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.

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 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 1134: Green River
“The trouble with the Green River Desert was not lack of water. There was plenty, but it was all in the Green River—’by far the most formidable stream to be met on this entire journey,’ said William Johnston, whose company was well in the forefront of the gold rush. He found it in full flood, a rushing torrent three hundred to four hundred feet wide and ten to twenty feet deep. . . .

The traders’ caravans and the early wagon trains skirted the desert proper to the southeast, remaining timidly near the Big Sandy until well within the angle of its confluence with the Green an then striking up the east bank of the great river about twenty miles to a crossing near the mouth of Slate creek. Later companies crossed almost at the mouth of the Big Sandy at what was called the Lombard Ferry. . . .

The Green in the month of June is a rare sample of a watercourse born of perpetual snowbanks. Its swollen current, racing down from icebound peaks and crisp and sparkling upland meadows, arrives in the hot sage flats swiftly but ponderously, and as cold as Greenland’s icy mountains.

It is almost unimaginable, but on this torrential sluice ordinary men, butcher, baker, and candlestick maker, launched their wives and young families in wagon beds. Taking such a liberty with the Green was surely the quintessence of something or other—maybe heroism, maybe just foolhardiness. . . .

Later there were ferries, but the earliest pioneers had to do with substitutes: catamaran rafts, made of braced logs dug out to hold the wagon wheels; ordinary rafts constructed hastily of any small timber available; sheet-iron or wooden boats fitted with wheels and previously driven in the caravan as vehicles.; and, most common, wagon beds caulked tight and with the naked bows stripped of canvas. . . .

And then, in the summer of ’47 came the ubiquitous Mormon and his ferryboats. By ’49 several were needed at the main crossings. It was a money-making venture, but the prices were ordinarily fair, ranging from three to four dollars a wagon.

[N.B. The Big Timber Pony Express Station site lies near Mile 1126 on the Pony Express Bikepacking Route, but is off the route to the southeast. To reach it, it looks like there is a cutoff road at about Mile 1123 that rejoins the Route around Mile 1127.

Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 240-241

Mile 1235-1311: Henefer to Mountain Dell station
“Beyond [Henefer Creek’s] headwaters, the great wagons rolled and thundered through Pratt’s Pass on the summit of a low divide.Down another steep hill the wagons pitched while all hands and the cook held back on ropes and on the wheels; along the bed of the tiny streamlet, crossing and crisscrossing it for two or three miles down to East Canyon with its steep watercourse known variously as Canyon, east canyon, or kenyon Creek. Here they really learned the meaning of ‘trouble.’

Small shallow East Canyon Creek had to be forded ten or more times; the trail was crooked beyond reason and think with amputated willow stubs, testimony to the herculean task accomplished by the Reed-Donner party in forcing a passage through mountains at this point in 1846. The Mormons, traveling in their footsteps a year later, accomplished the thirty-five mile trek from Weber River to Salt Lake Valley in three days; but they recorded that it took the Donner party sixteen days of hard labor to win through the valley. For years the cut willow stubs remained, and the animals baptized them with blood from torn hoofs and gashed legs.

From East Canyon the trail led up a ravine worn down by a narrow and precipitous creek full of bottomless mire and huge boulders ‘over which mules and wagon wheels had to be pulled or lifted constantly.’ . . .

When they reached the top of this four-mile climb the wagons were at the highest elevation of the entire journey so far, and about two thousand feet above the point where they had entered East Canyon. Here, on the fir-crowned summit of Big Mountain, the migrating Mormon columns had their first view of the promised land.

A mile and a half down, and down. No animals were left on on the wagons but the faithful wheelers remaining to hold up the tongues. Every available man held back on a rope. By ’49 the timber had been cut for the building of Salt Lake City and the caravans twisted here and there between the jagged stumps down to a small, sheltered hollow known as Mountain Dell. It was a lovely meadow, but miry. The wagons often celebrated their return to the horizontal by stalling in the mud with promptness and precision, and the tired travelers, admitting that they were sunk, gave it up for the day, camped, and fought mosquitoes.”

Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 295-296

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

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

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

Hockaday and the Salt Lake Mail
“[John] Hockaday, Magraw’s former partner, bid for the Utah mail contract in June 1857 but lost to Stephen B. Miles of Delaware, who took on the difficult task for only $32,000 per annum. Miles failed, and Hockaday and his associates won the St. Joseph–Salt Lake mail contract in May 1858 to provide weekly service until November 1860. . . .

Hockaday created the first dependable mail service between Utah and Missouri, eventually establishing thirty-six stations, each of which was entitled to preempt 320 acres of public land.”

Will Bagley, South Pass: Gateway to a Continent, Location 3880-3895 [Kindle Edition]

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

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.”

[“‘suave mari magno”–http://wiki.hmssurprise.org/phase3/index.php/Lexicon:Suave_mare_magno]

William Chandless, Chandless, W. (1857). A Visit to Salt Lake, p. 84-85

Roundabout
“There was good hunting roundabout.”

George R. Stewart, The California Trail, p. 43

Motive for the Pony Express
Much has been written of the famous Pony Express, but most accounts have stressed the romantic and spectacular side, failing to show the motives which actuated its founders, or to portray its relationship to the other problems of overland communication and western expansion. The Pony Express was not an end in itself, but a means to an end. There had been previous suggestions for the establishment of a fast overland express, and an attempt was made in Congress in I855 to provide such a service, but these first efforts did not succeed. With the establishment of the overland stage lines a rivalry had arisen between the Butterfield and the “Central” routes, and with the assembling of the thirty-sixth Congress in December, 1859, everything pointed in the direction of a general revision of the overland service. Partisans of the Central route were active but they met with considerable opposition. It was with the idea of demonstrating the practicability of the Central route for year-round travel and to secure an enlarged mail contract that the Pony Express scheme was conceived.

During the winter of 1859-60, while Mr. William H. Russell was in Washington, he discussed the overland mail question with Senator Gwin of California. The Senator contended that it was necessary to demonstrate the feasibility of the Central route before he would be able to get from Congress the desired contract. He appealed to Russell to launch a swift overland express and agreed to obtain from Congress a subsidy to reimburse the firm for the undertaking. The plan appealed to Russell and he agreed to put through the enterprise.

Note 349:

The Washington correspondent of the San Francisco Bulletin wrote of the project of Russell, Majors, and Waddell, January 30, 186o: “Their object in establishing this express is not so much to make money at present, as it is to prove by actual experiment the superiority of the Salt Lake route.” The Rocky Mountain News of May 23, 1860, makes the following comment upon the establishment of the Pony Express: “The Express Company deserve great credit for concentrating public attention on the Central route, and it is hoped that their enterprise will shame Congress into legislation in favor of the opening of a daily or tri-weekly mail route to Denver, Utah, and California. The southern route is backed up by the entire South.”

H. H. Bancroft, in his History of Nevada, 228, says that the object of the founders was never distinctively made known. However, he says that Walter Crowinsheld of Nevada who assisted to re-stock the road after the Pah Ute outbreak of 1860, was of the opinion that the line was established with a view to obtaining the mail contract when the feasibility of the route was demonstrated. Bancroft goes on to say that Russell, Majors, and Waddell made no effort in that direction. This is hardly true. Russell was lobbying in Congress, and the Butterfield company was moved to the Central route in 1861 only after a working arrangement had been made with Russell, Majors, and Waddell.

The close relation of the Pony Express to the mail contract is shown in a letter from W. H. Russell, dated New York, September 27, 1860. (Published in the San Francisco Bulletin of October 16, 1860.) In this letter he says that his company’s mail contract expires November 30th, and that they cannot continue the Pony Express unless their mail contract is renewed. “A mail contract alone would justify us to continue the Pony. . . We have however attained our principal object, that of practically demonstrating that the route is feasible and practical, and with a good mail contract, and in that way only, the Express can be sustained.’

LeRoy Hafen, The Overland Mail, p. 165-169 and notes

Fort Kearny Mail
“‘We arrived at Fort Kearny after noon [May 8, 1849]. Here we had an opportunity of sending letters to our friends. The officers are going to send a mail to the States in the morning and kindly offered to transmit any letters we wished to send.’ . . .

The Fort Kearny post office, which apparently was operated by, or in conjunction with, the post sutler, was another favorite haunt for emigrants . . . As a result of the vagaries of the mail service, particularly in early years, most enquiring emigrants came away disappointed; only a few would emerge triumphant with missives from loved ones. Thousands of letters, scribbled on packing boxes by candlelight, were mailed at Fort Kearny; only a dozen or so have survived.

The occasional heroic efforts of ‘north-siders’ [emigrants north of the Platte] to reach Fort Kearny for their mail have been noted, this being their only chance to communicate with home until Fort Laramie was reached.”

Merrill J. Mattes, The Great Platte River Road, p. 174, 206

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

Platte River
Campbell’s party reached the Platte well to the east of the forks, took the South Platte at the forks, and presently crossed to the North Platte. For a hundred miles the country had been gradually changing. The rains all but ceased, there was no more tall grass, drinkable water was becoming scarcer, the long upward inclination of the land had become apparent. The Platte was a thin mud that flowed sluggishly through innumerable islands of cottonwood and willow and might be a mile or more wide. It was the first of Western rivers to beget the standard quips — it was a mile wide and an inch deep and it flowed uphill, it was water you had to chew, it was good drinking if you threw it out and filled the cup with whiskey. Quicksands were added to the day’s hazards; Miller’s sketch is typical but can only imply the quaking and screaming of mules, who were intuitive about quicksands, and the bellowing of Campbell’s bulls.

Bernard De Voto, Across the Wide Missouri, p. 35

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

Important Centers for News
The four important centers of news for the Pacific Coast press before the establishment of the overland mail in 1858 were Washington, New York, New Orleans, and Panama.

John Denton Carter, "Before the Telegraph: The News Service of the San Francisco Bulletin, 1855-1861," Pacific Historical Review 11, No. 3 (Sep., 1942): 303

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

Mile 655: Chimney Rock
“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

Rise in Personal Letter Writing
By the mid-nineteenth century, the post, long primarily a vehicle for newspapers, now also enabled average Americans to enjoy easy, back-and-forth personal correspondence for pennies, and they did so in rapidly accelerating numbers. Statistics on volume are dodgy, but around 1820, most Americans still received fewer than one letter per year; that figure rose to nearly three by 1850, to seven by 1854, and kept on rising. In what historian David Henkin calls “the postal age,” their correspondence no longer had to be reserved for matters of life and death but could carry on casual written conversations between friends.

