Continent, Location 3836-3873 [Kindle Edition]
Oxen Abuse
“To make the exhausted oxen pull, some of these drivers would not stop short of breaking a tail, staving in a rib, or even gouging out an eye. I grew sick at their heartless doings, but was powerless to avert them. The thousands of carcasses of oxen which lined our trail showed how hard was their usage.”
Thaddeus S. Kenderdine, A California Tramp and Later Footprints, p. 38
Discommode
“While I was in this open-minded condition, we saw a man in a shady farmyard with his feet in a pan of water.
‘There’s the most sensible person I’ve seen all day, exclaimed my husband as he punctiliously parked the car with its nose to the hitching rack. ‘Let’s go talk to him.’
We didn’t discommode him in the least. In fact, we didn’t even cause a splash in the pan when we leaned over his fence in an earnest, questioning row and listened to his laconic statements.”
Discommode
William Russell's Motivation for Starting the Pony Express
“Some historians of the Pony Express attribute [Russell’s] action to patriotism, writing that he considered war inevitable and feared that California would swing to the cause of the South unless kept in close and rapid communication with the North. This might have been true, but it hardly squares with his action in other matters, and he is not known to have made any statement as to his reason. It seems more likely that he had set his ambition doggedly upon securing a million-dollar mail contract, and that, as in all his other promotions, he was determined to attain his goal by any means available, regardless of how injurious his action might be to his associates and creditors.
Apparently, all of Russell’s business decisions were actuated by wishful desire and oversanguine expectation instead of reasoned judgment.”
Ralph Moody, Stagecoach West, p. 190
Mile 1078: Pacific Springs Station
“All the time that my brain was wandering in this pleasant fog of confused ideas, my feet were carrying me out of the troubled times of ’49 and into the comparative luxury of the sixties (for the log houses, toward which my gregarious husband started some time ago, date from the original staging days, when they constituted the important Pony Express and stage station called Pacific Spring). There are four buildings—two on each side of the old road—widely spaced so that they form the four corners of a rough rectangle. The house faces the old store and bar. The blacksmith shop stares across at the stables. It is now the John Hays horse ranch, and the buildings are in everyday use.”
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 236
Travel Times
“The stage-coach traveled about a hundred to a hundred and twenty-five miles a day (twentyfour hours), the pony-rider about two hundred and fifty.”
Mark Twain, Roughing It, p. 71
Virginia Slade's Ball Gown
“Virginia Slade’s gown, no doubt made by hand by herself, was the outstanding one at this party of the year. It had a tight bodice, long flowing ful skirt, and was of pale green silk, this alone making it stand apart from the cotton dresses of the other feminie guests. The pale green was striking with her dark splendour. She smelled sweetly, too, of lavender water, this and cinnamon cologne being the two favorite fragrances of that period.”
Virginia Rowe Towle, Vigilante Woman," p. 128
"Finding" Missing Stock
“[A] number of overlanders ruefully discovered that even when a horse trade had been accomplished they could not be absolutely certain that the horse was definitely theirs, since a fellow emigrant, from whom the horse had initially been stolen, occasionally came up to claim his property. . . .
There was also a profitable variation on this deceitful tactic. Indians would steal horses or other stock, make an arrangement on a certain price for ‘finding’ the animas with the emigrants from whom they had stolen them, and then quickly appear with the animals to claim the reward. Overlanders suspected Indians of employing this strategem as early as 1843.”
John D. Unruh, Jr., The Plains Across, p. 163
Mail Call in San Francisco
“As early as the 1840s President Polk had acknowledged that mail service between the East and California was ‘indispensable for the diffusion of information, for the binding together [of] the different portions of our extended Confederacy.’ This hunger for mail was almost palpable in the early 1850s. When the monthly steamer arrived from Panama bearing mail from the East, a canon was fired on San Francisco’s Telegraph Hill., followed by bedlam throughout the city.
The physician William S. McCollumn, writing in 1850, described men waiting in line for days; men paying other men to stand in line for them; miners paying with gold dust to but places in line from other men; men who expected no mail but stood in line anyway, to sell their position to someone else; men sleeping overnight in blanket rolls, all to hold their place in the hope of news from home.”
Dan Rottenberg, Death of a Gunfighter, p. 90
Mile 1285: Henefer, UT
“From the confluence of the Echo Creek, the Weber flows six miles through velvety meadows starred with wild flowers and then slips into the mouth of a rock-bound canyon where, in trail days, the wagons could not go. . . .
Somewhere in the six-mile stretch preceding the canyon mouth the emigrants had to get across the Weber, and the sooner the better, for it picked up small tributaries along the way. It is definitely a mountain stream, and the early parties—those, for instance, who arrived before the end of June—found it dangerous. . . .
The emigrants left Weber River near the mouth of the unfriendly canyon, and stayed with timid little Henefer Creek its few feeble miles up through the rough hillside.”
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 294-295
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 pediculus vestimenti, but on the plains more vulgarly called “graybacks.” Some of the boys at times were fairly alive with them. It is not at all surprising, however, for they slept from year to year on ticks filled with hay—they called it “prairie feathers”—and their blankets were seldom washed from one year’s end to another. Some of the stage company’s employees didn’t indulge in a bath for several months at a time, especially during the winter season, when the weather was way down below the freezing-point and even the most plain and simple conveniences for a bath were greatly lacking.
While living at Latham that summer during the civil war, an excellent opportunity was from time to time afforded me to become familiar with a few things I had never before dreamed of. The boys employed on the stage line, I soon learned, had a way of disposing of the graybacks when they became so numerous that it was a serious question as to who should remain master of the situation. Not more than 800 yards to the south of the station were quite a number of uncommonly large ant-hills or mounds,
of circular form. They were at least six inches high, and some of them were fully six or eight feet across. The mounds appeared in shape very much like a pressed-tin milk-pan, bottom side up. The soil was mostly coarse sand and gravel, which the ants had thrown up into their nicely built mounds. The surrounding vegetation consisted of a luxuriant growth of cacti and scanty tufts of bunch- or buffalo-grass. The ants themselves, in size, were from one-fourth to three-fourths of an inch in length. Some of them could nearly always be seen reconnoiter- ing outside the hills—probably deployed as skirmishers—but they lived inside. In color they were a dark brown. . . .
During the hot weather of midsummer, when the vermin were rapidly multiplying, it was the custom of the boys at the station to take their underclothing and blankets in the morning, spread them out on the ant-hills, and get them late in the afternoon, minus the last grayback. This was the way they did their washing. They found it an excellent substitute for making the music of a John Chinaman on the wash-board. For a time, at least, after the “washing days,” they could enjoy some rest. But in a few weeks it would become necessary to repeat the operation of a general clean-out by placing their garments and blankets at the disposal of the ants. Nearly every stage-driver, stock tender, and bull-whacker along the South Platte infested with this kind of vermin, during the days of overland staging and freighting, well re¬ members the valuable services of these ants. Mammoth ant-hills, upward of a third of a century ago, were common in the South Platte valley in sight of the Rockies.
Root and Connelly, Overland Stage to California, 338-340
The Superhighway of Westward Expansion
“The route from Fort Kearny to Fort Laramie was the superhighway of westward expansion. There were many ‘jumping-off places’ for emigrants along the Missouri River from Independence to Omaha, but all these strands converged at Fort Kearny to become one great migratory, military, and communications route. Fort Kearny was the official end of the prairie lands and the gateway to the Great Plains, with its endless level horizon and strange treelessness; Fort Laramie, with Laramie Peak looming to the westward, marked the transition from the Great Plains to the Rocky Mountains.”
[N.B. Unsure of the difference between “plains” and “prairie,” I found this on Encyclopaedia Britannica: “Natural vegetation in the Great Plains is dominated by grasses—tallgrass and medium grass prairie in the east and shortgrass and bunchgrass steppes in the west. These [plains] grasslands include forbs and larger plants such as the yucca and the prickly pear cactus in marginal areas, as well as shrubs and some small trees such as the mesquite and the sagebrush.”
Merrill J. Mattes, The Great Platte River Road, p. 6
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 well seasoned. In practise, an especially later in the summer as time and supplies both ran sho the carts were made of whatever could be found, most of it oak an hickory and a lot of it green. Here, as in other aspects of the handcart experiment, an original over-optimism was complicated by unforeseen difficulties of organization and supply. Economy or no economy, those carts should never have been designed without iron axles and iron tires, and should never under any circumstances have been built with green lumber. The shrinking aridity beyond the 98th meridian, the sand of the Platte valley, the rocky Black Hills, were all so familiar to the authors of the scheme that they should have known. And no matter what they were made of, it was a fatal miscalculation that the carts were not ready when the first converts arrived. The delay, merely awkward for the Saints from the Enoch Train and the S. Curling, was progressive; it became disastrous for the emigrants from the Thornton and the Horizon.
