Quick Facts – Pony Express Ride

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.

Mormon Plan in Utah
“Because the majority of the Mormon population was Anglo-American, there were many aspects of Mormonism’s Manifest Destiny that aligned with the traditional American ideology. Taking whatever land they saw fit was certainly one of those, though the Mormons were neither as aggressive nor martial about doing so in comparison to many of their contemporaries. In many respects, they planned to follow the ‘Texas method’ of land acquisition, wherein they would dominate a certain area by sheer numbers in order to gain political power, and then exert their influence once they were strong enough to declare independence. Being the ‘first’ to occupy, cultivate, and improve the land the Mormons to establish a territory of their own where they would be the majority and none could expel them.”

Natalie Brooke Coffman, "The Mormon Battalion's Manifest Destiny: Expansion and Identity during the Mexican-American War" (2015). Graduate College Dissertations and Theses., pp.69-70

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

mIle 917: Fort Casper
Site of Fort Caspar/Platte Bridge Station, Fort Caspar Museum, 1847 Mormon Ferry, and Guinard Bridge. Fort Casper was a focus of 19th century emigration, commercial, and military activity. In 1847, Brigham Young’s Mormon pioneer party made a difficult crossing the North Platte River near this location, then left behind a small party to establish a ferry service there. Later, a toll bridge, trading post, Pony Express relay station, and telegraph office were built nearby. In 1862, the Army established a small military post at the station. The Fort Caspar Museum now provides on-site orientation and self-guided tour brochures for the reconstructed fort. A modest admission fee is charged.

Beyond Fort Caspar, travelers left the Platte River lifeline to strike out for the Sweetwater, which would take them to the Continental Divide at South Pass. Once in the Pacific watershed, the main trail followed smaller drainages to the Green River, west of today’s Farson.

National Park Service, Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide–Wyoming, p. 50

Mile 946: Willow Springs
“In time [the emigrants] passed. out of the poison-spring region, went over a snappy ridge, and came to Willow Springs at a distance of twenty-six miles from the ferry. In years of little travelit was the perfect oasis, pure water in a tiny willow grove surrounded by untainted grass. During heavy migrations the grass soon disappeared, and the cattle of the poor or improvident man went unfed at the end of a grueling day’s work. The water never failed.”

Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 205-206

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 1311-1322: Mountain Dell to Journey's End
“[From Little Mountain] Seven miles yet intervened between these recklessly intermingled people and the City of the Great Salt Lake, most of them in narrow, rock-bound brushy Emigration Canyon.

Between Emigrant Canyon and the city the wagons slowly filed past the spot, now called Journey’ End, where Brigham Young spoke the well remembered words, ‘This is the place.’ Just ahead the ‘City of the Saints’ spread before them, three miles in each direction.”

[N.B. This area is now called “This is the Place Heritage Park.”]

Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 297

Mile 554: Lodgepole Creek Valley
“Here is the valley of Lodgepole Creek through which passed historic trails, telegraph lines, and railroads. The famed Pony Express followed the valley in 1860-61. “Nine Mile” Pony Express station was located just southeast of present Chappell; “Pole Creek No. 2” station was a few miles west of here. Near Sidney, the Pony Express trail turned northwestward, passing Mud Springs station and Courthouse Rock en route to the North Platte River. In 1861 the first transcontinental telegraph line was built through the valley. Stagecoaches of the Central Overland Route soon followed, carrying passengers and mail. Former Pony express stations continued to serve the stage line, providing lodging and provisions for travelers. When the tracks of the Union Pacific Railroad reached here in 1867, wagon and stagecoach travel declined. Today modern highways retrace historic trails through the valley. Two miles east is Chappell, at first only a railroad siding. The townsite was surveyed in 1884 and a post office was established two years later. Chappell became the county seat of Deuel County in 1894.”

History Nebraska website

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

Lower and Upper California Crossings
“Between Fort Kearny and Fort Laramie there were only two divergences that are noteworthy; both pertain to the late period of the trail. Until 1859 all travel on the south bank of the Platte crossed the south fork of the river west of its junction with the north fork. The trail then moved northwest up the ‘peninsula’ between the south and north forks of the river and through Ash Hollow before reaching the valley of the North Platte. It then continued up the south bank to Fort Laramie. The discovery of gold in Colorado let to the Pike’s Peak trail southwestward up the South Platte and another connecting trail northward to the North Platte via Courthouse Rock, for which Julesburg, Colorado, became the new junction point.”

[N.B. The first crossing became known as the Lower California Crossing, and the later crossing near Julesburg was the North California Crossing. The Pony Express used the North California Crossing. Julesburg was the most problematic station at the opening of the Pony Express.]

Merrill J. Mattes, The Great Platte River Road, p. 6

Mile 753: Fort Laramie Ferry
“Robert Campbell [who built the original fort that became Fort Laramie] had cannily built his picketed stockade in the angle of the two rivers [Laramie and North Platte], so that all who approached from the east must either ford the Laramie or ferry the North Platte. Both projects provided plenty of exercise and some risk. Thos companies who had attained the west bank of the Missouri River at Independence, St. Joseph, Nebraska City, or nearby ferries, and who consequently traveled south of the Platte must now ford the Laramie. And the Laramie was deep, swift-flowing, and ice-cold. Those who ferried the Missouri at Kanesville or Council Bluffs, and remained north of the Platte were now faced with the thankless job of ferrying to the south side only to cross back again just west of the Black Hills, where the river swung too far south for their purpose, and the road left it definitely and forever. The did so up to and including the year 1849. . . .