Winifred Gallagher, How the Post Office Created America, p. 91

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

1960 Anniversary
Americans love anniversaries, and as 1960 approached, the country rediscovered the legacy of the Pony Express. A century made it possible for a whole new level of enthusiasm. By the time the centennial was planned, there was no one alive who had been there, and the celebrants were relying on memories and a very odd collection of books. Previous celebrations to honor the memory of the Pony Express—1935 was the seventy-fifth birthday—had been odd affairs. In 1954, a group of riders at the behest of the National Junior Chamber of Commerce reenacted the days of the Pony Express by racing day and night from Ogden, Utah, to Colorado Springs, nowhere near the actual route.

As the centennial approached, Waddell F. Smith, grandson of William Bradford Waddell, and the greatest professional Pony Express promoter of modern times, made himself known. Smith operated the Russell, Majors & Waddell Pony Express Foundation and Pony Express History and Art Gallery out of his home in San Rafael, California. In 1960, he produced The Story of the Pony Express: Official 1960 Centennial Edition. He called himself the editor, but the book is none other than Glenn Danford Bradley’s little tome reissued- and annotated-with an index by Smith. . . .

The actual observation of the centennial was as comic as the debate in California. One of the reriders staging the cross-country mail run accidentally shot another. The low point occurred when the reriders were unable to bring the mail overland on time and their tired horses had to be put on a truck. When they finally showed up in Old Sac, the mail pouch had been accidentally left behind.

Christopher Corbett, Orphans Preferred, p. 211, 213

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

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

San Buenaventura River
Escalante could have reached [Great Salt Lake] in less than two days’ travel and that he did not make the journey is inexplicable. It is all the more so because, as Miera’s report makes certain, the Indians said, or were understood to say, that a very large and navigable river flowed west from it, and surely their first duty was to explore any such river as a possible route to Monterey. Miera thought it must be the Tizon, which he believed Ofiate had discovered and named; but Tizon was Melchior Diaz’s name for the Colorado. When he drew his map he showed it flowing west from the larger lake—and so created a cartographer’s myth, for later maps would show just such a river flowing out of Great Salt Lake to the Pacific and would give it the name that Escalante had given Green River, the San Buenaventura.

Bernard De Voto, The Course of Empire, p. 294

Willamette Valley
Listening to the inner voice, Jason Lee entered on his mission, a long way from Flathead Lake, and consecrated the Lord’s house. It was built in the Willamette Valley, one of the great valleys of the world. When the missionaries reached French Prairie, so named because superannuated voyageurs of the Hudson’s Bay Company had settled there and made farms, they recognized a leading. They began to fell trees, hew puncheons, and split clapboards. Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin – beside hundreds of creeks thousands of movers were doing just the same, a brotherhood of axe and adze and frow who supply an American symbol. The little cabin they built beside the Willamette sixty-odd miles up from its mouth was just any cabin in any clearing – except that it was raised in Oregon and the American empire would form round it like a pool. McLoughlin approved the decision from a tangle of conflicting values, desires, company policies, and blunders. He had them out of the mountains, he had them south of the Columbia, and if the end was foreseeable, why, he had new friends to talk to. He sold them seed and cattle and all the material and supplies they needed. They drove an American furrow in Oregon soil and began to think of starting a school and preaching to the Indians. Some Indian boys and girls came in and asked to stay – dirty, lousy, and so nearly naked that clothes had to be made for them at once. A special providence of God had given some of this handful of rice-Christians pointed heads, like those which William Walker had not seen. They were Chinooks: providence had furnished the mission some broken-spirited novices who would be docile. That attended to, Lee opened the solicitation of his Mission Board that was to last for years. Send us families, send us females, send us laymen – send us farmers, mechanics, workmen – send us machinery and plows and fruit trees and seed. Send us ‘temporals’ – we have enough divines. Send us colonizers, empire-builders, a population. This is the richest land in the world.

Bernard De Voto, Across the Wide Missouri, p. 212

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

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

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

Slow Communications With Taylor
“Taylor sat under his grapevine at Matamor6s and could not have had a better press. Clearly the country appreciated his victories but the administration sent no official praise. The holy cause of Whiggery, about which Taylor had no clear ideas, was probably being degraded by the Democrats. Taylor cultivated his acquaintance with Congressional Whigs in letters which show Bliss’s editing. The President and the War Department kept annoying him with incomprehensible demands for information. They wanted to know what the country around him was like; he made no effort to find out. They wanted to know what ideas for further conquest the commanding general in the field was working out; he wasn’t working any out. The administration’s jgnorance and the commander’s stupidity interacted, and the confusion was increased by the sloth of communication. It took between three and four weeks to deliver a dispatch, but neither headquarters thought of establishing a courier service. (Polk usually heard of developments in the war from the British embassy before reports came through from the army.) But for that matter, neither headquarters thought to put its dispatches into cipher.”

Bernard De Voto, The Year of Decision, 1846, p. 287-288

Emigrants and Cattle
“The wagon-train emigrants remained for months cheek by jowl with more cattle than they had ever seen before; rode behind them; walked ahead of them; took their dust; drank milk from their tired cows; ate beef from the lame oxen butchered to get the last ounce of use from their faithful carcasses; slept on stormy nights with them tied restlessly to the wagon wheels while their horns poked bulges in the canvas tops; desperately kept themselves and their children from under stampeding hooves—or sometimes despairingly failed; endured cow hair on their clothes and in their food; drank water sullied by cattle and by buffalo; cooked with their droppings; and everlastingly—day and night—lived with the noise and smell of cattle.”

Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 172

First Overland Mail from St. Joseph
“Residents of Sacramento celebrated the arrival of the first overland mail from St. Joseph on July 20, 1858.”

First Overland Mail from St. Joseph

Marcy Expedition Crossing the Rockies
“Marcy offered the [Ute] chief the value of three horses if he would guide the party to Cochetopa Pass, the only feasible route in miles over the continental divide. But the Indian was adamant, indicating that the white men would die if they tried to cross.

“On the 11th of December the ascent of the western slope of the Rockies was commenced. Soon snow began to impede progress and presently became deeper with a crust on the surface which cut the legs of the mules. Deeper and deeper it grew and the order of march was changed. Instead of having the animals break the trail the men were ordered in front and proceeding in single file, tramped down a path. But despite this solicitude for the animals the poor beasts began to weaken. The bitter pine leaves from the evergreens formed their only sustenance and on this unwholesome forage the famished brutes grew thin, weak, and began to die. Burdens must be lightened if the crossing was to be made, and accordingly, all surplus baggage was cached.

“But still the mules continued to perish. One day five were lost, and on the following morning eight others lay stark and rigid on the mountain side. Not only was the pace being greatly reduced but the food supply of the men was becoming alarmingly small. All the beef cattle had been consumed and the bread supply was very limited. To husband the strength of men and animals Marcy now ordered all baggage discarded except arms and ammunition and one blanket for each man.

“The snow, now four feet deep, was so dry and light that the men when walking upright sank to their waists in the fluffy whiteness. Jim Baker decided to try snow-shoes, but found the snow too loose and powdery to sustain them. In breaking trail through the deepest part the men in front now found it necessary to crawl on their hands and knees to pack the snow so that it would bear up the other men and the animals. The leading man was usually able to go about fifty yards before he became exhausted and dropped out into a rear position.

“Rations had been reduced and finally were exhausted before the summit of the divide was reached. The only food now available to the hungry men was the meat of the famished animals.”

LeRoy R. Hafen, "A Winter Rescue March Across the Rockies," p. 9-10

The Great Migration of '46
“The “Great Migration” of the histories is variously the first big push toward Oregon in 1843 or the more populous one of ’45. The phrase is rightly used in that, as the texts say, those years made Oregon American soil no matter what might be said in Congress or Downing Street. Yet the migration of ’46 was the decisive one – this was the year of decision – and though [Francis ] Parkman failed to understand it, he was right in calling it great.”

Bernard De Voto, The Year of Decision, 1846, p. 119

Border Ruffians
“So I journeyed on, getting over about thirty-five miles a day on an average, and nothing worth recording occurred till Independence, an important town and Indian trading-post on the frontier of Missouri, was reached. There I found the place crowded with Missourians and a goodly sprinkling of men from the Southern States, all full of excitement over the burning question whether the Territory of Kansas, recently opened up for settlement, should be Slave or Free.

The Free State party in the North, managed and worked from Faneuil Hall, Boston, had been sending up men and arms, and had occupied positions defended by light artillery. The Missourians were crossing the river, and volunteers from all the Southern States were marching up to the conflict, which might break out at any moment.

In this scene of seething unrest and wild passion, a stranger was naturally regarded with suspicion until he declared his sympathies. Mine were strongly on the side of the South, and, as soon as I made this known, I was heartily welcomed amongst the ” Border Ruffians,” as the pro-Slavery party was nicknamed by the Free Staters.”

R.H. Williams, With the Border Ruffians, p. 74

Kublai Kaan's Pony Express
[T]he great Kaan had his Pony Ex- press 500 years earlier. Thus Marco wrote in Book ii, Chapter xxvi (Vol. i, pp. 433-437) how from the royal city of Cambalue (Pekin or Peiping) the Kaan had paved highways running to the various provinces. At every 25 miles on these royal roads was a Yamb, a “Horse-Post-House” or station, for the care and forwarding of travelers, but especially to expedite the movements of the emperor ‘s messengers. Marco states that there were in the empire more than 10,000 stations and that more than 300,000 horses were kept for the use of these messengers.

To save horse-flesh, foot-runners were generally used. As in India in the recent past if not in the very present, each man was equipped with a belt set with bells to give notice of his coming. Between these post-houses, smaller stations were built every three miles and the runner carried the despatches only that distance and turned them over to the next man. However, in case the despatches called for greater haste and speed, then horses were used. The riders were equipped with bells, as were the foot-runners, and the chronicler thus writes of them (p. 436):

They take a horse from those at the station which are standing ready saddled, all fresh and in wind, and mount and go at full speed, as hard as they can ride in fact. And when those at the next post hear the bells they get ready another horse and a man equipt in the same way, and he takes over the letter or whatever it be, and is off full-speed to the third station, where again a fresh horse is found all ready, and so the despatch speeds along from post to post, always at full gallop, with regular change of horses. And the speed at which they go is marvellous.