Wallace Stegner, The Gathering of Zion, p 230-31
Sixteen Dollars per Letter
There are no records of receipts, but the simple math involved in proposition tells the tale. A Pony Express rider could rarely carry more than twenty pounds of mail. Even if a courier had one hundred letters at five dollars apiece, five hundred dollars was hardly sufficient revenue to justify this expensive cross-country escapade, and rates dropped during the short duration of the service. (Root and Connelley even claim that on one run the rider carried only eight letters.) When it was all over, various critics and chroniclers of the Pony Express would estimate (educated guessing at best) that it had cost the firm sixteen dollars to move a single letter across the country, yet the rates had never been higher than five dollars a letter. This had never been a paying proposition. Even the most charitable historians of the Pony Express have acknowledged that the firm was hemorrhaging money from the evening that Johnny Frey met the Missouri bringing the first mail from back east.
Raymond Settle claimed that the Pony Express made 308 runs each way-a distance of 616,000 miles (twenty-four circumnavigations of the globe, he liked to point out). (Root and Connelley believed the Pony Express covered 650,000 miles-about 330 crosscountry trips.) Settle also claimed that 34,753 pieces of mail were carried (18,456 originated in San Francisco and 4,900 in Sacramento). But even the redoubtable Settle, who spent decades studying the Pony Express, could only guess as to the amount of money the firm lost. Settle believed it was “at least $500,000.”
“The absence of company records makes a break-down of items actually chargeable to it impossible, and the few random statements concerning it throw little light upon it. The complex activities of the company, which was also engaged in the stagecoach, express, and mail business, presents additional difficulties,” Settle added.
It so transpired that the firm of Russell, Majoes & Waddell had to pay the fiddler,” Alexander Majors recalled without providing further information except to say in his memoirs that the loss was “several hundred thousand dollars.”
Settle, sympathetic to the legacy of the firm, concluded optimistically that “the Pony Express failed in only one respect; it made no money.”
Christopher Corbett, Orphans Preferred, p. 124-125
Rebuilding Fort Bridger
For a long time [after the Utah War] the troops maintained an uncertain tenancy at Jim Bridger’s old trading post . . . naturally much building was necessary; and, with the fade-out of hostilities, timber was brought in from the Uinta Mountains, and barracks, officers’ quarters, guardhouse, etc., were all constructed around and about a large square parade ground through which flowed one of the most beautiful of the tiny channels of Blacks Forks. Far to one side of these were the stables, used later by the Pony Express. It is the back wall of these stables that the modern traveler sees as he rockets by on the highway. It will richly pay him to stop and go in.
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 252
Mile 475: O'Fallon's Bluffs
“We passed a marker of the site of Bishop’s Station and soon came to the first of the famous trail landmarks south of the river: O’Fallon’s Bluffs. This unspectacular elevation was only remarkable in being the vanguard of the sandstone formations. At its very foot the South Fork lay torpid in the sun, bulged around the contours of Issac Dillon island like a snake that has swallowed a rabbit. We went up and over the flat top of the bluff just as the emigrants had been forced to do. When it was practical to get down into the narrowing valley, the trail descended again, and the battalions of clean-washed little sunflowers turned their faces stead-fastly toward the west with us, for the sun was low.”
[N.B. According to Wikipedia, “Much of O’Fallons Bluff was removed when Interstate 80 was constructed, though remnants of wagon-wheel ruts from the Oregon and California trails still remain. These trail ruts parallel to Interstate 80 ranging from only a few feet (or meters) to about a mile (a little over a kilometer) from it. The remaining ruts that run up and over O’Fallon’s Bluff are marked by iron hoops representing wagon wheels and can be seen close to Interstate 80.”]
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 105-106
Post Office Monopoly
The post had either broken even or generated small surpluses until its expansion in the 1820s, when it generally began to report progressively greater losses. By 1844, the department was losing so much business to competitors that a reluctant Congress, fearing the political consequences of either cutting mail service or paying to support it, was forced to act, despite southern politicians’ suspicion of costly federal schemes that called for tax increases and strengthened Washington’s hand. As it is wont to do in such situations, Congress created a special commission to assess the crisis and make recommendations for fixing it. This group of experts took the high road, concluding that the post had not been created to generate revenue but for “elevating our people in the scale of civilization and bringing them together in patriotic affection,” as well as to “render the citizen worthy, by proper knowledge and enlightenment, of his important privileges as a sovereign constituent of his government.” Accordingly, starting with the Post Office Act of 1845 and continuing through 1851, Congress passed a series of reforms that would stimulate the full flowering of what the historian Wayne Fuller called “the people’s post office.”
The government finally abandoned the hoary principle that the post must support itself, even as it was extending all the way to the Pacific. The institution was explicitly defined as a public service that, like the military, deserved financial support, and after the Post Office Act of 1851 deficits would be accepted as a matter of course. Congress shored up the post’s finances in other important ways, especially by passing legislation that reinforced its poorly defended monopoly. Known as the Private Express Statutes, these laws made it a crime for other carriers to transport mail in places served by the post, which soon put the independent competitors out of business.
Winifred Gallagher, How the Post Office Created America, p. 86
Removal of Winter Quarters
“When Brigham Young returned from Utah in October after successfully establishing Salt Lake City, he realized that most of the emigrants would be able to move on in 1848. A half-way station would still be needed for those yet to come, but perhaps it would lessen difficulties if they placed it on a legal basis by removing it to the Potawatomi lands [east of the Mississippi]. Thus, the High Council decided in January, 1848, to order the abandonment of Winter Quarters. Citing the heavy losses from Indian depredations as well as other reasons, their leaders told Saints remaining west of the Missouri either to go ahead to Utah in 1848 or to move back across the river. The new forwarding station became known as Kanesville and proved to be the site of present-jay Council Bluffs, Iowa.”
Robert A. Trennert, Jr., "The Conflict Over Winter Quarters, 1846-1848," p. 395-96
Trailside Messages
“The bones of buffalo whiten the roadside, and their bleached skulls serve in a double way as records of the passers-by. Many are the names and bulletins pencilled on them; and by continually reading one begins to learn the biography of those in front, and feel an interest and a companionship in their progress. Perhaps we catch up another train, we all chat together, names drop out; ‘Oh!’ one answers, ‘I know your name, I read it on a buffalo head three weeks ago; you’re from —, are not you?’ Sometimes one reads short camp anecdotes or accidents, such as, ‘Woman shot to-day by her husband taking his gun loaded into the waggon—not expected to recover:’ then, ‘Woman shot on Thursday, doing well.'”
William Chandless, Chandless, W. (1857). A Visit to Salt Lake, p. 67
Mile 432: Cottonwood Springs
“Cottonwood Springs was merely a seep in a gully which had been an old bed of the river, and which had curved up towards Cottonwood Canyon. The water-bed of the river being largely composed of gravel, the water came down in the underflow, and seeped out at a place down in the bank where there had grown a large cottonwood tree. This spring had been dug out, and was the only spring as far as then known along the Platte for two hundred miles. It was at the mouth of Cottonwood Canyon that we were to build our military post. The place was a great crossing for the Indians going north and south. The valley here was several miles wide. There was a large island in the river of several thousand acres, upon which grew the finest grass to be found in the country, and there were some scrubby willows and cottonwoods; so that the Indians coming from the north found it a good stopping-place to feed their ponies either in summer or winter, because in the winter the ponies could eat the cottonwood brush. In addition to this, Cottonwood Canyon gave a fine passage to the south. A road went up on the floor of the canyon, between the trees, until it rose onto the tableland twenty miles south. The canyon furnished fuel and protection. It was for the purpose of breaking up this Indian run-way that we were ordered to build a post at the mouth of the canyon. We arrived there at eleven o’clock in the morning of October 11, 1863.”
[N.B. The historical (i.e., now non-existant) site of Cotton Springs is at https://goo.gl/maps/861MJvmkDvYy5pvX9. The nearby Pony Express marker, at Mile 429, looks as if the identifying plaque has been removed. the Cottonwood Springs Station historical marker is near Mile 437.]