There was no necessity, as it later proved, for any man to risk (and sometimes lose) his life in ferrying the Platte at Fort Laramie: there was an easy route on the north side. The officers [at Fort Laramie] were suspected of giving out misleading information to induce the emigrants to cross—at first, on account of the profit they could make from selling supplies at exhorbitant prices, and later because they ran a government ferry at five dollars per wagon and had unlimited opportunity to line their pockets.”

Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 161

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

The Buffalo Horse
The Indians had horses for all purposes. The buffalo horse was merely a trained cow pony; he bore a special mark or nick in his ear to distinguish him. He had to be alert, intelligent, willing to follow the game and press close to the side of the running animal, yet able to detect its intention and swerve from it so as not to become entangled, and all with no more guidance than the Indian exerted by pressure of his knees. The war horse and the buffalo horse were renowned for their speed, intelligence, and endurance. They were prize possessions and were valued above all else.

Walter Prescott Webb, The Great Plains, p. 61

Greater Numbers of Emigrants
“As gold rushers raced across the plains and mountains in unprecedented numbers, it was little wonder that writers were caught up in ‘adventurist’ euphoria. Nor was it surprising that the nay-sayers offered gloomy prophecies about what those overlanders might expect. More persons, after all, ventured out on the overland trip in 1849 alone than had made the continental crossing in all the previous years combined. Still greater numbers crowded the trails in 1850 and 1852. No one really knew what might happen.”

John D. Unruh, Jr., The Plains Across, p. 64

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

Easterners' View of Mormons
“If some causes of the Mormon War are only dimly visible today, the part played by eastern public opinion is not. throughout the 1850s, hostility toward the Latter-day Saints had increased until it approached unreasoning frenzy by mid-1857. . . .

there is no doubt that the Saints’ practice of polygamy was another potent force inflaming Gentiles against Mormonism. . . the Church’s explanation of ‘the Principle,’ as plural marriage came to be called, was an intricate one. . . .

To eastern minds the Mormons were guilty of more than immoral conduct; they also formed a society of conspirators against the national government. . . There was even greater concern among anti-Mormon Gentiles that Young might seek the more treasonable goal of complete separation from the Union. . . .

Agents Holeman and Hurt, supported by other federal officials, accused the Mormons of tempering with the tribes of their region, seeking to entice them from their dutiful allegiance to the country. . . .

The conceptions of the eastern Gentiles, then, pictured the Saints as libidinous villains, eager to terminate their relation with the country and prepared to transgress every standard of moral behavior by forming alliances with the hated Indian. On the other side of the anti-Mormon stereotype the leaders of the Church were held guilty of innumerable murders, indeed had a powerful secret society of assassins to commit their infamous deeds.

Norman F. Furniss, The Mormon Conflict, 1850-1859, p. 77-87

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 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.”

Jan Bennett (Repost) on Pony Express Bikepacking Route , 5/23/18

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

The "Wire-Rope Express"
“James Street, Pacific Telegraph agent, . . . had held several “confabs” with Shokup, chief of the Shoshones, and believed there was nothing to fear from the Indians in that vicinity.

The Alta California, July 9 1801 (quoted in the St. Louis Missouri Democrat, August 6), published the details of one of these meetings at Robert’s creek. Shokup was very friendly, but pointed out that before the white man arrived his tribe was happy and enjoyed plenty of game and roots; now the game had disappeared and the roots were almost extinct, making him unhappy, as his people were hungry. One of his wives was dangerously ill, and her doctor blamed the Overland Mail as the cause. The interpreter denied that this could be possible, and invited Shokup to ride on the stage to San Francisco. He accepted, but on arriving at Carson City resolved to return. He called the telegraph the ‘wire-rope express,’ and could not believe that, after arriving at San Francisco he could talk with his wife almost as quickly as if he were at her side. He supposed the Express to be an animal, and when told it consumed lightning, could not understand what sort of beast it was. He wired the ‘Big Captain’ at San Francisco that his Indians would not trouble the line, and wished to be the friends of the whites. General Carpenter, president of the Overland Telegraph, ordered presens sent to Sholrup and his tribesmen.”

George Root, "Pike's Peak Express Companies," Part IV, Kansas Historical Quarterly, Vol. 14, No. 1 (1944) p. 66, n. 424

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

Mile 1421: Point Lookout/Lookout Pass/Jackson's Station
“Originally, Lookout Pass was identified by Simpson as General Johnston’s Pass. The mail contract called it Point Lookout. From the top of the pass one can look west into the desert at what was to become known as Piute Hell. In May 1860, the Pah Ute War began, caused apparently because of white encroachment and depredations. For a short time, the Express was completely shut down (June-July). This ‘war’ was finally settled after the Civil War when soldiers were sent west to quell the Indian uprisings.

“An Egan employee, Fredrick W. Hurst, chronicles a station near the pass as being ‘Jackson’s Station’ in Brush Hollow. By 1876, the survey records show the site to be settled by Horace Rockwell (O.P. Rockwell’s brother) and his wife, Libby (See Figure 20). Reportedly in 1885 and since about 1870, the Rockwells occupied a small log house, possibly the old station house. A small cemetery plot, to the south, with iron railings apparently contains the remains of Rockwell’s pet dogs. No other physical remains can be found at the site.”

The Pony Express Stations of Utah in Historical Perspective, Point Lookout (Lookout Pass, Jackson's) Utah No. 15 Contract Station

Lure of the Trail for Men
“The male camaraderie of country life, in fact, was exaggerated by the dangers and excitements of the trail. “Men drawn together on the plains as in every day walks of life,” William Thompson remembered, “only the bonds were closer and far more enduring. The very dangers through which passed together rendered the ties more lasting.”