Marco’s specific statements as to the speed of these couriers are exaggerated and contradictory. In this chapter he says that the runner will carry despatches from places 10 days off in a day and night and from 100 days distant in 10 days and nights. The horse-men on the other hand will do 200 or 250 miles in a day and as much in a night. Yet he notes that at night they have to go slower because they are accompanied by footmen with torches, and the rider must accommodate his speed to that of the runner. Then Marco adds a detail about the dress of the riders, which I think (but am not sure about) was also true of our Pony Riders. Here are his own words: “Those men [riders] are highly prized; and they could never do it, did they not bind hard the stomach, chest and head with strong bands.” Had they not done so they would have literally been shaken to pieces. As an indication of how accurate Marco generally was in his observations, in speaking of the paved roads of Manzi as recorded by Ramusio, he meets a query in the reader’s mind in the following statement (Book ii, Chapter lxxvii-Vol. ii, p. 189): “But as the Great Kaan’s couriers could not gallop their horses over the pavement, the side of the road is left unpaved for their con- venience.” This, furthermore, is just what is found in the clay “shoulders” alongside our concrete roads in the United States to-day, and these soft shoulders are to-day utilized by horse- men in just the same way in order to save the horses’ feet.

E. W. Gudger, "Marco Polo and Some Modern things Old in the Asia of His Day, " The Scientific Monthly , Dec., 1933, Vol. 37, No. 6 (Dec., 1933), 501

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

Buffalo Bill's Pony Express Claims
“Not just every book about Cody but every one about the Pony Express recites Cody’s Pony Express exploits, even Alexander Majors’ memoirs. All, however, are easily recognized as mere quotations, paraphrases, or embellishments of Bill’s autobiography. There is but one tiny ember beneath these billows of smoke: for two months in the summer of 1857, the eleven-year-old Cody rode as messenger boy for Russell, Majors and Waddell within a three-mile radius of Leavenworth.

“There seems no point in resisting the inevitable; Bill’s pony riding represents another spate of fiction.”

John S. Gray, "Fact versus Fiction in the Kansas Boyhood of Buffalo Bill," Kansas History, Vol. 8, No. 1, p. 19

The Independence Road
“That section of the Oregon-California Trail commonly known in emigrant days as the Independence Road was first used by trading expeditions out of the Kansas City area in the 1830s. . . While trees are plentiful today, they were scarce in 1849 as the result of frequent prairie fires. The lack of wood and the numerous stream crossings were the biggest problems faced by the emigrants. . . .

The prairie road itself, ever winding to take advantage of contours, led Richard Hickman to explain, “A more crooked road never marked this green footstool.”

Merrill J. Mattes, The Great Platte River Road, p. 136-137

Old Isis Bargee
“At Saint Joseph (Mo.), better known by the somewhat irreverent abbreviation of St. Jo, I was introduced to Mr. Alexander Majors, formerly one of the contractors for supplying the army in Utah a veteran mountaineer, familiar with life on the prairies. His meritorious efforts to reform the morals of the land have not yet put forth even the bud of promise. He forbade his drivers and employees to drink, gamble, curse, and travel on Sundays; he desired them to peruse Bibles distributed to them gratis; and though he refrained from a lengthy proclamation commanding his lieges to be good boys and girls, he did not the less expect it of them. Results : I scarcely ever saw a sober driver; as for profanity the Western equivalent for hard swearing they would make the blush of shame crimson the cheek of the old Isis bargee; and, rare exceptions to the rule of the United States, they are not to be deterred from evil talking even by the dread presence of a ‘lady.'”

[“Old Isis bargee” = Thames river pilot, Isis being an alternate name for the Thames]

Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 5

Mile 1160 to 1193: Hams Fork to Fort Bridger
“The wagons had various routes as the years went by, but these all tended to center near the confluence of Hams and Blacks Forks. Both the original trail and the later road from Lombard Ferry crossed Hams Fork first, just above the junction, and then negotiated the more difficult Blacks Fork which curved like a frightened snake as it hastened through the low sage. Its waters were swift, cool, and deep, and the wagons turned and followed up its south bank, sometime close to the stream but oftener out in the hot sage and choking dust. The abumdance of small green willows surprised the sage-accustomed cooks with very little fire and a terrific smudge—which was not without its uses, the mosquitoes being recorded as smaller than hummingbirds but decidedly larger than crickets.”

Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 245

Cholera
“[W]e have the testimony of physicians of the day that it was the genuine, simon-pure article which filtered up the Mississippi on the river boats from the port of New Orleans. Up the Missouri it traveled, and into the trail outfitting towns, whose cemeteries grew apace. Out to the prairies it marched with the emigrant columns, reserving the full strength of its attack until it struck the Platte Valley, where crowded campsites and polluted wells provided a fertile field for its spread. Here it reigned supreme in its terror, for while it raged the Indians gave the camps wide berth. . . .

The onslaught of cholera was sudden and violent. In extreme cases a traveler might get up as usual in the morning and be buried at the noon stop. It was made more mysterious and dreaded by the utter ignorance of the emigrants as to what caused it. Physicians and thinkers advocated the use of swiftly running water instead of the polluted wells; but the general knowledge of the action of germs was still in the future, and few, if any, consistently boiled their drinking water. Some guidebooks recommended it, and, in reminiscences compiled many years later, a few pioneers have written that they did so; but I suspect that most of them merely made coffee or tea as being more palatable, and that boiling the water was incidental. . .

Some of the travelers worked themselves into such a frenzy of fear that they drove their animals day and night in a growing crescendo of terror. Some grew so callous in their mad flight that they would not stop to give adequate assistance to the dying, but rushed on, carrying them helpless and unattended in the wagons. . . . In other cases the sufferer was simply left behind when the train pulled out in the morning through lack of any one sufficiently concerned to brave the terror of the epidemic by caring for him. . . .

Sheer terror prompted much of the cruelty, necessity the rest; but it was a stark, raving, maniacal period which the emigrants experienced in the plague-smitten Platte Valley.

Turning to softer, but no less moving, aspects of the unhappy visitation, we find records of people who tended and buried the abandoned; carried sick strangers in their wagons, took orphaned children or mothers with families, maintaining them out of their own scanty supplies clear to the Pacific coast. These disconsolate and bereaved families were perhaps the saddest sight that the Overland Trail had to offer; crushed and stupefied by their loss; hurried along willy-nilly in a company of strangers, with their nearest and dearest left for the wolves to dig up and devour.”

Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 115-119

Kansas City
“The two French settlements [Chouteau’s headquarters and a few houses] were located, without fuss about mosquitoes or controversy over pure water, by simply arriving at the most convenient spot for trading purposes and remaining there. They, with their later neighbor Westport Landing, formed the nuclei of Kansas City. . . . David Cosad arrived at Kansasmouth on April 11, 1849. he called it Kansas and described it as a steamboat landing a short distance below the mouth of the Kansas River, and said it ‘bid fair to be a smart place for business.'”

Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 20-21

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

Those Who Could Read
At Pacific Springs, one of the crossroads of the western trail, a pile of gold-bearing quartz marked the road to California; the other road had a sign bearing the words “To Oregon.” Those who could read took the trail to Oregon.

Dorothy O. Johansen, "A Working Hypothesis for the Study of Migrations," Pacific Historical Review , Feb., 1967, Vol. 36, No. 1 (Feb., 1967), p 8

Missourians and Mormons on the Trail
Their second day out, June 5, they crawled up over the bluffs west of modern Guernsey, Wyoming, where today’s tourist may see the trail rutted nearly four feet deep in the soft rock, and as they were nooning at the warm spring which Fremont had noted, they were passed by an Oregon company that had left Independence on April 12 and was pushing to stay ahead of everything on the road. Next morning another Oregon train passed them, and there were murmurs and dark looks for in this company were some recognized Missourians. But segregation was impossible, for water and camping sites were scarce, and at Cottonwood Creek (the Hermann Ranch) the Saints found themselves corralling only a little beyond this second Oregon company. For all their mutual suspicion, there was some hobnobbing. Some of the Missourians had heard about the roadometer, and came over to inspect it. Burr Frost, one of the Mormon blacksmiths, got some credit in heaven by setting up his forge and repairing a carriage spring for one of them.

Wallace Stegner, The Gathering of Zion, p 145

Burr and the Mormons
“The short period between 1852 and 1855 was in general a peaceful interlude in the relations between the Mormons and the nation. Although Steptoe, [Secretary Benjamin G.] Ferris, and [Indian Agent] Holeman had raised brief disturbances, the years were as free of painful incident as any before 1896, when Utah gained statehood. But the harmony, such as it was, soon faded. Within a few months voices more powerful and strident than those heard in the past were demanding federal intervention in the Mormons’ country: and a stormy petrel reached Salt Lake City in the person of David. T. Burr, the newly appointed surveyor general of the Territory.

Almost at once Burr ran into trouble with the inhabitants on the Valley. their title to the land they occupied was tenuous at best, in the absence of an Indian treaty or congressional enactment. Knowing this, they looked upon a survey of their region as a move preliminary to their eviction by the Government. Their fears had some justification, for Burr soon wrote to his superiors that the Church had illegally appropriated areas of the public domain, a reference to the recent introduction of an experiment, tried without success in earlier communities, to persuade the Mormons to deed their properties to the Church.

In alarm, the Saints sought to impede the surveyor general’s labors in every way possible, using intimidation, violence, and their influence over the Indians. . . .Garland Hurt, whoe position as agent brought him into greater difficulties than Holeman had encountered . . . charged that a bishop had stirred up the Indians in southern Utah by circulating the lie that surveyors were really a posse sent in disguise to arrest Gunnison’s murderers. Other Mormons in Fillmore, Hurt added, had stoned a house where Burr and his men had stopped for the night.The surveyor general himself reported the Mormons’ removal of corner posts, the theft of animals, and other obstructive acts, none of which could be prosecuted in the Church-controlled courts.

In the spring of 1857 Burr gave up his work in Utah, offering a number of explanations for his decision. His life was in fanger, for the priesthood was denouncing him from the pulpit. One of his associates . . . had been beaten nearly to death, perhaps permanently crippled, by a grouop of the infamous Danites. . . . and Brigham Young had ominously declared in public that his, Burr’s, work was at an end. In this lawless atmosphere three apostates had been murdered; Burr’s friends predicted the same fate for him if he remained.