Eugene Ware, Indian Wars of 1864, p. 62
Horses Come to the Plains Tribes
“It is generally accepted by anthropologists that these herds originated from the horses lost or abandoned by De Soto about . 1541. Whether they came from De Soto’s horses, or from those of Coronado, or from other explorers is not material; . we know that the Kiowa and Missouri Indians were mounted by 1682; the Pawnee, by 1700; the Comanche, by 1714; the Plains Cree and Arikara, by 1738; the Assiriboin, Crow, Mandan, Snake, and Teton, by 1742; and the most northern tribe, the Sarsi, by 1784. How much earlier these Indians rode horses we do not know; but we can say that the dispersion of horses which began in 1541 was completed over the Plains area by 1784. This dispersion proceeded from south 1b north and occurred in the seventeenth and eizhteenth /centuries. At the same time, horse culture spread in the region east of the Mississippi and west of the Rocky Mountains, but in both cases it was restricted, never developing to any extent north of Virginia or the Ohio on the east, or north of California on the west. In the spread of the horse and horse culture through the whole Plains area, as contrasted with its partial spread both to the east and to the west, we have another example of the cultural unity of the Plains.”
Walter Prescott Webb, The Great Plains, p. 57
California Mustangs California Mustangs
“‘The worst imps of Satan in the business. The only way I could master them was to throw them and get a rope around each foot and stake them out, and have a man on the head and another on the body while I trimmed the feet and nailed the shoes on . . . It generally took half a day to shoe one of them.’
— Pony Express Farrier and Station Keeper, Levi Hensel, describing his experience shoeing half-wild California mustangs”
“Pacific Springs is a marshy area just beyond South Pass in Wyoming. Seemingly unassuming, it was the first source of water for riders on the western side of the continental divide. And the Pony Express station that was built here in 1860 was the first station on the Pacific side of the United States encountered by west-bound riders! This station burned to the ground in 1862, but the remains of a cabin built in the late 1800s/ early 1900s marks its general location.”
Ever since 1879, when William Cody first published his life story, this childhood saga has been a favorite of the American public. The Wild West show reprised it over and over again, the high-speed Pony Express scene in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West inscribing an almost indelible bond between young America and the child Will Cody. The pony was featured in the show’s debut in 1883, and audiences from Omaha to New York, Sarasota to Paris, thrilled to the display every year thereafter until the show ended in 1916.
Louis S. Warren, Buffalo Bill's America, p. 5
Freighting delays in 1860
The contract for freighting supplies on the New Mexico Route in 1860-61 provided for loading and starting at the usual time, in May or June. Russell, Majors & Waddell, as usual, bought wagons, oxen, and equipment with drafts due in 60, 90 or 120 days, expecting to pay them out of earnings. Week after week passed without being notified of goods ready to go. For some reason the quartermaster’s department was exceedingly slow in making consignments to the military posts of the southwest.
Meanwhile idle bullwhackers, stock tenders and other employees had to be paid. Drafts which should have been taken up went to protest. The bulk of supplies were ordered out in August and September, almost six months after some of the obligations were incurred.
Settle and Settle, "Napoleon of the West," Annals of Wyoming Vol. 32, No.1, April 1960, p. 35
Logistics of Establishing a Pony Express
“But the logistics of a mail relay stretching 1,966 miles from the Missouri River to Sacramento was so daunting that only an incurable dreamer like Russell would have considered implementing it. . . . The stage line currently maintained stations at 20- to 30-mile intervals where animals could be changed or rested; ponies racing at breakneck speed would need changing every ten miles or less. And west of Salt Lake City, Russell’s stage line had no operations at all.
All told, dozens of new stations would be required between the Missouri River and Sacramento. In the absence of forests, lumber to build the stations and corrals would have to be hauled great distances. Hundreds of high-quality ponies, capable of outrunning the Indians’ swift ponies, would need to be purchased, probably at three or four times the cost of ordinary range-bred horses. And a new breed of employee—young, skinny riders—would need to be hired and trained.
The enterprise would likely cost Russell, Majors & Waddell more than half a million dollars—for a mail service that was likely to be superseded by the telegraph and the railroads within a few years.”
Dan Rottenberg, Death of a Gunfighter, p. 159
Overlander Predisposition Toward Indians
“Reports of depredations, whether accurate or not, combined with the guidebook advice, predisposed overlanders toward treating all Indians with suspicion and distrust. . . . Thus primed, overlanders were responsible for many incidents which, while often humorous, were sometimes deadly. While these usually occurred at the inception of the journey, all along the trail forty-niners and subsequent overlanders shot at one another, at their own oxen, mules, horses, and sheep, at saddles and blankets, at elk, and even at pelicans. All had been mistaken for marauding Indians.”
John D. Unruh, Jr., The Plains Across, p. 177
Changing Landscape
“This country was quite different from that we had passed over. From Leavenworth across to where we struck the Platte River near Fort Kearny, it was a fine, beautiful country mostly prairie, with an occasional belt of timber along the streams. But up the South Platte it was comparatively a level, grassy plain from the river back to the sand hills, with no timber, and here we had to substitute buffalo chips for fuel. After reaching Ash Hollow we began to get some scrubby wood.
The whole appearance of the country had changed. It began to be more wavy and rocky, and occasionally there were some scrub cedars, scattered among the rocky hills. The tops of the waves were covered with rock in all the shapes the imagination of man can picture.
After leaving our eamp near Chimney Rock, we travelled in the midst of this grand and beautiful scenery a few days, undisturbed by Indians, much to our relief. We now came to Fort Laramie.
The country along the North Platte was nearly the same all the way, although it changed a little as we neared the Laramie range of mountains. There were more of the scrub cedars on the rocky bluffs.
The Laramie Mountains were quite bald, there being little timber except in the canyons.’
William Clark, "A Trip Across the Plains in 1857," Iowa Journal of History and Politics, 20 (1922), p. 187
Crossing South Pass
“The amount of earth and sky in view at once was rather appalling. Something familiar about the situation kept ringing a bell in my memory, and suddenly I audibly recalled the ‘tiny moving speck of humanity in the great, rolling waste of sage,’ without which no self-respecting western novel can get past its first page. Thus oriented into the picture, we went on slowly in approved style. . . .
In spite of its easy grades, the Rock Mountain chain at South Pass is quite a hurdle to cross. To the emigrants it was also a symbol, and many an Argonaut forgot his quest for gold and only remembered in these las few miles of the Atlantic watershed that the backbone of the continent would soon divide him from his family, perhaps forever.
As the teams drew near the top it became increasingly cold, and men shivered around the insufficient sagebrush fires at night thinking wishfully of the extra blankets they had thrown away. The encampment of Shoshones which the gold-seekers found near the top of the mountain got many requests for buffalo robes. . . .
Far to our left, on the rim of the pass, the Oregon Buttes raised their rugged crests. The name, when given, was descriptive, for in early trail days all the shaggy wilderness that lay between the mountain top and the mouth of the Columbia was Oregon. Before us, through the flat sage land, the great emigration road unrolled in an enormous ribbon one hundred feet wide. We paralleled its resistless onward sweep. The omnipotent Artist who created this mighty picture used bold stokes. The swelling summits on each side are too huge for detail . . .
So muc earth; so terrifically much sky; and so close together! The first few wagon trains across the God-given pass feel that they are squeezing between the two.”
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 225, 228, 231
Mochilas Were a Later Innovation
“The mochilla [sic] system developed out of necessity—an adaptation made to problems encountered in the daily operation of the Pony Express. There is no indication that these special pouches were ordered and used before the first run of the Pony Express in April 1860. Evidently, they were not put in use until after late 1860, for when the English traveller Richard Burton passed along the route at that time, he mentioned that letters were carried in leathern bags, and that they were “thrown about carelessly” when the saddle was changed between horses.39 Given the Spanish nomenclature, it may have been adapted from similar pouches in use in California.”
Anthony Godfrey, Historic Research Study Pony Express National Historic Trail, p. 65-66
Women Did Not Initiate Emigration
“The historian John Faragher, based on comparative research of men’s and women’s accounts of the westward journey, has concluded that “not one wife initiated the idea [of emigrating to Oregon or California]; it was always the husband. Less than a quarter of the women writers recorded agreeing with their restless husbands; most of them accepted it as a husband-made decision to which they could only acquiesce. But nearly a third wrote of their objections and how they moved only reluctantly” (Faragher:1979, p. 163).