This chance for an exaggerated and extended occasion masculine good times lured men to the trail. Truly one of the great attractions of the trip was the notion of spending entire spring and summer “in the rough” with the boys, away routines of farm work. Trail work was hard, to be sure, but farm drudgery held none of this romantic allure. The idea of an overland emigration struck romantic chords deep within the male breast. One midwestern visitor reported that men “spoke of ‘Old Kentuck’ and ‘Old Virginny’ in a tone that sounded like deep emotion,” and Indiana farmers “related with glowing eyes” tales of how their fathers had emigrated from the valleys of Appalachia. William Oliver told of how the men at an inn along the National Road in Manhattan, Indiana, listened almost reverently as a gnarled old frontiersman recounted his adventures, supposedly at the side of Daniel Boone, hunting ‘Injuns.’ On the trail men could live out collective fantasies that some had experienced in the early days of the midwestern frontier but most had only dreamed of on their staid and settled farms. Here on the trail was an opportunity to bring to life that male self-image. The project of Oregon and California settlement itself included a male vision of life in a time and place where men played a man’s role with long rifle and hunting knife as well as plough and cradle.

Hunting has continually recurred as a theme in these pages of the importance it assumed for emigrant men. It was in this context of male fantasy and the measurement of masculine identity against the standard of earlier, heroic generation of men that hunting took on its meaning. At home the rifle had retained its symbolic if not practical place as the key instrument of male activity. As such, the rifle was the object around which men organized their conception of the trip. By insisting that their rifles would again become the means of securing nourishment for their families, men allowed their own projections to set the form and the content of the journey. Matthew Field captured something of this with a description of the emigrants passing through Westport, men to the front, “rifles on their shoulders, … looking as if they were already watching around the corners of the streets for game.” Hunting, of course, supplied very little of the actual nourishment for the overland travelers, and experienced observers, from the beginning, advised against wasting valuable time on the hunt.But the men nonetheless insisted on approaching the trip as at least a hunting expedition.”

John Mack Faragher, Women & Men on the Overland Trail, p. 135-36

Crossing the South Platte
“From the moment they had passed the junction of the rivers the emigrants were fired with only one thought: to get across the South Platte. The Colorado gold-seekers of ’59, Pikes Peakers as they were called, might remain comfortably on the south bank, but travelers to Oregon and California, and, later, to Montana and Idaho must ford this large watercourse which unaccommodatingly swung too far to the left for their purpose.

Many crossed immediately above the forks, following Frémont’s example. There were also several little-used fords, but the great bulk of the migration crossed four miles above Brule, Nebraska at a spot called the Lower California Crossing, although in the late fifties and the sixties the Upper California Crossing at Julesburg, Colorado, became a rival. . . .

Everything considered, the crossing near Brule was the greatest ford of the Overland trek . . . [T]here were hundreds of wagons each day during the season, which must get through the quicksand of the South Platte ford or give up the journey. it was one of the few dangers of which they had definite advance notice. They could, and did, worry about it from the time they left home . . .

From the days of the first fir trappers, on through the Oregon migration and the California gold rush, it was in everybody’s way.”

Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 106-109

Character of Plains Settlers
In a letter to Manypenny, September 12, 1856, [Fort Laramie area Indian Agent] Twiss pointed out that the Indians were “not being improved, but rather deteriorating, and becoming worse from year to year.” This condition was due, in part, to the fact that all too often “those whites who reside among the Indians of the prairies are neither the pioneers of civilization nor settlements, but emphatically fugitives from both…. It is impossible for them to reside in the States or organized Territories, because the relat.ions of peace and amity between them and the courts of justice are inter- rupted…. [They] teach the Indians lessons in their own school of depravity.” Good missionaries and teachers, and honest traders – desirable at all times – were far from plentiful.

Twiss thus appears to have been firm in upholding his own rights and the rights of his department; ready to do the best by the Indians a.s he saw the best; keenly alert to Indian problems; but ever pessimistic or questioning the ultimate fate of the Red Man.

Alban W. Hoopes, “Thomas S. Twiss, Indian Agent on the Upper Platte, 1855-1861,” The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Vol. 20, No. 3 (Dec., 1933), pp. 364

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

Freighting Times
“From twenty-eight to forty-five days on the road were needed to put a wagon-train from the Missouri River into Denver. This was the time needed for oxen, and to cover he distance in twenty-eight was fast travel indeed. Mule-trains covered the same road i n about three weeks time. A train would spend seventy to seventy-five days an the trail between the Missouri River and Salt Lake City.”

Floyd Bresee, Overland Freighting in the Platte Valley 1850–1870, p. 43

Overland Mail and the Confederacy
“‘Paul Jones,’ a correspondent writing from St. Joseph, October 17, lo the Missouri. Democrat (October 22, 1861), berated [CCO & PP President] Hughes as a rascal secessionist, and charged that the destruction of the Platte river bridge had ‘jarred the festering treason from his soul, or the fear of losing his salary of $5,000 per annum, causes him to be a thorough Union man. . . . While located in this city, that company were very careful that not a dollar of Uncle Sam’s money went into a loyal man’s pocket . . . . Why is Mr. Slade kept in their employ? . . a division agent . . . having charge of the entire route from the crossing of the South Platte to the Pacific Springs. He is a vile-mouthed, rabid secessionist. . . .'”