As was frequently the case in more significant episodes, the truth about Burr’s clash with the Mormons is not easily found. . . .From the statements of burr, Hurt, Crain, Mogo, Wilson, and Landon it appeared that the people of the territory were, if not actually rebellious, at least ready to impede the work of duly appointed federal representatives.”

Norman F. Furniss, The Mormon Conflict, 1850-1859, p. 45-47.

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

Camping
“From West of Casper, WY to outside of Sacramento, CA free camping on public lands can happen almost anywhere you can find a place to put your sleeping bag down. I wouldn’t necessarily suggest a hammock as there aren’t very many tall things to tie off to out in the high desert.

Here’s a link to information about camping on Bureau of Land Management land (BLM)

Check out the interactive map to see a trace of the Pony Express route on top of a layer that shows public lands”

Jan Bennett on Bike The Pony Express , 3/6/20

South Pass 1836
the last tangential touch of the Sweetwater, in the greenery of its shallow gully where it comes down out of the hills, and we know that it camped for the night of July 4 at Pacific Spring or at the little Sandy. From camp to camp this was a tremendous day for any westering party – any party, that is, which had newcomers in it, for it was just a day’s drive, and a dry one, to veterans. But it crossed the parting of the waters, the fundamental divide of the continent, and it marked the end of the United States. From water to water was twelve miles and somewhere in that stretch you left home behind and came to Oregon. Fremont, who had Kit Carson to help him, found the true height of land only with great difficulty and no doubt incorrectly, for he had no instruments sensitive enough to make sure. He estimated that the final rise where the continent parted and fell away on both sides was about equal ‘to the ascent of the Capitol hill from the Avenue at Washington.’ But it was enough for any traveler that somewhere in that twelve-mile stretch of dun and olive sagebrush he crossed the fundamental watershed and the frontier of fable. No one ever more momentously than some of those who crossed it with Fitzpatrick on Independence Day of 1836.

Bernard De Voto, Across the Wide Missouri, p. 244-45

The Mormon "Halfway House"
“Year by year the number and variety of available goods and services [in Salt Lake City] increased. . . .By 1852 . . . travelers could patronize several eating houses and hotels. In 1853 yjr United States Hotel owners advertised the only bar in the city . . . By 1856 clothiers, weavers, druggists, sign painters, saddlers, and operators of vegetable markets were also actively engaged in trade . . .

The total effect of all this was significant. To be able to interrupt the once-formidable overland journey for an extended sojourn in a large city where an emigrant could feast on memorable cuisine, board in a bona fide hotel, have a likeness made to send back to relatives, have his hair cut, his watch repaired, and even eyeglasses prescribed must have altered the atitudes with which travelers faced the overland journey.”

John D. Unruh, Jr., The Plains Across, p. 310-311

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

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

Buffalo Bill and the Pony Express
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

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

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

Suckers and Pukes
“Through the magic of the Internet, we managed to find an 1854 volume called History of Illinois From Its Commencement as a State in 1818 to 1857, penned by “the late Gov. Thomas Ford” which promised a “full account of the Black Hawk War, the rise, progress and fall of Mormonism, the Alton and Lovejoy riots and other important and interesting events.”

It also explains the origin of the nicknames “pukes” and “suckers.”

First the suckers. Back in the late 1820s, migrant workers from southern Illinois began traveling up the Mississippi River in the spring to work in the Galena lead mines and then back down the river to their homes in the fall. This, the late Gov. Ford noted, mirrored the migratory patterns of “the fishy tribe called ‘Suckers.'”

But there’s another, less charitable though more interesting explanation. A “sucker” is a sprout off the main stem of a tobacco plant that sucks off nutrients and has to be plucked off so that the plant will thrive. The southern part of Illinois, the late Gov. Ford explained, was originally settled by poor Southerners who “were asserted to be a burthen upon the people of wealth; and when they removed to Illinois, they were supposed to have stripped themselves off from the stem of the tobacco plant, and gone away to perish like the stem of the tobacco plant.”

As it happened, the Galena mines were full of workers from Missouri, too, and they didn’t get along very well with the miners from southern Illinois. “Analogies always abound with those who wish to be sarcastic,” the late Gov. helpfully notes, and so the Missourians started calling the southern Illinoisans “suckers.” Think of it as a precursor to “hoosier.”

In retaliation, the suckers started calling the hated Missourians “pukes” because…well, let’s let the late Gov. explain because he does a far better job than we can.

It had been observed that the lower lead mines in Missouri had sent up to the Galena country whole hoards of uncouth ruffians, from which it was inferred that Missouri had taken a “Puke,” and had vomited forth to the upper lead mines, all her worse population. From thenceforth, the Missourians were called “Pukes;” and by these names of “Suckers” and “Pukes,” the Illinoians and Missourians are likely to be called, amongst the vulgar, forever.

Sadly, when the time came to copyright their slogans, Illinois and Missouri went with the less-colorful Land of Lincoln and Show-Me State (though some of the legends around the Show-Me State nickname still aren’t especially complimentary toward Missourians), and apparently “Suckers” and “Pukes” were too vulgar for college football. The illustration of the puking Missouri pig is still charming, though.

Aimee Levitt, "The United States of Hogs, or Why Missourians Are Pukes," Riverfront Times, Jan 10, 2012

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

Chorpenning's New Route
“By December 1858, [Chorpenning] removed his stock and coaches to the new road. Passengers who came through spoke in high terms of the road, believing that soon the line would be running between California and Salt Lake City in a week’s time without any difficulty. Chorpenning still had difficulties during the winter months. But when snow blocked the path of the horse coaches, the mail was transferred to horseback or even to the backs of men on snowshoes to see that it was delivered on time.”

Anthony Godfrey, Historic Research Study Pony Express National Historic Trail, p. 18

The Prairie Night Clock
“The stars of the Great Bear—the prairie night-clock—first began to pale without any seeming cause, till presently a faint streak of pale light dum i gurg, or the wolf’s tail, as it is called by the Persian began to shimmer upon the eastern verge of heaven. It grew and grew through the dark blue air . . .”

Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 131

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.”

Expedition Utah, Nevada Pony Express Stations

First Call for Mail to Oregon
The first agitation for mail service to the Pacific Coast was promoted by immigrants to Oregon. In March, 1847, a bill to provide this service, which included the building of five steamships under the supervision of the secretary of the navy, was passed by Congress. While the ships were being constructed, contracts for transporting the mail to Oregon via the Isthmus of Panama were let. . . . The service was to be once a month, with a stop at the infant town of San Francisco. While the first steamer, the California, was en route to the Pacific around Cape Horn, gold was discovered at Sutter’s mill. When the ship reached San Francisco she was left stranded in the bay by her entire crew, who stampeded off to the gold diggings.

Raymond W. Settle, "The Pony Express, Heroic Effort—Tragic End," Utah Historical Quarterly, Vol. 27 n.2, p. 104

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

Assoil
“By the slaughtered body of St. Parley Pratt (whom God assoil!) there was never anything on this earth like it !”

[assoil (archaic): absolve, pardon]

Mark Twain, Roughing It, p. 123

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

Senator Gwin's Motivation
“It was sometime in December 1859 or early January 1860 that William H. Russell, one of the partners in the firm Russell, Majors and [sic] Waddell, and California Senator William M. Gwin met to discuss the need to improve communications between California and the East and how it could best be achieved . . . Gwin hoped to gain favor politically. Even though he was a southern sympathizer [and thus, a supporter of Butterfield’s southern ox bow route], he believed that bringing in mail service over the shorter central route would increase his popularity and ensure his chance of re-election or higher office.”

William E. Hill, The Pony Express: Yesterday and Today, p. 1

Orphans Preferred
One measure of what the job was like is an advertisement for riders allegedly posted as the service geared up: Wanted: Young, skinny, wiry fellows not over eighteen. Must be expert riders, willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred. It’s a famous ad, included in countless tellings of the Pony, often done up in old-style typography with appropriate illustrations and anxious exclamation marks. Unfortunately, like many mementos of the Pony, it appears to be bogus, concocted years after the last Pony rider had shaken the dust from his jeans and gone off into the sunset. But it does capture the spirit of the riders, who while they may not have faced death at least twice or four times a week, were nonetheless expected to be hardy, adventurous souls, willing to push themselves and their mounts to the limit.

Jim DeFelice, West Like Lightning, p. 35-36

Mile 137: Marysville, KS
“Marysville was the direct result of a route surveyed from Fort Leavenworth to Salt Lake City in 1849 by Lieutenant Stansbury. At this point, he was concerned mainly with locating an easy ford across the Big Blue. The town sprang up unbidden; its small board shacks mushroomed amongst the hurly-burly of wagons camped at the crossing, and its first citizens lived by the traffic of the trail.”

[Just above this paragraph is a wonderful description of Marysville in June: “Our first impression on entering Marysville was of a motley assortment of red brick wall broken by a lion-guarded gate crouched at one side of the street whicle, ahead of us, the clock in front of the funeral parlor was suitably dead. There was no need for time today. No one was keeping appointments.”]

“Here at Marysville the travelers from St, Joseph merged with that part of the traffic from Independence, Missouri, which had continued up the east bank of the Big Blue. They all forded at one place in an indistinguishable Mass and went on six miles to the next point of interest, the junction of the St. Jo Road with the one which came swinging up from the Independence Crossing.”

Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 53 and 62

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

Breaking Mules
“The only mules emigrants could buy seemed to be unbroken ones. McIlhany says it took him a month to ‘get acquainted’ with mules purchased at St. Joe . . .

Those attempting to ride these animals found them incorrigible. ‘Many valiant riders,’ writes R.C. Shaw, ‘found themselves in very undignified positions.’ Vincent Geiger speaks of one man being thrown ‘Hell, west, & Crooked.’ Some of the beasts were never thoroughly subdued until they became food for coyotes.”

Merrill J. Mattes, The Great Platte River Road, p. 38

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

Teton Sioux
“Titonwan (Teton, ‘Village of the Prairies’), inhabiting the trans-Missourian prairies, and extending westward to the dividing ridge between the Little Missouri and Powder River, and thence south on a line near the 106 meridian. They constitute more than one half of the whole Dakotah nation.”

Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 97

Killed by a Wagon
“Gilbert L. Cole told of a shocking incident that happened on the prairie not far from where we now stood [Wakarusa River, Kansas]. His wagon company had been forced to cross a slough: an ordinary slough, no doubt—they crossed lots of them, planless ditches holding unambitious water. They were miserable things to ford, having no dependable bottom and offering most of the difficulties of a creek with none of its luxury.

The animals were badly in need of a breathing spell after the struggle up and out. Mr. Cole, who was driving that particular day, pulled his wagon abreast of another, standing motionless with its team sagged back out of their collars and chains dragging. The unknown wagon was of the type with.a flap door in its canvas side and in the door stood a beautiful baby girl about four years old. She smiled coyly at him–a lovely picture for a home-starved man–and he snapped his fingers to amuse her. Suddenly her father, on the driver’s seat, cracked his whip, probably in sudden worry at the time lost or in fear of losing his precious place in line. The animals took up the slack in the chains with terrific suddenness. The wagon gave a lurch, and the little girl was on the ground.

The great iron tire went over her at the waist line, wrote Mr. Cole, with her “pretty head and hands reaching up on one side of the wheel.” The mother threw herself after the child but unavailingly. “Such excruciating sobs of agony I hope never to hear again,” he wrote. “But why say it that way when I can hear them still?” . . .

The first death of the Great Migration of ‘43 was six-year old Joel Hembree, killed by a wagon. Available journals mention dozens of instances. Usually the victim died.”

Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 33

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

Commencement of the Utah War
“[T]he Mormon War began formally on the 18th of July [1857] with the departure of the Tenth Infantry Regiment from Fort Leavenworth. A day later Phelps’ battery of four six-pounders and two twelve-pound howitzers followed from a camp nearby, and shortly thereafter the weary Fifth Infantry started for Utah. . . . In general they followed the trail familiar to overland pioneers: west from Fort Leavenworth to the Big Blue, north on this river, ad then northwest on the Little Blue, its tributary. The troops finally came to the wide, shallow, and lethargic Platte, the vital highway to the Rocky Mountain country.”

Norman F. Furniss, The Mormon Conflict, 1850-1859, p. 101

Questions About the Pony Express
One of the first things the student of the Pony Express discovers is that numerous controversial—perhaps unanswerable—questions concerning it exist. Among these are how and with whom the idea originated, who the first riders out of both St. Joseph and San Francisco were, how much it cost the proprietors to inaugurate and operate it, what was their main purpose in so doing, the relation to it of the Overland Mail Company, Wells Fargo Express Company, and Benjamin Holladay, etc.

The source of these questions is five-fold: (1) insufficient newspaper coverage during its operation; (2) its brief existence of only eighteen months; (3) the destruction of nearly all of the records of Russell, Majors & Waddell and of the Central Overland California & Pike’s Peak Express Company; (4) the dispersion of the personnel of both companies and the Pony Express employees in 1861-62; and, (5) an almost total lack of interest in it on the part of historians and writers for nearly half a century. During those years practically everyone who had anything to do with it, or knew anything about it, passed away.

The result of the scarcity of documentary evidence and creditable personal knowledge has been widespread misrepresentation of facts, the substitution of tradition for historical evidence, statements and conclusions based upon hasty and inadequate research, and in some instances the intentional ignoring or twisting of demonstrable facts by writers and motion picture producers for various unworthy ends.

Settle and Settle, "Orgin of the Pony Express," Missouri Historical Society Bulletin Vol. 26, No.3, April 1960, p. 199

Fugitive Slave Law in California
Just after the State was admitted into the Union, a fugitive slave law was passed authorizing the extradition of slaves brought into the State voluntarily by their masters. Also, the legislature of 1852 enacted a law against negroes (which the legislatures of 1853, 1854, and 1855 re-enacted), the intention being to “legalize the kidnapping of free negroes, as well as the arrest of fugitives.” The Supreme Court in California in 1852 said that slavery was still a legal institution, i. e., that slaves brought to California before 1849 were still slaves when California was admitted to the Union. (In this “Andy Slave Case” decision of 1852, Judge Murray enunciated the same doctrine relating to the status of an African that Chief Justice Taney afterwards set forth In the Dred Scott decision.) But in 1859, a case was decided reversing the former decision, and stating that only travelers or temporary visitors could lawfully hold slaves in California. Laws and judicial decisions, however, were not sufficient to prevent either the introduction or continuance of the institution ; and they did not by any means abate the aggressive sentiment of the active and able pro-slavery minority in California, which dominated the politics of the State for the first decade of its existence, and which preached the delusive doctrine of Popular Sovereignty whenever opportunity offered.

(In the Charleston Democratic Convention in April, 1860, California and Oregon were the only free States that voted for the majority report (on the platform) in which this doctrine was enunciated: "Congress has no power to abolish slavery In the Territories. . . . The Territorial Legislature has no power to abolish slavery in any Territory, nor to prohibit the introduction of slaves therein, nor any power to exclude slavery therefrom, nor any power to destroy or impair the right of property In slaves by any legislation whatever.)

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. 106 and notes 2, 3

Bradford & Company, Denver
By midsummer 1859, Majors and Waddell were convinced that there was something substantial about the Pike’s Peak business after all. Together with Russell they formed a partnership with Robert B. Bradford, a relative of Waddell, known as R. B. Bradford & Company, to open a store in Denver. Bradford was to operate it and receive one third of the profits. The goods were furnished by Russell, Majors and Waddell.

Settle and Settle, "Napoleon of the West," Annals of Wyoming Vol. 32, No.1, April 1960, p. 27

Mile 1850: Simpson Park Station
“At Simpson’s Park [on May 20, 1860], James Alcott was killed, the station burned, and the stock driven off during the Pah Ute War. Two Indians were employed here to herd the stock. Another of the employees was Giovanni Brutisch.”

============

“When [William H.] Streeper reached Simpson’s Park he found the station burned, the stock gone, and the keeper, James Alcott dead. Hurrying on he met the east bound mule mail carrier who upon learning what had happened at Simpson’s Park, refused to go any further. Instead, he turned back with Streeper to Smith’s Creek.”

Settle and Settle, Saddles and Spurs, p. 142, 155

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

First Mileposts on the Emigrant Trail
“They arrived in time and were turned over to Parley’s brother, the Apostle Orson Pratt. Orson was the best educated of the Saints and one of the principal intelligences, a remarkable man who had been the faculty of the putative Nauvoo University as he was to be the faculty of the University of Deseret. He determined the latitude and longitude of the camp whenever observation was possible, and examined the terrain for all conceivable information. He soon found that his observations were more precise than those of Fremont, whose map they were using. Therefore, in collaboration with Willard Richards and William Clayton, two other trained minds, he proposed to make a new map. Eventually the data they assembled were digested by Clayton in The Latter-Day Saints Emigrant’s Guide. Published the next year, it was the most accurate study of the trail before Stansbury’s. Clayton, who had been detailed to compute distances, grew bored with counting the revolutions of a wagon wheel – 36o to the mile – and so Orson Pratt invented an odometer. Appleton , Harmon carved its gears from planking and thereafter the distances were exactly known. At intervals a kind of logbook of the pioneers, together with all relevant information and the counsel of the Twelve, was deposited in a slotted board and set up where the next company would see it. They dotted the route with such “prairie postoffices” and occasionally set up signboards giving the total distance from Winter Quarters and other landmarks. These were the first mileposts ever erected on the Oregon trail. The pioneers also sent back letters and counsel by everyone whom they met coming down the trail.”

Bernard De Voto, The Year of Decision, 1846, p. 458

Mile 600: Pole Creek Station

Pole Creek Station, NE

“Life at most of the Pony Express Stations was not exactly luxurious. Sir Richard Burton wrote the following about Pole Creek Station based on his 1862 visit:

‘The hovel fronting the creek was built like an Irish shanty, or a Beloch hut, against a hill side, to save one wall, and it presented a fresh phase of squalor and wretchedness. The mud walls were partly papered with “Harper’s Magazine,” “Frank Leslie,” and the “New York Illustrated News;” the ceiling was a fine festoon-work of soot, and the floor was much like the ground outside, only not nearly so clean.'”

[N.B. The marker is not on the Pony Express Bikepacking Route, but about 4 miles south, on Highway 30 just east of Sidney. The marker location is here.]

Jan Bennett (Repost) on Pony Express Bikepacking Route , 5/15/18

Overland Stagecoach Mornings
“We resumed undress uniform, climbed a-top of the flying coach, dangled our legs over the side, shouted occasionally at our frantic mules, merely to see them lay their ears back and scamper faster, tied our hats on to keep our hair from blowing away, and leveled an outlook over the world-wide carpet about us for things new and strange to gaze at. Even at this day it thrills me through and through to think of the life, the gladness and the wild sense of freedom that used to make the blood dance in my veins on those fine overland mornings!”

Mark Twain, Roughing It, p. 49

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.”

[N.B. More info about the station here.]

Jan Bennett on Pony Express Bikepacking Route , 5/3/18

Road Over The Sierras
There is likely no more detailed and graphic description of the devastated and hazardous conditions existing along this main immigrant thoroughfare than that written by J. Ross Browne, who, afoot, negotiated the entire trail to Carson City, over the very route taken by Upson, only a few days after the latter’s epic ride.

“The road from Placerville to Strawberry Flat is for the most part graded, and no doubt is a very good road in summer; but it would be a violation of conscience to recommend it in the month of April,” Brown noted. “In many places it seemed absolutely impracticable for wheeled vehicles . . . for the road was literally lined with broken-down stages, wagons, and carts, presenting every variety of aspect, from the general smash-up to the ordinary capsize. Wheels had taken rectangular cuts to the bottom; broken tongues projected from the mud; loads of dry goods and whiskey-barrels lay wallowing in the general wreck of matter … whole trains of pack mules struggled frantically to make the transit from one dry point to another; burros . . . frequently were buried up to the neck … Now and then an enterprising mule would emerge from the mud, and, by attempting to keep the edge of the road, lose his foothold, and go rolling to the bottom 9f the canyon, pack and all.”