Keith Heyer Meldahl, Hard Road West, p. 16 n.2
Popskull and Tanglefoot
“There is little doubt that the principle commodity sold here [at Dobytown] was whiskey of a dubious type identified by one victim as ‘popskull.’ Get. William T. Sherman called it ‘tanglefoot,’ and noted that its effects were so damaging that freight train captains sometimes tried to avoid camping nearby for fear of losing some of their help. Birge says that one enterprising merchant sold a bottled concoction known as ‘Hostetter’s Bitters,’ the consumption of which would begin a ‘season of Saturnalia’ among revelers. When George Holliday marched through here with his calvary unit, a small riot took place in this ‘dirt village’ when the thirsty soldiers rebelled against the price of whiskey at 25¢ a glass.”
Merrill J. Mattes, The Great Platte River Road, p. 222
Crow Indians
The Plains tribes varied widely in culture, customs, intelligence, and personality. Because the Sioux were the biggest and therefore the most powerful tribe and because from early in the Civil War on to the death of Crazy Horse they raised so much hell that they were constantly in the headlines, they are established in our accumulation of readymade ideas as the outstanding Indians of the West. The mountain men did not think so; in their empirical respect the Crows, the Cheyennes, and the Arapahos outranked the Sioux. A modern student knows that he cannot avoid using a white man’s measuring rod but he tends to agree with the mountain men at least in regard to the Crows and the Cheyennes.
The Crows fought the United States Army only once and that was a small skirmish; they made little trouble for the white man and next to the Nez Perces and Flatheads were the best friends of trappers. On the other hand, they fought all Indians. They never had an ally and made only one truce: with the Sioux, for a single year. They thought of the Sioux as their principal enemies and when Sublette & Campbell brought the Oglalas to the Platte in 1834 and so upset the balance of power in the mountains forever, a pressure began which by about 1860 forced the Crows back as far as Powder River. They could not hold against the sheer weight of numbers but even this half conquest of Absaroka cost the Sioux dear, since the Crows were forever raiding them. More spectacular is the fact that they put a limit to the southward expansion of the Blackfeet, probably getting more Blackfoot scalps than any other tribe contrived to. But they would take on anyone and they raided everywhere. Primarily for horses. In envy and humility their neighbors paid them the supreme tribute: they said that the Crows were the best horse-thieves. The number of Comanche horses in their herds supported the judgment;
Bernard De Voto, Across the Wide Missouri, p. 122-123
Significance of the Pony Express
“At this point, any criticism of the Pony Express might be considered by many Americans as unpatriotic to say the least. Nonetheless, an assessment of the significance of the C.O.C. & P.P. Express Co. has to be made—one that cuts through the myth to reality. In the author’s judgement, the Pony Express played a role in the development of transportation and communication links between the west and the east coasts, but not a very successful one. Plain and simple, the C.O.C. & P.P. Express Co. failed to provide “reliable” mail service across the country as Russell, Majors, and Waddell promised.
“Many unforeseen and known factors, contributed to Russell, Majors, and Waddell’s failure. The primary problem they did not foresee was the Pyramid Lake Indian War, which severely interrupted and then slowed Pony Express service for several months . . .
“Setting Indian depredations aside, unpredictable weather-related events actually defeated the company. Russell, Majors, and Waddell promised speedy reliable service come rain, snow, or sunshine. In good weather, the Pony Express system worked as it was designed. But during the long, hard, stormy winter of 1860-1861, actually the first real test of the system against harsh weather elements, the Pony Express system could not maintain a regular or speedy schedule, even with the help of the extension of the telegraph lines. Due to the severe winter that year, the system broke down delaying the mail for substantial periods of time, much as it had under previous mail contractors, such as George Chorpenning. According to one historian, the average time of the twenty-two midwinter trips between destination points was 13.8 days. On four of these trips, sixteen days were used between telegraph points. Additionally, one trip took seventeen days, and another trip was missed entirely. Like it or not, postmaster general Aaron V. Brown was correct in 1857 when he thought the southern route of the Butterfield Overland Mail Company was superior to the central overland route because of winter travel conditions.
“On another level, the Pony Express failed as a successful business venture. The undertaking of an enterprise on a scale and size of the Pony Express by a private business was not a ‘Great Gamble’ as one author posed, but instead, it simply was an imprudent business venture. Quickly looking at the possible numbers of letters sent versus the cost of the operation, any smart businessman could recognize the disparity. Alexander Majors knew that the amount of business transacted over this line was insufficient to pay one-tenth of the expenses, to say nothing about the amount of capital invested. In Russell, Majors, and Waddell’s defense, some historians argue that the “Pony Express was not an end in itself, but a means to an end,” a legitimate business investment designed to place the firm in a favorable position to compete with the Butterfield line for the next overland mail contract. Russell, Majors, and Waddell knew it would be made obsolete by the telegraph. If this supposition were true, then the Pony Express failed here as well. In March 1861, when the overland mail contract was signed due to the exigencies of the impending Civil War, Russell, Majors, and Waddell were not in a financial position to compete with the Butterfield line, and therefore they lost out on their only chance to obtain a overland mail route contract.
“As the above arguments infer, the Pony Express’ significance in American history does not rest on the company’s capabilities. Instead, its significance is grounded in two different areas: 1) the Pony Express’ basic contribution to transportation and communication history, and 2) its very existence during a critical time period in American history.
“Clearly the Pony Express reduced the communication distance between the east and west coasts, and “speeded up news service to and from the Pacific Coast.” The Pony Express was a benefit to the public for this reason. Contemporary accounts also tend to agree that the Pony Express bound these two distant sections of the Union together before and during the Civil War. The Pony Express also fostered closer communication links between Mormon communities at Salt Lake City, and other Trans-Missouri communities and eastern states.”
Anthony Godfrey, Historic Resource Study Pony Express National Historic Trail, p. 231-322
Last 36 Miles to Salt Lake
By the testimony of every diarist, the thirty-six last miles, from the Weber to the Salt Lake Valley, were worse than anything on the whole road. It was as if sanctuary withheld itself, as if safety could be had only by intensifying ordeal. The road had already been broken, if that was the word, by the Donner-Reed wagoners, but Orson Pratt’s forty-two men, slaving with ax and shovel and pry-pole to make a few miles a day, fell into camp every night with a respect approaching awe for the quarrelsome Gentiles who had first taken wagons through those canyons. They had uphill, downhill, sidehill, boulders, creek-crossings, willows—above all willows, thick as a porcupine’s quills and hardly less troublesome to get through. Growing, they screened rocks and holes and dropoffsthat could br~ak a wheel; chopped off, they left stumps sharp as spears, and ruinous to the feet of men and animals. When they had to travel, as they did much of the way, with one wheel in the creek and one blundering along a steep bank sown with these stubs, they could literally count their progress one wheel’s turn at a time.
Wallace Stegner, The Gathering of Zion, p 164
Rolling Prairie
“Our way led over a succession of grassy swells spaced at intervals with breezeless hollows. What a country to have traveled before the day of the graded road and the planted tree! Driving an ox team over these endless, rolling hillocks was a task from which the very imagination recoiled. However–this was July and the emigrants went through, each year, in May.
They started in good weather, of course. The sun shone upon a “grand and beautiful prairie which can be compared to nothing but the mighty ocean.” A succession of rich, shining green swells was star-dusted with small frail blossoms and splashed with the harder varieties like great spillings of calcimine powders. Here. Patch of mountain pink, here spiderwort–while, ahead, a spreading of purple over a sunny slope proved, on closer acquaintance, to be larkspur. Bobolinks sang where currant bushes lined the meandering watercourses, and the line of white wagon tops stretched like a shining ribbon across the curving velvet breast of the prairie.”
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 24
Early California Mail
More pertinent, geographically, are the relay express services of Governor Stephen W. Kearny of California and of Major Chorpenning. General Kearny, as military governor of the new territory freshly wrested from Mexico, established a horse courier service of two soldiers, one at San Francisco and the other at San Diego. Starting on alternate Mondays, they kept a semimonthly schedule, exchanging mail sacks at a convenient halfway point. Kearny’s postal service gave transportation to both official communications and private letters without charge.
Roy S. Bloss, Pony Express—The Great Gamble, 14
Oxen as Spare Tires
“A yoke of oxen is two animals leashed together by a yoke: a crossbar of carved wood fastened to their necks with oxbows. Two or three yoke (four to six animals) pulled a typical emigrant wagon. Most emigrants brought along several additional animals—the nineteenth-century equivalent of spare tires. Of oxen, mules, and horses (the three animal engines of the westward migration) oxen were by far the most common. Although slow, oxen were relatively inexpensive, immensely strong, less likely than horses or mules to be stolen by Indians, and could subsist reasonably well on available grass.”