George Root, "Pike's Peak Express Companies," Part IV, Kansas Historical Quarterly, Vol. 14, No. 1 (1944) p. 81, n. 481

Sweetwater River
“The Canadian voyageurs have translated the name Sweetwater from the Indian Pina Pa; but the term is here more applicable in a metaphorical than in a literal point of view. . . . There is a something in the Sweetwater which appeals to the feelings of rugged men: even the drivers and the station-keepers speak of ” her” with a bearish affection.”

Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 150-151

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 1075: South Pass
“Ten miles beyond Ford No. 9, hilly miles, ending in a long champaign having some of the characteristics of a rolling prairie . . . led us to the South Pass, the great Wasserscheide between the Atlantic and the Pacific, and the frontier points between the territory of Nebraska and the State of Oregon. . . .

“The last part of the ascent is so gentle that it is difficult to distinguish the exact point where the versant lies : a stony band crossing the road on the ridge of the table-land is pointed out as the place, and the position has been fixed at N. lat. 48 19′, and W. long. 108 40′. The northern limit is the noble chain of Les Montagnes Eocheuses, which goes by the name of the Wind River; the southern is called Table Mountain, an insignificant mass of low hills.

A pass it is not : it has some of the features of Thermopylge or the Gorge of Killiecrankie ; of the European St. Bernard or Simplon; of the Alleghany Passes or of the Mexican Barrancas. It is not, as it sounds, a ghaut between lofty mountains, or, as the traveler may expect, a giant gateway, opening through Cyclopean walls of beetling rocks that rise in forbidding grandeur as he passes onward to the Western continent. And yet the word ‘Pass’ has its significancy. In that New World where Nature has worked upon the largest scale, where every feature of scenery, river and lake, swamp and forest, prairie and mountain, dwarf their congeners in the old hemisphere, this majestic level-topped bluff, the highest steppe of the continent, upon whose iron surface there is space enough for the armies of the globe to march over, is the grandest and the most appropriate of avenues.

A water-shed is always exciting to the traveler. What shall I say of this, where, on the topmost point of American travel, you drink within a hundred yards of the waters of the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans—that divides the ‘doorways of the west wind from the ‘portals of the sunrise? . . .

It is a suggestive spot, this ‘divortia aquarum:’ it compels Memory to revive past scenes before plunging into the mysterious ‘Lands of the Hereafter,’ which lie before and beneath the feet. The Great Ferry, which steam has now bridged, the palisaded banks of the Hudson, the soft and sunny scenery of the Ohio, and the kingly course of the Upper Mississippi, the terrible beauty of Niagara, and the marvels of that chain of inland seas which winds its watery way from Ontario to Superior; the rich pasture-lands of the North, the plantations of the semi-tropical South, and the broad cornfields of the West; finally, the vast meadow-land and the gloomy desert-waste of sage and saleratus, of clay and mauvaise terre, of red butte and tawny rock, all pass before the mind in rapid array ere they are ihrust into oblivion by the excitement of a new departure.”

Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 161-163

End of the Pony Express
But Indian resistance and financial woes, serious as they were, did not bury the Pony Express. Technology did. About two months after the first mochila left St. Joseph, Congress authorized funding to build a transcontinental telegraph. Crews from Nebraska and what is now western Nevada began working toward each other, erecting poles and stringing wire along the Pony Express route. The lines met on Salt Lake City’s Main Street. On October 24, 1861, Western Union ceremoniously linked the two segments and made near instantaneous, coast-to-coast communications a reality. Two days later the now-obsolete Pony Express closed its doors. Mail that was already underway continued to its destination, with the last mochila arriving in San Francisco on November 20, 1861. The Pony’s parent company, the Central Overland California & Pike’s Peak Express Co., soon fell into bankruptcy and was acquired by “Stagecoach King” Ben Holladay. That operation continued under a new name, the Overland Stage Company.

National Park Service, Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide–Utah, p. 45

Effect of Way Stations on Overland Travel
“The most striking new developments [in overland travel] were prompted by the way station requirements of overland stagecoaching (to Denver and the Pike’s Peak country as well as to Salt Lake City and California) and the Pony Express. When coupled with the rapidity of rural and urban settlement west of the Missouri River, east of the traditional California and Oregon destination points, and on all sides of Salt Lake City, the net result was an overland trip which resembled the pioneering ventures of the early 1840s in name only. For in 1859 and 1860 there were, literally, hundreds of supportive facilities en route. Rarely did the emigrant travel more than twenty-five or thirty miles without encountering at least one habitation. Usually there were more. It made no difference whether the overlander began from St. Joseph and traveled via the overland trail on the south side of the Platte River or whether he launched out from Council Bluffs–Omaha on the north side of the Platte—supportive facilities were everywhere.”

John D. Unruh, Jr., The Plains Across, p. 298

The Big Blue
“Except under abnormal conditions the camp site under these old trees [by the Big Blue] was an oasis, comfortable and even luxurious with fresh-water clams from the river, berries from the woods and even wild honey from an occasional bee tree.Given the added fillip of a pretty girl or two, it became a treasured memory to the ‘army of boys’ who traveled west. It may well be stressed, just here, that the bulk of the gold migration was young,–splendidly, adventurously, pitifully, young, the average age being estimated as less than twenty-five years; and nothing short of a comprehensive avalanche could have prevented a certain amount of love-making.

Here at the Big Bluewhere the evening camps smelled pungently of wood smoke; where the declining sun distilled the nostalgic fragrance of wild grape, renewing memories and fostering hope; where the prying moon rose two hours high before it got so much as a peep at the camps within the perfume=med woods–here romance flourished. Many and many a lifelong comradeship was blossoming by the time the river was crossed at last and the wagons moved on into the shimmering distances ahead.