Roy S. Bloss, Pony Express—The Great Gamble, 48

Mules to Pack Down the Snow
“Bolivar Roberts [Division Superintendent in Carson City, NV] was worried. The success or failure of the Pony Express might easily depend upon its first run. . . .On the first report of a blizzard [in the Sierra Nevada], Roberts had sent riders hurrying to the mountains with strings of pack mules. The mules were to be kept constantly on the move, treading out the trail through canyons or passes where blowing snow was beginning to drift. Even if it took the pony rider a week to reach the summit, the mules must keep the trail open until he passed.”

Ralph Moody, Riders of the Pony Express, p. 34

Mile 2126-2148: Pacific House to Placerville
Fifteen miles above Hangtown [Placerville] the teams reached Pacific House, at fourteen, Bullion Bend, where a stage was held up and loot is supposed to be buried; at twelve, Sportsman’s Hall (named from the multitude of card sharks that frequented its tables) where the relay waited for the Pony Express rider on his mad dash. It was the chosen stopping place for teamsters freighting to the Nevada mines and had stable room for several hundred horses. Then they came to Five Mile House and on down to Hangtown Creek with all its water drained out into ditches to feed the big toms.'”

Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 453

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

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.

Settle and Settle, "The Early Careers of William Bradford Waddell and William Hepburn Russell: Frontier Capitalists," Kansas Historical Quarterly Vol. 26, No.4, Winter 1960, p. 357

Creeks
“To the chronically thirsty emigrant the most important landmarks were the creeks. Hills and dusty plains, they took in their daily march and forgot if they could. But a creek was a different matter whose delights were only partly counterbalanced by the tragic fact that the barrel containing the luster tea had got loose during the crossing and heaven only knew how much was broken, and that the wall-eyed mule had stepped into the Dutch oven with disastrous results to everything concerned. Indeed fatal accidents often occurred from less contributing causes than that, and very frequently they happened at the crossings. No—they never forgot the creeks.”

Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 29

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

A Real Desert by Daylight
“And it was pleasant also to reflect that this was not an obscure, back country desert, but a very celebrated one, the metropolis itself, as you may say. All this was very well and very comfortable and satisfactory—but now we were to cross a desert in daylight. This was fine—novel—romantic—dramatically adventurous—this, indeed, was worth living for, worth traveling for! We would write home all about it.

This enthusiasm, this stern thirst for adventure, wilted under the sultry August sun and did not last above one hour. One poor little hour—and then we were ashamed that we had ‘gushed ‘ so. The poetry was all in the anticipation there is none in the reality. Imagine a vast, waveless ocean stricken dead and turned to ashes; imagine this solemn waste tufted with ash-dusted sage-bushes; imagine the lifeless silence and solitude that belong to such a place; imagine a coach creeping like a bug through the midst of this shoreless level, and sending up tumbled volumes of dust as if it were a bug that went by steam; imagine this aching monotony of toiling and plowing kept up hour after hour, and the shore still as far away as ever, apparently; imagine team, driver, coach and passengers so deeply coated with ashes that they are all one colorless color; imagine ash-drifts roosting above moustaches and eyebrows like snow accumulations on boughs and bushes. This is the reality of it.

The sun beats down with dead, blistering, relentless malignity ; the perspiration is welling from every pore in man and beast, but scarcely a sign of it finds its way to the surface—it is absorbed before it gets there; there is not the faintest breath of air stirring; there is not a merciful shred of cloud in all the brilliant firmament; there is not a living creature visible in any direction whither one searches the blank level that stretches its monotonous miles on every hand; there is not a sound—not a sigh—not a whisper—not a buzz, or a whir of wings, or distant pipe of bird—not even a sob from the lost souls that doubtless people that dead air. And so the occasional sneezing of the resting mules, and the champing of the bits, grate harshly on the grim stillness, not dissipating the spell but accenting it and making one feel more lonesome and forsaken than before.

The mules, under violent swearing, coaxing and whipcracking, would make at stated intervals a ‘spurt,’ and drag the coach a hundred or may be ‘two hundred yards, stirring up a billowy cloud of dust that rolled back, enveloping the vehicle to the wheel-tops or higher, and making it seem afloat in a fog. Then a rest followed, with the usual sneezing and bit-champing. Then another ‘spurt’ of a hundred yards and another rest at the end of it. All day long we kept this up, without water for the mules and without ever changing the team. At least we kept it up ten hours, which, I take it, is a day, and a pretty honest one, in an alkali desert. It was from four in the morning till two in the afternoon. And it was so hot! and so close! and our water canteens went dry in the middle of the day and we got so thirsty! It was so stupid and tiresome and dull! and the tedious hours did lag and drag and limp along with such a cruel deliberation! It was so trying to give one’s watch a good long undisturbed spell and then take it out and find that it had been fooling away the time and not trying to get ahead any! The alkali dust cut through our lips, it persecuted our eyes, it ate through the delicate membranes and made our noses bleed and kept them bleeding—and truly and seriously the romance all faded far away and disappeared, and left the desert trip nothing but a harsh reality—a thirsty, sweltering, longing, hateful reality!

Two miles and a quarter an hour for ten hours—that was what we accomplished.”

Mark Twain, Roughing It, p. 143-144

Pony Express Route Shortened
From the Leavenworth Daily Times, August 29, 1861. St. Joseph, Aug. 26.—

The Pony Express has been abandoned between St. Joseph and a station 110 miles west [Marysville]. Letters will be obliged to go by stage from here to reach the Pony at that starting point.

"The Pony Express Rides Again," The Kansas Historical Quarterly, Winter 1959: Volume 25, Issue 4, p. 385

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

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

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.

===========

[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

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

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

Slavery in Oregon and California
Oregon was less hospitable to blacks than many of them had hoped. The territorial legislature passed laws prohibiting admission to black settlers, even though exceptions were made on individual petition. When Oregon was admitted to the union in 1857, a Free Negro Admission Article was proposed for the state’s constitution. but it was defeated, and the small number of blacks who had made their way to Oregon lived uneasily until the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863.

California, on the other hand, outlawed slavery within its boundaries in 1850 because miners feared the appearance of slave labor. The mines soon became places where an exotic mixture of races and nationalities shouldered one another in the feverish search for wealth. Mary Ballou wrote home that she lived in a mining camp caUed “Negro Bar,” where “French and Duch and Scoth and Jews and Italions and Sweeds and Chineese and Indians” were all panning for gold. Even before the discovery of gold. California had been settled by men and women of Mexican, lndian, and African descent. Eighteen percent of the population, according to a Spanish census of 1790, were of other than Anglo-American origin. By 1849, San Francisco blacks had formed a “mutual Benefit and Relief Society” of their own. By 1854, that city had three black churches, and within the next decade there were three black newspapers and as many black churches.

Lillian Schlissel, Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey, p. 136

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

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

William Lightfoot Visscher
Despite the demands of his extracurricular activities, Visscher was a prolific hack in the tradition of Ned Buntline and Colonel Prentiss Ingraham. He published A Thrilling and Truthful History of the Pony Express with other sketches and incidents of those stirring times forty-seven years after the last courier galloped in with the mail. Visscher’s slim book was the first history of the fast-mail service. It contains no bibliography, no footnotes, no table of contents. There are no acknowledgments of sources, although Visscher knew the various members of the Pony Express fraternity—many as drinking companions.

. . . borrowing heavily from the few published sources available. The first of those works was The Great Salt Lake Trail, by Colonel Henry Inman, the old cavalry veteran who looked like Mark Twain. It was published in 1898, a decade before Visscher’s book. Inman was ably assisted in his literary efforts by none other than Colonel William F. Cody (Buffalo Bill loved to offer editorial advice to a struggling author). The only other book published at the time that made any attempt to chronicle the Pony Express was a serious work—The Overland Stage to California, by Frank A. Root and William E. Connelley, published in 1901. Visscher stole from that book, too.

Visscher’s greatest service to the legend of the Pony Express was his enshrinement of Buffalo Bill as the king of the fast-mail couriers. Visscher claimed to be “a boy-hood chum” of Buffalo Bill’s, which was a preposterous fiction. In addition to Buffalo Bill’s legacy, Visscher greatly enriched the legend of Pony Bob Haslam in the saddle. These are cornerstones of the thrilling story.

Visscher’s account has the badman Joseph Slade hiring young Billy Cody to carry the mail-replete with stirring dialogue. Visscher also includes pages of Ned Buntline—like adventures for young Cody with “lnjuns” and road agents.

William Lightfoot Visscher

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

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

Contracted Mail Service to Salt Lake
“The first attempt on the part of the government to [provide mail service between Salt Lake Valley and the Missouri] was made early in 1850 when a four-year contract . . . was let to Samuel H. Woodson . . .

During the four years of the contract, service between the Missouri River and Salt Lake City was fairly regular and satisfactory. Little and his associates [who sublet the contract from Fort Laramie to Salt Lake City] met and conquered every difficulty an open road through seven hundred miles of virgin, unsettled territory could impose, Indian treachery and raids, inadequate pay, and they concluded their service with credit to themselves.”

Settle and Settle, Empire on Wheels, p. 70-71

Great Plains Hailstorms
“Of all the Great Plains storms, hailstorms were the worst. Elizabeth Dixon Smith endured one on July 8, 1847. “To day we had the dredfulest hail storm that I ever witnessed … [I)t tore some of their waggon covers off broke some bows [the curving wooden stays that hold up the canvas covers] and made horses and oxon run a way.” Near the South Platte crossing on June 20, 1849, William Swain’s party was pounded by hailstones “the size of a walnut to that of a goose egg [original italics].” The terrified livestock, cut to bleeding and “writhing with the pain inflicted by the strokes of the hail,” reared and spun in their traces, upsetting wagons and breaking tongues and wheels. People hid under wagons or grabbed saddles, pails, or kettles for shelter. When the bombing ended, all gathered around to compare their “sundry bruised and gashed heads, black eyes, pounded and swollen backs, shoulders, and arms, which with a little attention from the doctor and some liniment soon became sound.” Laughter spread with the emerging sun. ‘”No great evil without some good’ was our motto,” Swain wrote, “so we filled our pails and kettles with hail and had ice water the rest of the day, a luxury we little expected on this route.”

Keith Heyer Meldahl, Hard Road West, p. 56-57

Mile 552: Julesburg
“On the south fork of the Platte River, nearly opposite the mouth of Lodgepole Creek, stood, from the late fifties, a flea-bitten collection of shacks—unpainted, unwholesome, and thoroughly unlovely. It was called Julesburg, and its presiding genius, Jules Beni, was a hulking French-Canadian trader as ill-favored by nature as his chosen place of residence.