Keith Heyer Meldahl, Hard Road West, p. 18
Lodissa Frizell's Last Entry
“‘We are hardly half way. I felt tired and weary. O the luxury of a house, a house! I felt what some one expressed who had traveled this long & tedious journey that, “it tries the soul.” I would have given all my interest in California, to have been seated around my own fireside surrounded by friend & relation. That this journey is tiresome, no one will doubt, that it is perilous, the death of many testify and the heart has a thousand misgivings and the mind is tortured with anxiety, & often as I passed the fresh made graves, I have glanced at the sideboards of the waggon [sic], not knowing how soon it might serve as a coffin for some of us; but thanks for the kind care of Providence we were favored more than some others.'”
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 235
Drinking on the Pony Express
Burton observed uncountable instances of drinking along the route; being a traveler who enjoyed a dram himself, he commented frequently when the liquor supply was low. He does not appear to have passed up any opportunities to “liquor up,” as he calls it. His account seems to indicate that Alexander Majors’s famous admonition about sobriety was widely ignored, and modern research appears to confirm that.
Archaeological excavations conducted by Donald L. Hardesty of the University of Nevada-Reno in the late 1970s on Cold Springs and Sand Springs Stations in central Nevada uncovered hundreds of fragments of wine, champagne, gin, ale, brandy, beer, and whiskey bottles at both sites dating from the time of the Pony. Hardesty noted in a report prepared for the federal Bureau of Land Management in 1979 that there was ample evidence that dictums against taking strong drink were ignored. “The firm of Russell, Majors & Waddell was adamantly opposed to the use of alcohol beverages by its employees and required them to sign an oath saying that they would not indulge. But observations of drunken pony express riders falling off their horses [Hardesty cited Buffalo Bill Cody’s memoirs as offering an example] suggests that the oath was not too effective. The archaeological record of Cold Springs and Sand Springs stations supports that conclusion.”
Richard Burton not only noted countless instances of drinking but wryly reported that he had observed no indications of scriptural study, either. “There was no sign of Bible, Shakespeare, or Milton: a Holywell Street romance or two was the only attempt at literature,” he observed.
Christopher Corbett, Orphans Preferred, p. 101
Names of the Upper Crossing
“The Upper Crossing of the South Fork of the Platte apparently went by several names including ‘Laramie Crossing,’ ‘Goodale’s Crossing,’ ‘Morrell’s Crossing,’ and later ‘Julesburg’ or ‘Overland City,’ although Julesburg came to be preferred. Julesburg became widely known, the station and stable were then ‘long, one-story, hewed cedar-log buildings; there was also a store and blacksmith, shop. . . . The Pacific telegraph line at this point also crossed the Platte, having been completed through to San Francisco via Fort Bridger and Salt Lake. . . . lt cost ten dollars a wagon to get ferried across the Platte [by rope ferry in 1864 ]. “-Overland Stage, pp. 219, 220”
George Root, "Pike's Peak Express Companies," Part III, Kansas Historical Quarterly, Vol. 13, No. 8 (1944) p. 524, note 310
Horses for Buffalo Hunting
. . . and, as I said before, they should not be made to travel faster than a walk unless absolutely necessary; neither should they be taken off the road for the purpose of hunting or chasing buffalo, as one buffalo-chase injures them more than a week of moderate riding.
Randolph Marcy, The Prairie Traveler, 92
Steers Make the Best Oxen
Bulls can be trained to pull a wagon, but steers (that is, castrated males) are preferred, largely because they grow larger and stronger. . . .
“Because he has longer legs and he’s taller, an ox can travel much faster than a bull. Also,” Ford continues, “even though the bull may have a big burst of energy, like for fighting—because of its testosterone—, a steer would have more total muscle. So although a bull could easily kill any steer [in a fight], in working, the steer will have enduring power that lasts all day long, whereas the bull’s energy quickly burns up, and then he’s completely depleted.”
Dixon Ford and Lee Kreutzer, "Oxen: Engines of the Emigration," Overland Journal, V. 33. No. 1 (2015), p. 6
The Great American Desert
“The language of the maps shows that the Great American Desert existed in the records from 1820 until 1858. The popular concept of the desert had existed in the written records for two hundred and eighty years before that time, i1 and in published accounts and in the public mind it continued to live until after the Civil War. The fiction of. the Great American Desert was founded by the first explorers, was confirmed by scientific investigators and military reports, and was popularized by travelers and newspapers.”
Walter Prescott Webb, The Great Plains, p. 153
Mormon Polygamy
On July 12., 1843, apparently as a way of quieting opposition, including that of his first wife Emma, Joseph dictated to William Clayton the revelation on celestial marriage, but he had been taking plural wives well before, as had others of the hierarchy. In the last three or four years of his life, if Mrs. Brodie’s count is accurate, Joseph had taken forty-eight wives besides Emma. And though the doctrine of celestial marriage stressed responsibility and duty and greater glory in Heaven and even a sort of eugenics as its justifications, and though many of the priesthood, including Brigham Young, entered into it in anguish of spirit and only because it was God’s commandment, there is little evidence that to the full-blooded prophet polygamy was especially puritan.
Wallace Stegner, The Gathering of Zion, p 32-33
Mile 395: Cozad, NE
“In 1879 the explorer and geologist John Wesley Powell, later the director of the U.S. Geological Survey, established the 100th meridian as the “moisture line,” often locally called the ‘dry line,’ separating the relatively fertile plains of eastern Nebraska and the arid scrub country to the west. (In Nebraska, an average of twenty-two to twenty-eight inches of rain falls annually east of the 100th meridian; twelve to sixteen inches falls to the west.) Revisions to the Homesteading Act under Theodore Roosevelt—a pro-rancher Republican—allowed settlers west of the 100th meridian to claim a full section of 640 acres instead of the original 160 acres, because the drier land was so much less productive, and this is one reason why eastern Nebraska is cropped, and western Nebraska is mostly cattle country In nearby Cozad there is a historical marker on Route 30 at the 100th meridian, where the Oregon Trail, the Pony Express route, the transcontinental Union Pacific, the Lincoln Highway, and modern interstate Route 80 intersect. The Concord coaches of the Central California & Pikes Peak Express Company, later the Overland Mail Company, ran nearby.”
[Note: Cozad is north of the XP Trail at about Mile 395. The monuments referred to appear to be along a loop of Meridian Avenue that runs just south of Hwy 30, Between Meridian and F Street. There is also a 100th Meridian museum (https://www.cozadhistory.org) and Willow Creek Pony Express Station in Cozad City Park (9th and F Streets).]
Rinker Buck, The Oregon Trail, p. 186
Virginia Slade's Talents
“Virginia, we know, was an expert seamstress as well as horsewoman, dancer, good shot, and excellent cook. . . .
“Often when [Jack Slade] was sober—or at least partially so—he escorted her to dances in Virginia City where she was the ‘belle of the ball,’ as she was considered the best dancer in all the Northwest Territory.”
Virginia Rowe Towle, Vigilante Woman," p. 127
The Shooting of Ferrin
“In April we moved from Henry’s fork to the mouth of Ham’s fork, where we remained for a month . . .
“While camped here a mule train of sixteen wagons loaded with freight for Salt Lake City camped a short distance above us on the stream. In a few minutes we heard a shot fired and as there seemed to be some excitement we walked up to the wagons, and were shocked to see one of the drivers lying on the ground, shot through the heart. The wagon boss had gotten drunk at Green river, about fifteen miles back, was cussing the driver about some trifle, the driver had talked back and the ‘boss’ who was J. A. Slade, drew his revolver and shot the man dead. Later the teamsters dug a grave by the roadside, wrapped the dead man in his blankets and buried him. The train went to Salt Lake and nothing was done about the murder.”
Granville Stewart, Forty Years on the Frontier, Vol. I, p. 151
Mormons as the Most Successful Pioneers
So there are more than theological reasons for remembering the Mormon pioneers. They were the most systematic, organized, disciplined, and successful pioneers in our history; and their advantage over the random individualists who preceded them and paralleled them and followed them up the valley of the Platte came directly from their “un-American” social and religious organization. Where Oregon emigrants and argonauts bound for the gold fields lost practically all their social cohesion en route, the Mormons moved like the Host of Israel they thought themselves. Far from loosening their social organization, the trail perfected it. As communities on the march they proved extraordinarily adaptable. When driven out of Nauvoo, they converted their fixed property, insofar as they could, into the instruments of mobility, especially livestock, and became for the time herders and shepherds, teamsters and frontiersmen, instead of artisans and townsmen and farmers. When their villages on wheels reached the valley of their destination, the Saints were able to revert at once, because they were town-and-temple builders and because they had their families with them, to the stable agrarian life in which most of them had grown up.