Irene D. Paden, Te Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 52

Mile 1835: Dry Creek
“[W]hen Streeper was ready to return, two prospectors traveling toward Salt Lake City, asked him if they could accompany him, to which he replied that they could if they were not afraid of Indians. They fared forth and saw no Indians or anything else out of the ordinary until they neared Dry Creek station. They saw no signs of anyone about and a herd of cattle was moving away from it.

Riding on in Streeper dismounted, walked to the door of the station and looked inside. Years later he said that what he saw caused his hair to stand on end. Before him lay the scalped, mutilated body of Ralph Rosier, the station keeper. John Applegate and Lafayette (“Bolly”) Bolwinkle were not there. Later, he learned what had happened.

A day or so before, after he had passed on his westward way, Rosier and Applegate rose early as usual to begin the days work. ‘Bolly’ was enjoying an extra forty winks before joining them. Applegate started to make a fire to get breakfast while Rosier went to the spring for a bucket of water.

Suddenly a rifle shot rang out and Rosier screamed. Applegate leaped to the door, looked out, saw his friend upon the ground dying, and turned back. Another shot, and Applegate fell to the floor, a horrible wound in his hip and groin. A moment later McCandless who was alone in his trading post, dashed across the road and took refuge in the station.

‘Bolly’ leaped from his bed in his stocking feet, and seized his gun. For some minutes he and McCandless worked like beaver piling grain bags in the doorway and making other preparations to defend the place to the last ditch. Applegate, who was suffering intensely, urged them to abandon him to his fate and attempt to reach the next station. When they refused he asked for a revolver. They gave him one, thinking he wished to take a shot at an Indian. Instead he shot himself through the head.

After the first two shots the attackers seem to have remained quiet, for nothing is said about ‘Bolly’ and McCandless having fought them. At length the trader declared they had to make a run of it to the next station. When ‘Bolly’ objected on the grounds that the Indians would certainly cut them down in the open, McCandles assured him such was not the case. They were not after him, he said, and since he had always treated them well they had a friendly feeling for him. If ‘Bolly’ would stay close to him they would nut dare shoot for fear of hitting him.

‘Bolly’ at length agreed co make the attempt. When everything was ready, the grain bags were removed from the door and they leaped outside. As they dashed down the road McCandless kept between ‘Bolly’ and the Indians. A few gave chase on foot, but the fugitives outdistanced them. Being satisfied with the blood they had already shed, they turned hack to loot the station.

‘Bolly’ and McCandless reached the next station in safety where they found three or four men ready to defend it. Having covered the ten or twelve miles without boots ‘Bolly’s’ feet were so cut by stones and filled with cactus thorns that he was laid up for some time.”

Settle and Settle, Saddles and Spurs, p. 155-156

Climate West of South Pass
“The climate in this part, as indeed every where between the South Pass and the Great Salt Lake Valley, was an exaggeration of the Italian, with hot days, cool nights, and an incomparable purity and tenuity [thinness] of atmosphere.”

Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 179-180

Adobe
“The very word is Spanish, derived from the Arabic —, meaning ‘the brick.’ it is known throughout the West, and is written adobies, and pronounced dobies.”

Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 197

Feeding Oxen Without Grass
“The oxen were unyoked, fed and watered out of supplies carried in the wagons. Grass here [before the Bear River on Sublette’s Cutoff] was nonexistent, and the normal amount at the Big Sandy had been stripped so bare that it took a man all day to gather a sackful. The resourceful emigrants got around this emergency by feeding their animals flour and water or even baked bread—a grain product which they were able to digest.”

Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 254

Complaints Against Magraw
“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

Mile 890: Deer Creek
“After ten miles of the usual number of creeks, ‘Deep,’ ‘Small,’ ‘Snow,’ ‘Muddy,’ etc., and heavy descents, we reached at 10 A.M. Deer Creek, a stream about thirty feet wide, said to abound in fish. The station boasts of an Indian agent, Major Twiss, a post-office, a store, and of course a grog-shop. M. Bissonette, the owner of the two latter and an old Indian trader, was the usual Creole, speaking a French not unlike that of the Channel Islands, and wide awake to the advantages derivable from travelers: the large straggling establishment seemed to produce in abundance large squaws and little half-breeds. Fortunately stimulants are not much required on the plains: I wish my enemy no more terrible fate than to drink excessively with M. Bissonette of M. Bissonette’s liquor. The good Creole, when asked to join us, naively refused: he reminded me pf certain wine-merchants in more civilized lands, who, when dining with their pratique, sensibly prefer small-beer to their own concoctions.’

Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 138-139

Genoa, Nevada
“[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

Bond Scandal Fallout
“There is little doubt that this affair, aggravated by the financial difficulties of the time and the accumulated irregularities of the past, virtually destroyed the credit of Russell, Majors & Waddell and made their financial failure a certainty, precisely as Russell had feared. Can there be any wonder that the government declined to give a new contract for the overland mail to a firm which had condoned such practices?”

George Root, "Pike's Peak Express Companies," Part IV, Kansas Historical Quarterly, Vol. 14, No. 1 (1944) p. 87

Mile 235: Oak Grove Ranch Marker
Just after Mile 235, near the town of Oak, is a historical marker commemorating the August 7, 1864 raid on this ranch.

Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 76 (discussing "The Narrows")

Causes of Death for Emigrants
“[T]he actual dangers of the overland venture have been considerably misrepresented by the myth-makers’ overemphasis on Indian treachery. The less than 400 emigrants killed by Indians during the antebellum era represent a mere 4 percent of the estimated 10,000 or more emigrant deaths. It follows that disease and trail accidents were far more to be feared by the prospective overlander than were the native inhabitants of the West.