At first it was an isolated ranch and trading post, but it was not long before the stagecoaches (instead of fording the South Platte at the Lower California Crossing) continued up the left bank as far as ‘Jules Ranch,’ which was then logically known as the Upper California Crossing. The dirty little settlement looked like a wart on the bare face of Nature, but its importance was enhanced because the roads forked here and the stages and mail destined for the recently discovered gold diggings near Pikes Peak left the ‘Old Trail’ at this point and followed the south bank of the South Platte without the necessity of fording.

A stage station was established at the forks of the road, and Jules was appointed stationmaster. Because he knew his prairie and his Indians and seemed to make money for himself, it was thought he would do equally well for the company. This was a mistake. Jules, who was a rogue, a liar, and a horse thief, spent much of his time drinking and continued to make money for himself instead of for the stage company. . . .”

“I was saying that we were somewhat dashed to find [in the site of the original settlement] nothing but a cornfield with most of the corn washed put and a bridge, which had washed in, sitting irrelevantly in the middle of it. Noting is left of the hard-boiled old town—not even a board or.a crumbling wall. Spotted Tail [who sacked the town in 1864] did a thorough job, and the Platte Valley weather has taken care of any minor details omitted at the time.”

Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 130-132 and 139

Pemmican
Winter was a preserving season for women and to some extent for trappers. For example, it was a good time to make pemmican, the best of all concentrated foods. The ‘winter pemmican’ of the literature, which is sometimes spoken of unfavorably, was made not in winter but following the fall hunt, when the weather was likely to be unsettled and thorough drying difficult, so that the product might turn sour. ‘Summer pemmican,’ the Grade A stuff, was made in late winter and early spring. The meat, almost but not quite exclusively buffalo meat, was first dried in the way always used by trappers and Indians whenever they had a surplus following a hunt. It was cut into slices and strips an inch or so thick, scored crisscross, and spread out on racks of cottonwood poles high enough to keep it from dogs, wolves, and vermin. Not so much the sun as the wind dried it and the process, which winter cold did not affect, took four or five days. It could be shortened to three days if during the first one a slow, smoky fire was maintained under the frame, and such smoking made the product sweeter and tastier. The result was the universal dried meat, jerky or charqui, of the literature, a first-rate food in itself. It was always carried by trapping parties.

Pemmican, however, was in a class by itself. All the gristles and sinews that might be present in jerky were removed and the residue was pounded in a mortar or on a parfleche till it was pulverized. This powder was loosely packed in a parfleche bag, melted fat was poured over it, and the mouth of the bag was sewed up. Thus packed, pemmican would keep for years. It was a splendid high-energy food, a complete diet in itself. It was also a great treat (some cynics dissenting), incomparably richer and more flavorsome than jerky. It could be eaten uncooked or fried, roasted, or boiled, by itself or in combination with anything you had on hand. The luxury article was ‘berry pemmican,’ into which pulverized dried fruits of any available kind had been mixed, most often wild cherries with their stones.

Bernard De Voto, Across the Wide Missouri, p. 163-164

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

The White-Topped Wain
“That day’s chief study was of wagons, those ships of the great American Sahara which, gathering in fleets at certain seasons, conduct the traffic between the eastern and the western shores of a waste which is every where like a sea, and which presently will become salt. The white-topped wain—banished by railways from Pennsylvania, where, drawn by the ‘Conestoga horse,’ it once formed a marked feature in the landscape—has found a home in the Far West. They are not unpicturesque from afar, these long-winding trains, in early morning like lines of white cranes trooping slowly over the prairie, or in more mysterious evening resembling dim sails crossing a rolling sea. The vehicles are more simple than our Cape wagons—huge beds like punts mounted on solid wheels, with logs for brakes, and contrasting strongly with the emerald plain, white tilts of twilled cotton or osnaburg, supported by substantial oaken or hickory bows. The wain is literally a ‘prairie ship:’ its body is often used as a ferry, and when hides are unprocurable the covering is thus converted into a ‘bull boat.’ Two stakes driven into the ground, to mark the length, are connected by a longitudinal keel and ribs of willow rods; cross-sticks are tied with thongs to prevent ‘caving in,’ and the canvas is strained over the frame-work.”

Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 22

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

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

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

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

Mormon Assassins
“‘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

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

Simpson's Route to California
“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

The Code of the West
“In the absence of law and in the social conditions that obtained, men worked out an extra-legal code or custom by which they guided their actions. This custom is often called the code of the West. The code demanded what Roosevelt called a square deal; it demanded fair play. According to it one must not shoot his adversary in the back, and he must not shoot an unarmed man. In actual practice he must give notice of his intention, albeit the action followed the notice as a lightning stroke. Failure to abide by the code did not necessarily bring formal pcnishment for the act already committed; it meant that the violator might be cut off without benefit of notice in the next act. Thus was justice carried out in a crude but effective manner, and warning given that in general the code must prevail.”

Walter Prescott Webb, The Great Plains, p. 497

Mail Subsidizing Stagecoaches
In 1785, barely two years after the Revolution ended, the post made the first of its greatly underappreciated contributions to America’s transportation network by subsidizing stagecoaches to carry the mail, starting on certain major routes. The coaches were slower and much more expensive than the post riders, but they could carry much more mail, particularly the bulky newspapers, and do so more securely and dependably. Moreover, as Congressman Charles Pinckney of South Carolina emphasized, the government’s investment improved both mail service and transportation by encouraging “the establishment of stages to make intercourse between different parts of the Union less difficult and expensive.”

Winifred Gallagher, How the Post Office Created America, p. 49-50

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

Mile 1113: Big Sandy Station
“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

Effect of Paiute War on News Delivery
Indian raids in the summer of that year [1860] forced the pony to suspend operations for a month or more, and news of Lincoln’s nomination, which took place on May 18, was not reported in the Bulletin until June 10, twenty-three days later. It was brought out by overland mail. In June the Bulletin, Alta California, and Sacramento Union contributed $100 each to aid in reopening the pony service from Salt Lake City to Carson City. It was operating smoothly again by July, and when Lincoln was elected in November, the pony rushed the news through in six days.”

John Denton Carter, "Before the Telegraph: The News Service of the San Francisco Bulletin, 1855-1861," Pacific Historical Review 11, No. 3 (Sep., 1942): 315

North Platte
“Emerging from Ash Hollow, the trains rolled on-ever west-along the south bank of the North Platte. “Its width is not so great [as the Platte],” Edwin Bryant observed, “but still it is a wide stream, with shallow and turbid water, the flavor of which is, to me, excessively disagreeable.” The North Platte may taste bad, but in June its valley is dazzling. The full glory of spring paves the land with a carpet of lush grass and wildflowers. The bulbous yellow-white flowers of blooming yuccas pepper the landscape. Thunderstorms regularly scrub the air clean, leaving it cool and pungent with the smell of wet grass and sagebrush. Much of the valley today is a patchwork of irrigated fields and fenced cattle ranges. Up on the valley flanks, though, far from the river and on land too steep to irrigate, you can still sense the wild high plains-the vanished buffalo grasslands.”

Keith Heyer Meldahl, Hard Road West, p. 59

Burton on French Canadians
“They are a queer lot, these French Canadians, who have ‘located’ themselves in the Far West. Travelers who have hunted with them speak highly of them as a patient, submissive, and obedient race, inured to privations, and gifted with the reckless abandon—no despicable quality in prairie traveling—of the old Gascon adventurer; armed and ever vigilant, hardy, handy, and hearty children of Nature, combining with the sagacity and the instinctive qualities all the superstitions of the Indians; enduring as mountain goats; satisfied with a diet of wild meat, happiest when it could be followed by a cup of strong milkless coffee, a ‘chasse cafe’ and a ‘brule-gueule;’ invariably and contagiously merry; generous as courageous; handsome, active, and athletic; sashed, knived, and dressed in buckskin, to the envy of every Indian ‘brave,’ and the admiration of every Indian belle, upon whom, if the adventurer’s heart had not fallen into the snares of the more attractive half-breed, he would spend what remained of his $10 a month, after coffee, alcohol, and tobacco had been extravagantly paid for, in presents of the gaudiest trash.

Such is the voyageur of books: I can only speak of him as I found him, a lazy dog, somewhat shy and proud, much addicted to loafing and to keeping cabarets, because, as the old phrase is, the cabarets keep him in idleness too. Probably his good qualities lie below the surface: those who hide a farthing rush-light under a bushel can hardly expect us, in this railway age, to take the trouble of finding it. I will answer, however, for the fact, that the bad points are painfully prominent.”

Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 152

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

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

Mountain Fever
“And as [the emigrants] got to thinner air they encountered a new malady, a prostrating seizure of nausea and violent headaches, frequently complicated by still another kind of dysentery. Bryant, who was stricken with it, attributed it to excessive drinking of milk from cows which had been made unhealthy by overwork and had drunk alkali water and eaten noxious weeds. But it was really “mountain fever,” a process of adjustment to diminished oxygen which most people repeat today when they go to high altitudes.”

Bernard De Voto, The Year of Decision, 1846, p. 161

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

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

Mile 2135: Sportsman's Hall
Sportsman’s Hall, CA

“Sportsman’s Hall was California’s only Home Station. It was frequently called the Twelve Mile House and sometimes simply referred to as ‘The Hall.’ It was opened in 1852 by Scotland immigrants John and James Blair. Sportsmans Hall was one of the most popular and most important places on the trail. No other inn approached its size or the quality of its accommodations. . . Originally it was a hotel, restaurant, and a stage stop that could accommodate 500 horses, with extensive corrals. It has burned to the ground and been rebuilt twice. Part of the original structure still exists, and if you look carefully, you will see the beams, hand hewed, that hold the roof up.”

“A number of sources list Sportsman’s Hall as a station, which also appeared on a contract station. Herbert Ralph Cross identifies Sportsman’s Hall as a “rider relay” or home station, fifty-six miles from Sacramento and twelve miles east of Placerville. A California Registered Historical Landmark’s plaque at the site reads:

This was the site of Sportsman’s Hall, also known as the Twelve-Mile House. The hotel operated in the late 1850’s and 1860’s by John and James Blair. A stopping place for stages and teams of the Comstock, it became a relay station of the central overland Pony Express. Here, at 7:40 a.m., April 4, 1860, Pony rider William (Sam) Hamilton, riding in from Placerville, handed the Express mail to Warren Upson who, two minutes later, sped on his way eastward.