Wallace Stegner, The Gathering of Zion, p 6
Mile 1299: Big Pass Update
“Pony’s clear from Henefer to at least Ibapah. Can’t vouch for Wyo. Be careful if you decide to take the singletrack off of Big Mtn Pass in Utah. They made the lower reaches by Mtn Dell Reservoir more MTBish.”
Borby Kennedy on Bike The Pony Express , 5/5/2020
Stations Attacked During the Paiute War
“A San Francisco dispatch of June 4, in New York Daily Tribune, June 26, 1860, reported the stations abandoned beyond Sand Springs toward Salt Lake. The station at Simpson Park was burned, and tho horses driven off; the station keeper at Dry creek was murdered. . . .
“For some time Ruby Valley station, 300 miles west of Salt Lake was the one farthest west (this side of the trouble sone) not interfered with by the Indians. At this time it was announced that the Pony Express would begin semiweekly trips from St. Joseph (apparently to take care of the emergency).”
George Root, "Pike's Peak Express Companies," Part IV, Kansas Historical Quarterly, Vol. 14, No. 1 (1944) p. 59, n. 378, 381
Chiles in 1849
“Those who came later were unfortunate in encountering early snows. Among these was that veteran of veterans, Joseph Chiles. He left Independence on May 1, and went by Salt Lake City. He took the Carson Route, which he had helped to open in ’41 and ’48. Unfortunately, as his custom seems to have been, he had taken his time. Caught by a snowstorm on the pass, he was forced to abandon several loaded wagons, and lost about a hundred cattle. Finally, as he had done so often before, he won through. He arrived with 115 head of fine cattle, including a thoroughbred Durham Bull.”
George R. Stewart, The California Trail, p. 310-311
Texas or Cherokee Oxen
“The oxen were not, in general, the massive beasts bred in the northeast but were range cattle from Texas or the Cherokee country. While they should be large and at least four years old for best performance, they actually varied greatly. One man said that they were ‘of every character and description—some of them very small, but having horns of immense size, that we boys used to say that the meat of the steer could be packed in its horns.’ . . . According to a merchant of Nebraska City who had done some freighting, the Texas steer made the best leader; quick on his feet, he could, and at times did, outrun a horse.”
Henry Pickering Walker, The Wagonmasters (1966), p. 107
Russell's Reason for Starting the Pony Express
The motive which prompted Russell to organize and operate the Pony Express has often been misstated. Briefly, it was an advertising proposition to fix public and Congressional attention upon the Central Route, with the result that the lucrative contract for carrying the mail overland to California would be given to the C.O.C. & P.P. H This cold, business-like purpose detracts in no manner whatever from the romance of the undertaking. He hoped the Pony Express would make money, but he was not fully convinced it would. In fact, his contract with the St. Joseph citizens permitted him to discontinue it after six months if it did not pay. Neither Majors nor Waddell thought it would, but they went along with him anyway.
Settle and Settle, "Napoleon of the West," Annals of Wyoming Vol. 32, No.1, April 1960, p. 34
Pony Express Re-Rides
“[I]n 1923, the first re-ride of the Pony Express was organized. Sixty riders traversed eight states in a celebration commemorating the C.O.C. & P.P. Express Co. that was formed sixty-three years earlier. Authenticity of the original days of the Pony Express was provided by the dress of the riders, as well as the route of the re-ride.. . .
“In 1935, the Diamond Jubilee of the Pony Express, a second re-ride of the route was made, sponsored by the Oregon Trail Memorial Association. On April 3, the date that the Pony Express began, celebration activities began across the nation. In August, approximately 300 Boy Scouts participated in the re-ride of the Pony Express historic trail. All events ended in late October, which signified the start of the transcontinental telegraph and the end of the Pony Express.”
Anthony Godfrey, Historic Resource Study Pony Express National Historic Trail, p. 227
Mormons and the Courts
“It was in the judicial rather than the political field, however, that non-Mormons felt most keenly the dictatorial authority of the church. . . .At first the Mormons, believing that Gentile courts did not dispense justice, followed the advice of their leaders to use their own ecclesiastical tribunals in settlement of their mutual difficulties. Then the influx of Gentiles brought the Saints into legal entanglements that could be resolved only in territorial courts, other devices were employed to guard the interests of Church members. The legislature, for instance, by enactment in 1852 permitted anyone, with or without legal training, to serve as an attorney in court; two years later a more extensive act declared that only territorial laws, and those of Congress ‘when applicable,’ could be ‘read, argued, cited or adopted as precedent in any trial,’ Thus the Mormons tried to escape all laws, including English common law, that might serve to prejudice their search for autonomy. . . .
Of all the judicial defenses raised by the Church to protect itself, none caused so much trouble as the probate courts. In February 1852 the legislature gave these tribunals such exceptional powers that they came to have jurisdiction in criminal and civil cases. . . .In reply, many Gentiles insisted that thte extravagant augmentation of the probate courts’ authority was obvious proof of the Mormons’ ultimate intention to establish a community effectively independent of all federal control. W. W. Drummond, a federal judge who more than any other man brought about the Mormon War of 1857-58 . . . used this strange legal situation as one of his arguments for the need of an expedition against the Latter-day Saints.”
Norman F. Furniss, The Mormon Conflict, 1850-1859, p. 16-18
Mile 930: Red Buttes Station
Located 10 miles from North Platte Station and 12 miles from Willow Springs Station about 200 feet southwest of the Red Buttes Oregon Trail Marker and south of the old Goose Egg Ranch house. Red Buttes Pony Express Station was located on a ridge overlooking the North Platte River at Bessemer Bend. Explorers, fur traders, mountain men and emigrants camped at this site. Although the main route of the Oregon Trail was located a few miles north of this site, many emigrant travelers crossed the North Platte River here for the last time on their trek to the west. They preferred using this favorable ford rather than waiting in line and paying the tolls and ferry fees required at lower crossings. Ample grass, good water and pleasant surroundings made this a favorite campsite for some travelers, since the route to and from the Sweetwater River was three days of rough, dry country and poisonous alkali water.
Pony Express lore recalls than William “Buffalo Bill” Cody, one of the youngest Pony Express riders at the age of 14, made the longest non-stop ride from this station. Completing his own run of 116 miles between Red Buttes and Three Crossings, he found his relief rider had met any untimely death, causing Cody to ride an extra 76 miles to Rocky Ridge Station. He immediately returned from Rocky Ridge to Red Buttes, completing the route in record time. http://www.expeditionutah.com/featured-trails/pony-express-trail/wyoming-pony-express-stations/
Sources generally agree on the identity of Red Butte(s) as a C.O.C. & P.P. Express Co. or Pony Express station, also largely because this name appears on the 1861 Overland Mail Company contract. Franzwa specifically lists Red Buttes as a Pony Express stop on his maps.
“[D]efinitely undependable were the Pawnee, whose territory extended from the Big Blue Crossing to the forks of the Platte. The Kanzas, the Potawatomi, and the Sac and Fox were semi-civilized, at least to the point that there was some semblance of legality to their extraction of funds from the emigrants. The Pawnee were warriors and buffalo hunters who roamed their vast domain looking for trouble. They found plenty of it in the form of Sioux and Cheyenne to the west; and emigrants who had found themselves in the thick of tribal warfare on the Kansas River might have the experience repeated along the Little Blue and the Platte. . . . For the most part, however, the rumors of battles and massacres [between Pawnee and emigrants] were untrue, and the Pawnee merely threatened and blustered, demanding tribute of some kind for crossing their lands, although they would not be above robbing and sometimes murdering stragglers.”
Merrill J. Mattes, The Great Platte River Road, p. 156
Jules Beni
“On the South Side of the South Platte, perhaps about a mile east of the mouth of ‘Lodgepole Creek,’ a Frenchman by the name of Jules had started a trading-post. The place was a great Cheyenne crossing-ground going north and south, and a frequent place of Cheyenne rendezvous. It was also much used by the Sioux. The Cheyennes had a great liking for the country on the South Platte at the mouth of Lodgepole, and had had camps there for many years. Jules was said to be a half-breed French-and-Indian trader, and to have established this post for the purpose of trading with the Cheyenne Indians. It was said his name was Jules Beni, but everybody called him ‘Jules.” He was a man of keen native shrewdness, an exceedingly dangerous man, with a peppery, fierce disposition. He had killed several persons, and had become a great deal of a character in the country. A man who had known him several years told me that Jules once killed two persons of local celebrity, cut off their ears, dried them, and carried these four ears in his pockets. That every once in a while he would take them out and show them to somebody. They were great trophies, as he thought. He kept supplies for the pilgrims, and at one time had a large stock. . . . He got to be so bad and dangerous that Slade, the superintendent of the stage company, had to kill him.”