Disease was far and away the number one killer, accounting for nine out of every ten deaths. Although the emigrant was never completely safe from the scourge of epidemic disease, the initial portion of the trail to Fort Laramie, otherwise the easiest segment of the journey, occasioned the most disease-induced deaths. . . .Diarrhea, tuberculosis, smallpox, mumps, and a host of other illnesses downed travelers, but the chief afflictions were cholera, mountain fever, and scurvy. . . .

[C]arelessness was second only to disease as a hazard of cross-country travel. . . . One of the most unexpected facets of the ‘overland’ journey was that death by water claimed almost as many victims during the antebellum era as did the much-feared Indians—perhaps as many as 300, at least 90 in 1850 alone. . . .

After drownings the commonest cause of fatal accidents was careless handling of the fantastic arsenal of firearms the overlanders carried wist with them.

John D. Unruh, Jr., The Plains Across, p. 408-410

Mile 1834: Route Alternatives
At Mile 1834, you have the option of:

Staying on the Pony Express Trail to Dry Creek Station, through Simpson Park Mountains, to Simpson Park Station. This route takes Streep’s Cutoff, also called Streeper’s Cutoff, after the rider William Streeper, or Fool’s Cutoff, due to its unsuitability for wagons. It goes west over a pass just south of Eagle Butte.

Turning south to US 50 and following Simpson’s route around Cape Horn Station (of the Overland Stagecoach).

Mile 1834: Route Alternatives

Overland City
“At noon on the fifth day out, we arrived at the ‘Crossing of the South Platte,’ alias ‘Julesburg,’ alias ‘Overland City,’ four hundred and seventy miles from St. Joseph—the strangest, quaintest, funniest frontier town that our untraveled eyes had ever stared at and been astonished with.”

Mark Twain, Roughing It, p. 59

Water in Utah and Nevada
“This last July I went back through Utah and Nevada to secure water for riders at the ranches along the route. The ranch owners are happy to let you access water on their properties, they just request that you let them know that you are there and on their property.
Also, in order to ride through the Pathfinder ranch properties in Wyoming, to the west of Casper, you will need to request permission and sign a waiver. They are happy to have riders pass through.”

Jan Bennett on Bike The Pony Express (comments), 8/19/19

Longest Infantry March in History
“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

Wild Sage
“This hideous growth, which is to weary our eyes as far as central valleys of the Sierra Nevada, will require a few words of notice.

The artemisia, absinthe, or wild sage differs much from the panacea concerning which the Salernitan school rhymed: “Cur moriatur homo cui Salvia crescit in horto.” [“Why should a man die whilst sage grows in his garden?”] Yet it fills the air with a smell that caricatures the odor of the garden-plant, causing the traveler to look round in astonishment; and when used for cooking it taints the food with a taste between camphor and turpentine. It is of two kinds. The smaller or white species (A. filifolia) rarely grows higher than a foot. Its fetor is less rank, and at times of scarcity it forms tolerable fodder for animals. The Western men have made of it, as of the “red root,” a tea, which must be pronounced decidedly inferior to corn coffee. The Indians smoke it, but they are not particular about what they inhale: like that perverse p—n of Ludlow, who smoked the bell-ropes rather than not smoke at all, or like school-boys who break themselves in upon ratan, they use even the larger sage as well as a variety of other graveolent growths.

The second kind (A. tridentatd) is to the family of shrubs what the prairie cedar is to the trees a gnarled, crooked, rough-barked deformity. It has no pretensions to beauty except in earliest youth, and in the dewy hours when the breeze turns up its leaves that glitter like silver in the sun; and its constant presence in the worst and most desert tracts teaches one to regard it, like the mangrove in Asia and Africa, with aversion. In size it greatly varies ; in some places it is but little larger than the white species; near the Red Buttes its woody stem often attains the height of a man and the thickness of his waist. As many as fifty rings have been counted in one wood, which, according to the normal calculation, would bring its age up to half a century. After its first year, stock will eat it only when threatened with starvation. It has, however, its use; the traveler, despite its ugliness, hails the appearance of its stiff, wiry clumps at the evening halt: it is easily uprooted, and by virtue of its essential oil it makes a hot and lasting fire, and ashes over. According to Colonel Fremont, ‘it has a small fly accompanying it through every change of elevation and latitude.’ The same eminent authority also suggests that the respiration of air so highly impregnated with aromatic plants may partly account for the favorable effect of the climate upon consumption.”

Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 53-54

Forks of the Platte
“The Platte River divides at N. lat. 40 05′ 05″, and W. long. (G.) 101 21′ 24″. The northern, by virtue of dimensions, claims to be the main stream. The southern, which is also called in obsolete maps Padouca, from the Pawnee name for the iatans, whom the Spaniards term Comanches, averages 600 yards, about 100 less than its rival in breadth, and, according to the prairie people, affords the best drinking.”

Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 60-61

Mile 1215: Needle Rocks and Echo Canyon
“After fording Bear River [At Evanston, Wy?] this part of the land was quite a grave-yard we passed over rough ground, and, descending into a bush, were shown on a ridge to the right a huge Stonehenge, a crown of broken and somewhat lanceolate perpendicular conglomerates or cemented pudding-stones called not inappropriately Needle Rocks. At Egan’s Creek, a tributary of the Yellow Creek, the wild geraniums and the willows flourished despite the six feet of snow which sometimes lies in these bottoms. We then crossed Yellow Creek, a water trending northeastward, and feeding, like those hitherto forded, Bear River: the bottom, a fine broad meadow, was a favorite camping-ground, as the many fire-places proved. Beyond the stream we ascended Yellow-Creek Hill, a steep chain which divides the versant of the Bear River eastward from that of Weber River to the west. The ascent might be avoided, but the view from the summit is a fine panorama. The horizon behind us is girt by a mob of hills, Bridger’s Range, silver-veined upon a dark blue ground ; nearer, mountains and rocks, cones and hog-backs, are scattered about in admirable confusion, divided by shaggy rollers and dark ravines, each with its own little water-course. In front the eye runs down the long bright red line of Echo Kanyon, and rests with astonishment upon its novel and curious features, the sublimity of its broken and jagged peaks, divided by dark abysses, and based upon huge piles of disjointed and scattered rock. On the right, about half a mile north of the road, and near the head of the kanyon, is a place that adds human interest to the scene. Cache Cave is a dark, deep, natural tunnel in the rock, which has sheltered many a hunter and trader from wild weather and wilder men: the wall is probably of marl and earthy limestone, whose whiteness is set off by the ochrish brick-red of the ravine below.”

[Note: Needle Rock Station is off the Pony Express Bikepacking Trail. It is southwest of Evanston, WY, and would require turning off the Route at about Mile 1215, or, if you want to catch an addition two stations, Mile 1237]

Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 183-184

Rate of Communication in 1846
“The vote of June 12 was to instruct the President to accept 49°. Three days later Mr. Buchanan and Mr. Pakenham signed the convention that settled the Oregon question forever …. At this point it is wholesome to recall once more the rates of communication, since they governed the management of armies as well as the tidings of peace. The convention was signed on June 15. At once an express left Washington to notify the Oregonians that they were American citizens after all and need not, as some of them were at that moment proposing to do, commit a Bear Flag maneuver against the Hudson’s Bay Company. It went to Vera Cruz and followed in Gillespie’s tracks across enemy soil to Mazatlan. The first boat out was bound to China by way of the Sandwich Islands, and at Honolulu the dispatch was put on board the bark Fawn, which crossed the bar at the mouth of the Columbia on November 12. Five months after the signing of the convention, the Fawn‘s supercargo was rowed to shore with the great news. He was nine days behind unofficial dispatches from Honolulu on the Toulon.

Bernard De Voto, The Year of Decision, 1846, p. 230-231

Camp Guards
“They were the camp guards. Three or four men detailed for this work watched the first half of the night, when another group of equal number stood guard until daylight. Each mess took a fill night’s guard dividing the time and alternating the men. The camp was constantly ‘on a war footing,’ and in times of immediate danger the camp guards as well as the night herders were doubled. The guard was maintained regardless of weather conditions.”

Floyd Bresee, Overland Freighting in the Platte Valley 1850–1870, p. 58

Chorpenning and the Egan Trail
“In October, 1858, Chorpenning set out from Salt Lake City to examine a more direct route, south of Great Salt Lake. Three years before, a Utah pioneer, Howard Egan, had explored a route from northern California to Salt Lake City which followed very nearly the fortieth parallel, north latitude. In September 1855, he retraced his steps and won a wager by riding riding on mule back from Salt Lake City to Sacramento in ten days. This route came to be know as the Egan trail. Chorpenning found the route practicable and immediately set about moving his mail line to the new route.”

LeRoy Hafen, The Overland Mail: 1849–1869, p. 112

Mile 1952: Sand Springs Station
“Sand-Springs Station deserved its name. Like the Brazas de San Diego and other mauvaises terres near the Rio Grande, the land is cumbered here and there with drifted ridges of the finest sand, sometimes 200 feet high, and shifting before every gale. Behind the house stood a mound shaped like the contents of an hour-glass, drifted up by the stormy S.E. gale in esplanade shape, and falling steep to northward or against the wind. The water near this vile hole was thick and stale with sulphury salts: it blistered even the hands. The station-house was no unfit object in such a scene, roofless and chairless, filthy and squalid, with a smoky fire in one corner, and a table in the centre of an impure floor, the walls open to every wind, and the interior full of dust. Hibernia herself never produced aught more characteristic.”

Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 491

Higher Than Haman
“And if ever another man gives a whistle to a child of mine and I get my hands on him, I will hang him higher than Haman!”

[Haman (also known as Haman the Agagite or Haman the evil) is the main antagonist in the Book of Esther, who according to the Hebrew Bible was a vizier in the Persian empire under King Ahasuerus, commonly identified as Xerxes I. . . .

As described in the Book of Esther, Haman was the son of Hammedatha the Agagite. After Haman was appointed the principal minister of the king Ahasuerus, all of the king’s servants were required to bow down to Haman, but Mordechairefused to. Angered by this, and knowing of Mordechai’s Jewish nationality, Haman convinced Ahasuerus to allow him to have all of the Jews in the Persian empire killed.

The plot was foiled by Queen Esther, the king’s recent wife, who was herself a Jew. Esther invited Haman and the king to two banquets. In the second banquet, she informed the king that Haman was plotting to kill her (and the other Jews). This enraged the king, who was further angered when (after leaving the room briefly and returning) he discovered Haman had fallen on Esther’s couch, intending to beg mercy from Esther, but which the king interpreted as a sexual advance.