Eugene Ware, Indian Wars of 1864, p. 247-48
Mile 1835: Dry Creek
“Twenty miles farther led to the west end of the Sheawit Valley, where we found the station on a grassy bench at the foot of low rolling hills. It was a mere shell, with a substantial stone corral behind, and the inmates were speculating upon the possibility of roofing themselves in before the winter. Water is found in tolerable quantities below the station, but the place deserved its name, ‘Dry Creek.’ . . .
“Dry-Creek Station is on the eastern frontier of the western agency; as at Roberts’ Creek, supplies and literature from Great Salt City east and Carson City west are usually exhausted before they reach these final points. After a frugal feed, we inspected a grave for two, which bore the names of Loscier and Applegate, and the date 21st of May. These men, employes of the station, were attacked by Indians Panaks or Shoshonees, or possibly both: the former was killed by the first fire; the latter, when shot in the groin, and unable to proceed, borrowed, under pretext of defense, a revolver, bade good-by to his companions, and put a bullet through his own head: the remainder then escaped. Both these poor fellows remain unavenged. The Anglo-American, who is admirably protected by the officials of his government in Europe, Asia, and Africa, is systematically neglected—teste [witness, for example] Mexico—in America. The double grave, piled up with stones, showed gaps where the wolves had attempted to tunnel, and blue-bottle flies were buzzing over it in expectation. Colonel Totten, at our instance, promised that it should be looked to. . . .
“Shortly after 8 A.M. we were afield, hastening to finish the long divide that separates Roberts’ Creek Valley from its western neighbor, which, as yet unchristened, is known to the b’hoys as Smoky Valley. The road wound in the shape of the letter U round the impassable part of the ridge [i.e., via the Cape Horn route south of Simpson Mountains rather than over Eagle Butte, which is the Pony Express rote]. Crossing the north end of Smoky Valley, we came upon rolling ground, with water-willows and cedars ‘blazed’—barked with a gash—for sign-posts.”
Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 483-484
Desipere in Loco
“Unaccustomed, of late years at least, to deal with tales of twice-told travel, I can not but feel, especially when, as in the present case, so much detail has been expended upon the trivialities of a Diary, the want of that freshness and originality which would have helped the reader over a little lengthiness. My best excuse is the following extract from the lexicographer’s “Journey to the Western Islands,” made in company with Mr. Boswell during the year of grace 1773, and upheld even at that late hour as somewhat a feat in the locomotive line.
These diminutive observations seem to take away something from the dignity of writing, and therefore are never communicated but with hesitation, and a little fear of abasement and contempt. But it must be remembered that life consists not of a series of illustrious actions or elegant enjoyments; the greater part of our time passes in compliance with necessities, in the performance of daily duties, in the removal of small inconveniences, in the procurement of petty pleasures, and we are well or ill at ease as the main stream of life glides on smoothly, or is ruffled by small obstacles and frequent interruptions.
“True! and as the novelist claims his right to elaborate, in the ‘domestic epic,’ the most trivial scenes of household routine, so the traveler may be allowed to enlarge, when copying nature in his humbler way, upon the subject of his little drama, and, not confining himself to the great, the good, and the beautiful, nor suffering himself to be wholly engrossed by the claims of cotton, civilization, and Christianity, useful knowledge and missionary enterprise, to desipere in loco by expatiating upon his bed, his meat, and his drink.”
[Note: “dulce est desipere in loco” = Latin phrase: it is pleasant to be frivolous at the appropriate time.]
Richard Burton, The City of Saints, ix
Affection for Oxen
“Every family had great affection for their oxen, which were greeted with names like Rouser, Old Bailey, Brindle and Bright, and Old Smut and Snarley; and when, in the extremity of the journey, oxen died of thirst or exhaustion, the owner’s grief was as much for the loss of a valued friend as for being marooned in the wilderness. The joy of the Belle Somers family knew no bounds when ‘the late lamented Snider,’ an ox, reappeared in the desert, having survived only because he stumbled upon a waterhole.”
Merrill J. Mattes, The Great Platte River Road, p. 41
Mile 178: Rock Creek Station
“Rock Creek station was established along the Oregon-California Trail in 1858 to sell supplies and other services to the emigrants. The station subsequently served as a relay station for the Pony Express, and finally as a stage station for the Overland stage. To the northwest of the old station site is the finest stretch of pristine trail ruts in southeastern Nebraska. These ruts, which cover 1600 feet, are quite dramatic in appearance.”
“On the north side [of Courthouse Rock], between it and the river, a large area of swampy ground makes the going uncertain, and Chimney Rock, the next famous landmark, looms ahead like a beckoning finger to encourage the traveler. . . .
The very loveliness of the scene made for enthusiasm and exaggeration. Some journals record the height of the Chimney as four hundred or even five hundred feet, but the government report, made by Preuss of the Frémont Expedition in 1842, read . . .’the weather is rapidly diminishing its height, which is now not more than two hundred feet above the river . . .’ Jim Bridger explained this phenomenon by the supposition that it had been struck by lightening . . . Local tradition has it that a company of soldiers once camped near by, and, needing a target for their cannon practice, displayed the excellence of their marksmanship by knocking pff about forty feet of the famous old column.
The Chimney Rock stands just across the valley from Bayard, Nebraska, where a one-way bridge tempts the motorist to cross the island-studded Platte and view this great limestone shaft. Here the recurring cholera epidemics of 1849 and 1850 were at their worst, and the Chimney stands guard over the long chain of hasty graves like Nature’s own monument to their memory, visible for miles, a fit symbol of the wild and throbbing romance of the trail.”
[N.B. There is a Chimney Rock Cemetery dating from emigrant times. It is at the end of the short road which goes straight at Mile 655 of the Pony Express Bikepacking Route, where the route makes a right-hand tun. Google Maps shows a trail to Chimney Rock from the cemetery, whereas there is no access from the parking lot at the Chimney Rock National Historic site. Comments on Google Maps note that there is another trail just north of the parking lot. apparently, there are a lot of rattle snakes in the area.]
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 145-147
Ferry Delay in Sacramento
From the Elwood Free Press, January 12, 1861. Fr. Kearny, Jan. 9—
The Pony Express passed about 11 last night. San Francisco, Dec. 26, 3:40 P.M.—The Pony Express, with St. Louis dates, telegraphed to Ft. Kearney on the 10th, arrived at Sacramento on Sun-day 23d, where it was detained twenty-four hours waiting for a steamer to take it to San Francisco. There being no Sunday boat. The Pony is delayed at Sacramento from one to two days, whenever it arrives there on Saturday, after two o’clock, P.M. The Express time table ought to be arranged so that the Pony will always arrive at Sacramento between Monday morning and Friday evening.
“[Emigrants] had time to be married, to be born, or to die while they waited in camp for the grass to sprout upon the prairie. This was absolutely vital, for, until it was high enough to provide feed for the animals, only those horse and mule teams carrying grain dared to start the journey. . . .
Little as they liked the delay, it was sometimes a good thing. For, unless the emigrant was the provident type who had brought his own teams, he must get them from among the contumacious animals presented for his inspection at the markets of Independence; and in nine cases out of ten, both he and the newly acquired livestock were in for trouble.
Half-broken or, in many instances, totally wild steers and mules were calmly sold to men who might never in their lives have driven anything more dangerous than a buggy mare. . . .
John E. Brown wrote that, after he had found pairs that would not start a fight on sight, it was next to impossible to get four that would tolerate each other. In which case the leaders (having the advantage of position) kicked the wheelers clear out of the harness.”
Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 5-6
Increased Mail to the West
“Although inclined to southern interests, Postmaster-general [Aaron] Brown was also an exponent of the policy of generous postal extension into the West. He applied a liberal interpretation to the powers of the postal department and set about to do his part in furthering the development of the new region. After holding office bu two years Mr. Brown had six lines carrying mail to the Pacific Coast, where but two existed when he assumed his position in the cabinet. During this period, also, the frequency of mail transmission had been increased upon the most improved route from semi-monthly to semi-weekly service.”
LeRoy Hafen, The Overland Mail: 1849–1869, p. 103
Butterfield on the Central Route
“The Butterfield Overland Mail contracted to manage the express operations east of Salt Lake in April 1861. The company launched the first daily overland stage and mail service from St. Joseph, Missouri (and later Atchison, Kansas) to Placerville in July 1861.”
Will Bagley, South Pass: Gateway to a Continent, Location 4019 [Kindle Edition]
Platte Water
“[T]ravelers found that, at times, it was necessary to sink headless barrels in the river bed to get water. Captain Howard Stansbury found ‘innumerable’ small wells dug in the sand of the river two to four feet deep that yielded good clean water. Concerning its potability, there were a number of standard quips, including; including, “It was good drinking water if you threw it out and filled the cup with whiskey” and “It was water you had to chew.”
Henry Pickering Walker, The Wagonmasters (1966), p. 39
Paying Tributes
“As at St. Joe and in the west bottoms the emigrants had been pestered by ‘dirty looking redskins’ looking for handouts. These were the more shiftless members of the Kickapoo, Sac and Fox tribes who had been settled on the west bank of the Missouri River in the early 1840s. West of Mosquito Creek these tribesmen had more clothing and fewer lice, and their begging assumed more sophisticated forms, of which Lucius Fairchild’s experience was typical: ‘We met two Indians one a Sac and the other a Fox both chiefs with a paper from the Indian Agent saying that these Indians complained of the emigrants burning timber and requested all to pay them something so we gave them half a dollar which satisfied them.’ In 1852 several indignant travelers mentioned the levying of tribute at the rate of 25¢ per team just to cross the reservation.’The tariff,’ wrote Jay Green, ‘Idid refuse to pay as I thought it a skeem of speculation got up by the Indian Agent.'”
Merrill J. Mattes, The Great Platte River Road, p. 144-145
Pony Goes Semi-Weekly
They arrived safely on June 22nd and the delayed mail was sent on to San Francisco, where it was received June 25th—the first Pony mail in three weeks.
Now, a strange thing happened. In the face of threatened disintegration across Nevada, Russell heaped another wager on the political gambling table. Coincident with the delayed mail’s arrival at Carson City, it was announced that trips thereafter would be dispatched twice as often, or semiweekly, on Wednesdays and Saturdays, from both ends of the line.
A rumor about semiweekly trips had circulated in California around the middle of May. Later that same month in Washington the Senate was scheduled to take up the ill-fated Overland Mail Bill, authored by Senator Hale. Russell had lobbied long and hard for his interest in the measure. At this critical juncture a doubling of the Pony’s timetable would further dramatize the Central Route and might well influence the outcome. Plainly, the bold maneuver was Russell’s last-ditch effort.
Roy S. Bloss, Pony Express—The Great Gamble, 75
Cost of Emigration
Foodstuffs were assembled at the start of the journey. The Emigrants Guide to Oregon and California, in 1845, recommended that each emigrant supply himself with 200 pounds of flour, 150 pounds of bacon, 10 pounds of coffee, 20 pounds of sugar, and 10 pounds of salt. Additional supplies included chipped beef, rice, tea, dried beans, dried fruit, saleratus (baking soda), vinegar, pickles, mustard, and tallow. The basic kitchenware was a kettle, fry pan, coffee pot, tin plates, cups, knives, and forks.
Provisions for the journey could cost from three to six hundred dollars, depending on how much the family brought from home. In addition, each family needed a supply of powder, lead, and shot. It needed rifles, too, for an additional sixty or seventy dollars. Thus the basic outfitting cost was between five hundred and one thousand dollars, and emigrants starting east of the Missouri River incurred additional expenses in getting to the jumping-off places from homes in Ohio and western Pennsylvania. Then there was always the need for cash to have on hand through the course of the journey itself: to replace stores that were used up; to pay for the charges of the ferrymen at river crossings; to buy replacements for wagons that had broken or oxen that had gone lame; to buy food through the first winter in the new lands.
Lillian Schlissel, Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey, p. 23
Mile 312: Summit Station
“The trail lay to our left, easily accessible at all times; and on it, near the summit of the ride, the old stages found the last stop before the long waterless drive over to the Platte River. Here stood Summit Station. Perhaps ‘stood’ is not the best word, for the building was only three feet above ground and extended four feet below.”
[N.B. The Pony Express marker is just north of the Pony Express Bikepacking Route, on 44 Road (just before Mile 312). Also at this spot is the Susan O’Hale Grave Historical Marker.]
Mile 312: Summit Station
Alexander Majors's Bibles
“Speaking of this thorough plainsman [Alexander Majors] reminds me of the lack of religion among some of the boys. Mr. Major[s] was always interested in the moral elevation of the men who worked for him, and sometimes before a train left the Missouri River he would present each man with a neat pocket Testament, the leaves of which, being about the right size out of which to make cigarettes, were used for the same instead of being read.”
— Darley, Reverend G .M., “The End Gate of the Mess Wagon,” The Trail: A Magazine for Colorado, Volumes 1, No. 1 (1908) : 18-19
Alexander Majors's Bibles
Government Strategies in the West
“And so the issue was drawn: a series of permanent posts from the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean or periodic campaigns along the trails to impress and, when necessary, chastise the Indians. . . .
Ultimately, governmental authorities resorted to a number of strategies, often simultaneously, in an attempt to neutralize the Indian threat to overland travel: treaties were negotiated, presents distributed, reservations established, awe-inspiring and/or punitive military expeditions dispatched, roving patrols instituted, military escorts provided. But initially, most persons concerned with this problem shared [the] outlook that a series of military forts was the best approach.”
John D. Unruh, Jr., The Plains Across, p. 202-205
Majors on the Platte River Road
Alexander Majors of the firm of Russell, Majors & Waddell termed the Fort Kearny route the best natural road on the continent and believed it the best in the world.
Sometimes this stretch is referred to as “Nine Mile Ridge.” The stone marker was erected by the State of Nebraska in 1912. Located at https://goo.gl/maps/EHArEhZmXwpZRR4EA.
The following lines rely extensively on the article by Randy Brown in the Spring, 2007, issue of Overland Journal, titled The Grave of Susan C. Haile. When I first visited this area in the late 1960s with Boy Scouts, it was generally known as the “Lone Grave.” Randy Brown writes, “Most assuredly, however, when Susan Haile died in 1852 hers was not a lone grave. This was in the midst of the ‘cholera corridor’, . . . .” Most likely there were dozens even hundreds of graves along the Thirty-two Mile Creek/Platte River Valley stretch, but we know only the Susan Haile grave location. We know of the Haile grave because of the existence of a headstone. Intriguing legends and questions accompany the Haile story. Who was she? How did she die? How was a gravestone transported to the spot?
W.H. Stephens of Winnebago County, Illinois, left his name at Rock Avenue July 5, 1849. A day later, he carved his name at Independence Rock. Richard Collier, Wyoming SHPO.“It is a jagged, broken ridge,” Burton wrote, “of huge sandstone boulders, tilted up edgeways, and running in a line over the crest of a long roll of land … like the vertebrae of some great sea-serpent or other long crawling animal; and, on a nearer view, the several pieces resolve themselves into sphinxes, veiled nuns, Lot’s pillars, and other freakish objects.”
A freight train consisting of eight wagons loaded with hardware for Denver, was attacked Sunday morning, August 7, 1864, by a party of Cheyenne and Arapahoe Indians. Five men were killed instantly, a sixth was mortally wounded, and the wagons were burned. (Brown, 2007) The bodies and smoking wagons were found by two young couples out for a Sunday morning ride from Thirty-Two Mile Creek station and on Monday morning Overland Stage Line employees from the station arrived. The wounded teamster was able to give a few details of the attack before he died. The men were buried beside the trails 140 yards south of the OCTA marker. This is the only known burial site of white men who met death in Adams County due to hostile Indian activity. The Nova-Color OCTA marker was installed in 1996 on the south side of the road at the edge of a broad and deep ditch. Franzwa’s Maps of the Oregon Trail shows ruts southeast of the markers, but with the installation of a center pivot irrigation system several years ago, they are no longer visible. The next image shows the flat marker indicating the burial site.
“Rock Creek station was established along the Oregon-California Trail in 1858 to sell supplies and other services to the emigrants. The station subsequently served as a relay station for the Pony Express, and finally as a stage station for the Overland stage. To the northwest of the old station site is the finest stretch of pristine trail ruts in southeastern Nebraska. These ruts, which cover 1600 feet, are quite dramatic in appearance.”