On the king’s orders, Haman was hanged from the 50-cubit-high gallows that had originally been built by Haman himself, on the advice of his wife Zeresh, in order to hang Mordechai. The bodies of Haman’s ten sons were also hanged, after they died in battle against the Jews. “All the enemies of the Jews” were additionally killed by the Jews, 75,000 of them.^[8]

The apparent purpose of this unusually high gallows can be understood from the geography of Shushan: Haman’s house (where the pole was located) was likely in the city of Shushan (a flat area), while the royal citadel and palace were located on a mound about 15 meters higher than the city. Such a tall pole would have allowed Haman to observe Mordechai’s corpse while dining in the royal palace, had his plans worked as intended.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haman]

Mark Twain, Roughing It, p. 124

Tracking the Sign of an Indian
” The feet, being more used than the other extremities, and unconfined by boot or shoe, are somewhat splay, spreading out immediately behind the toes, while the heel is remarkably narrow. In consequence of being carried straight to the fore the only easy position for walking through grass they tread, like the ant-eater, more heavily on the outer than on the inner edge. The sign of the Indian is readily recognized by the least experienced tracker.”

Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 104

Mile 284: Lone Tree Station
“In time or course climbed slightly to a flat upland covered with grain. This was evidently Nine Mile Ridge, where in staging days stood Lone Tree Station. The solitary tree for which the station was named used to be visible for a long distance in each direction and helped to break the monotony of the bare, rolling prairie hills. It was hard to imagine such a condition faced, as we were, with ranches and roadsides planted thick with shrubs and shade trees.”

Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner,p. 77-78

Finest Natural Wagon Roads
“Even though the rivers of the high plains did not provide the westering Americans with navigable waterways, the valleys of two of these rivers did provide the world’s finest natural wagon roads. Along a great section of the valley of the Arkansas River ran the Santa Fe Trail, and a branch that led to Denver, Colorado. Along the Platte ran the Overland Trail, also called the Oregon Trail, the California Trail, and the Mormon Trail.”

Henry Pickering Walker, The Wagonmasters (1966), p. 18

Trail Options West of South Pass
“From South Pass, emigrants had several options for reaching California. They could go to Salt Lake City via the trail to Fort Bridger, and then take either the Salt Lake Cutoff or the Hastings Cutoff west from there. Or they could tum north from Fort Bridger onto the Fort Hall Road (part of the original Oregon Trail), which led to Fort Hall on the Snake River. Or they could bypass Fort Bridger entirely by taking the Sublette Cutoff, which connected up with the Fort Hall Road in the Bear River Valley. Whichever way they went, they had to cross the vast, bleak Green River and the rough terrain of the Overthrust Belt.”

Keith Heyer Meldahl, Hard Road West, p. 140, n 8.1

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

Mile 1900: Smith Creek Station
“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

Wood for Julesburg
“We were told that we would have to stay at Julesburg over the winter, and that some arrangement would have to be made for winter quarters. The first thing we had to do was to get some wood for cooking. We had been using ‘bull-chips,’ and the boys had not had much cooked food. Captain O’Brien directed me to take the company wagons and an escort, and go for wood. There were no cedar canyons, and no trees anywhere in the neighborhood of Julesburg. The nearest point at which there was anything like a tree was over at Ash Hollow, and that was a day’s march to the northeast, on the North Platte. . . .

“By telegraph we got a lot of cedar poles cut down at Cottonwood Canyon, and the post wagons there brought us up a lot under escort. There was nothing growing along the Platte of much consequence. The statement used to be that one could not get a riding-switch for seventy miles on each side of Julesburg along the Platte. It was thirty miles south of Julesburg to what was called the White Man’s Fork of the Republican River, but it was seventy miles, nearly, to the Republican River. Pioneers had said that there was nothing on White Man’s Fork and nothing until we went seventy miles to the Republican, and there only cottonwoods.”

Eugene Ware, Indian Wars of 1864, p. 318-19, 328

Mail Contracts and the Mormon War
[William M.F.] Magraw lost his contract [to provide mail service between Salt Lake City and Independence] in 1856 for unsatisfactory service and was succeeded by a Mormon, Hiram Kimball, the new low bidder. Brigham Young then took over Kimball’s contract, planing a great Mormon commercial enterprise which would carry not only the mails but all goods between the Missouri River and Utah. . . . [T]he contract was summarily annulled in June of 1857, on the pretext that Kimball was late in fulfilling its terms. The charge was true but only because winter blizzards had, as usual, delayed the mails. . . . Magraw’s unhappiness at losing his contract, and Mormon unhappiness at losing theirs, were contributory causes to the ensuing ‘war’ of 1857-58.”

John D. Unruh, Jr., The Plains Across, p. 241

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

The Pony Express Takes Over Chorpenning's Route
Happily, as it turns out, for the Pony Express, the Central Overland Trail was also developed as a stagecoach and mail-by-mule route by a hardworking competitor, George W. Chorpenning. Chorpenning held the federal contract for mail and stagecoach service between Salt Lake and San Francisco when Pony Express agents came sniffing around, looking for opportunity. The U.S. Post Office abruptly canceled his contract in May 1860, about a month after the Pony Express started operations, due in part to behind-the-scenes conniving by the Pony and others hoping to grab that contract for themselves. Even while Chorpenning’s “Jackass Mail” was still up and braying — and without a government contract in hand, itself — the Pony took over his route, brazenly moved into his stage and mail stations, seized his livestock and equipment, and hired away some of his key employees. Chorpenning brought a claim before Congress for his losses, but was still uncompensated when he died in 1894. Meanwhile, the Pony Express would share its pirated route and assets with a passenger, freight, and “heavy mail” stage line operated by its parent company, the Central Overland California & Pike’s Peak Express Co.

national Park Service, Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide–Wyoming, p. 37-38