– From the Pony Express Bikepacking Route info marker, citing the Pony Express Historic Resource Study

Posted on the Pony Express National Historic Trail Facebook page (and comments), 2/20/18

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

Spur to Emigration on the 1840s
In 1831, a Massachusetts schoolteacher incorporated the “American Society for Encouraging the Settlement of the Oregon Territory.” His ambition was to “repeat with appropriate variations the history of the Puritan colony of Massachusetts Bay.” But the real spur to emigration into Oregon was the prolonged depression that swept the country in 1837· By the year’s end, banks across the nation had closed, and by 1839 wages fell 30 to so percent. Twenty thousand unemployed laborers demonstrated in Philadelphia, and in New York two hundred thousand people were wondering how they would survive the winter. Horace Greeley told the unemployed to “go West,” but the Midwest was as hard-hit as New York. In the Mississippi valley, prices fell lower and lower. Wheat was ten cents a bushel, and corn could be given away. Steamboats on the Mississippi and the Missouri rivers were burning grain for fuel. As farmers surveyed the debacle, they could find fewer and fewer reasons not to escape to better lands.)

And there was another factor. In a fashion that men and women of the twentieth century will never fully understand, farmers of the Mississippi valley and the Plains states had begun to feel “crowded.·~ One farmer said that the reason he had to emigrate from western Illinois was that “people were settling right under his nose,” although his nearest neighbor was twelve miles away. He moved to Missouri, but that did not satisfy, and soon he abandoned a half-finished clearing and packed his family and household goods onto a wagon and made his way to Oregon where there was only the Pacific Ocean beside him.’

Lillian Schlissel, Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey, p. 19-20

Black Camel
This side of Eternity, it is all one now. The last rider has departed for that bourne whence the Black Camel is the only steed.

John L. Considine, “Eleven Days to St.Joe!,” Sunset Magazine 51, no. 4 (1923): 81

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

The Army Enters Salt Lake City
“A prerequisite to the establishment of any real peace in the Territory was the entrance of the army and its creation of a military camp without incident. On June 13 Johnston started his command on the road to the Mormon’s capital. Across Muddy Creek and Bear River the men tramped, then down Echo Canyon, its ramparts now deserted, and at last, on June 26, into the Valley of the Great Salt Lake, their objective for almost a year. . . . From his hiding place Robert T. Burton saw the first men arrive at ten o’clock in the morning and watched until the rearguard had passed through the empty streets at five-thirty in the afternoon.”

Norman F. Furniss, The Mormon Conflict, 1850-1859, p. 201

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

Montana Vigilantes
Now the Vigilantes—and Slade was one of them—struck. They struck by night, fastening a piece of paper bearing the cryptic 3-7-77 to the cabin doors of those given last warning to leave Montana, dragging from theor beds those to die.

Dabney Otis Collins, The Hanging of Bad Jack Slade, 44-45

Meaning of the Plains in American Life
“This problem may best be approached through a brief resume. It has been pointed out that the ninety-eighth meridian separates the United States into two equal parts, that the Anglo-Americans who approached the Great Plains from the east came with an experience of more than two centuries of pioneering in the woodland environment, and that when they crossed over into the Plains their technique of pioneering broke down and they were compelled to make a radical readjustment in their way of life. The key to an understanding of the history of the West must be sought, therefore, in a comparative study of what was in the East and what came to be in the West. The salient truth, the essential truth, is that the West cannot be understood as a mere extension of things Eastern. Though “the roots of the present lie deep in the past,” it does not follow that the fruits of the present are the same or that the fruits of the West are identical with those of the East. Such a formula would destroy the variable quality in history and make of it an exact science. In history the differences are more important than the similarities. When one makes a comparative study of the sections, the dominant truth which emerges is expressed in the word contrast.

The contrast begins in geology and topography and is continued in climate, reflected in vegetation, apparent in wild animal life, obvious in anthropology, and not undiscernible in history. To the white man, with his forest culture, the Plains presented themselves as an obstacle, one which served to exercise and often defeat his ingenuity, to upset his calculations, to hinder his settlement, and to alter his weapons, tools, institutions, and social attitudes; in short, to throw his whole way of life out of gear. The history of the white man in the Great Plains is the history of adjustments and modifications, of giving up old things that would no longer function for new thinis that would, of giving up an old way of life for a new way in order that there might be a way. Here one must view the white man and his culture as a dynamic thing, moving from the forest-clad land into the treeless plain.”

Walter Prescott Webb, The Great Plains, p. 507-508

Wide-Awake
“I was glad to drink off the brim of my ‘wide-awake.'”

[A wideawake hat is a broad brimmed felt “countryman’s hat” with a low crown, similar to a slouch hat. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wideawake_hat]

William Chandless, Chandless, W. (1857). A Visit to Salt Lake, p. 29

Fort Laramie
[Fort Laramie] was one of the great fixed points of the later fur trade, in the heart of the Sioux country, on the way to the Shoshone country, linked to Bent’s Fort (Pueblo) by a well-traveled trail along the Laramie Fork and the Chugwater, linked to the lower Missouri posts by the great highway of the Platte valley.

Established in 1835 by William Sublette, it was first called Fort William for its builder. In 1841 the log fort was rebuilt of adobes on almost the same site and renamed Fort John, for John Sarpy, whom the Mormons knew as the friendly bourgeois of the American Fur Company post at Bellevue, below Winter Quarters. But not everyone called it Fort John. Most knew it as Fort Laramie, and literally everyone who traveled the Overland Trail knew it. Whether bound for Oregon, California, or the valleys of the mountains, whether traveling south bank or north, they had to come up the trough of the North Platte, and just at the bottleneck where the river emerged from rough country into the comparative open, there sat the fort on its barren gravel flat within a bright swift curve of the Laramie Fork, two miles above its junction with the North Platte.

Emigrants coming up the south bank forded the Laramie Fork to reach the fort, those coming up the North Platte forded or ferried the North Platte, depending on the season and the stage of water. From Fort Laramie onward to beyond South Pass, a distance of three hundred miles, the country cramped the several streams of the emigration into a single channel, at least at first. After 1850, when a way was opened along the north bank of the North Platte between the mouth of the Laramie Fork and the so-called Last Crossing (modern Casper, Wyoming), some trains, especially Mormon trains, elected to by-pass Fort Laramie. Their reasons were various—hurry because of lateness on the trail, fear of contamination by Gentile companies, unwillingness to pay bridge or ferry charges, or plain well-organized bull-headed self-sufficiency. But most, after weeks of plodding up the hot, dusty, treeless, brain-baking Platte valley, found the attractions of companionship, news, trail information, gossip, trade, repairs, and Taos Lightning more than mortal flesh cold resist even if it wanted to.

Wallace Stegner, The Gathering of Zion, p 141-42

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

"The Pony Express Rides Again," The Kansas Historical Quarterly, Winter 1959: Volume 25, Issue 4, p. 383

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

Pony Express News Delivery
The Bulletin and Union had no sooner put their new system into working order than a further improvement in communication with the East made it more or less obsolete. This was the beginning of the pony express on April 3, 1860. The important dispatches were now rushed through by pony in eight to ten days, although the bulkier matter such as the eastern papers and the long letters from the New York and Washington correspondents containing background material largely, continued to be sent by the overland mail or the Panama steamers. It became necessary for the Bulletin and the papers associated with it to maintain a correspondent at Carson City, the terminus of the telegraph line from California. This correspondent received the dispatches from the pony express traveling west and telegraphed them to Sacramento and San Francisco. These telegraphic dispatches were usually headed by the description: “Per Telegraphic Dispatch to St. Louis; Thence to St. Joseph, Mo.; Thence by Overland Pony Express to Carson City, U .T.; Thence by Telegraph to San Francisco.

John Denton Carter, "Before the Telegraph: The News Service of the San Francisco Bulletin, 1855-1861," Pacific Historical Review 11, No. 3 (Sep., 1942): 314

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.”

The Pony Express Stations of Utah in Historical Perspective, Rockwell's (Orin Porter Rockwell's) Utah No. 10 Contract Station

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

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

Freighter's Camp
“A level valley, miles in width; a broad river, full of wooded islands, and shallows, and rippling currents ; in the far distance low ranges of interminable hills; a circle of white covered wagons, with the embers of campfires dimly glowing in their midst. This is the scene, but the central object, our camp, only is visible, for the light of morning has not yet come.

It is the dawn of a warm summer’s day. Between the hard bed, the heat and musquitoes, a restless night has been passed, tired and needful of repose as you have been ; but as daylight approaches, a deep sleep comes over you. Suddenly you hear a thumping on the side of the sheeted wagon, accompanied with cries of ‘Roll out ! Roll out !’ and words unmentionable added thereto. This is the reveille of the plains, and the performer is the assistant wagon-master of the train; the musical instruments are his lungs and a detached ox-bow. The sounds travel around the circle of wagons until not a driver is slighted. Drowsily you roll on your bed of hard bags of flour and try to think you imagine the sounds and can sleep longer, but no, they are reality.”

Thaddeus S. Kenderdine, A California Tramp and Later Footprints, p. 31

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

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 1741: Diamond Springs Station
The station site and the Pony Express Monument are in separate locations.

The site is at https://goo.gl/maps/6ecT5eFvKsvLdtXM9. In satellite view, it appears there is a cutoff from the XP Trail just before the trail turns south to Thompson Ranch (at the west end of Telegraph canyon).

According to the US Topo map, the monument is located by the Thompson Ranch approximately at the POI water icon. (“There is a brass Pony Express centennial plaque mounted in a stone and concrete monument near the ranch house just one mile south of the actual station site.”)

One author (Hill, p.222) states (without citation) that Diamond Springs served as a gathering place during the Pauite War.

Expedition Utah, Nevada Pony Express Stations

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.

National Park Service, Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide–Wyoming, p. 71

Mile 1573: Spring Valley Station
“The keeper of . . . Spring Valley was Constant Dubail, a Frenchman. It was here that Elijah N. Wilson was wounded in the head by an arrow. . . .

“In September [1860] Elijah N. Wilson was sent along the line from Schell Creek to Antelope station with a number of horses. He made the trip safely, delivered his charges, and started back the next day. When he reached Spring Valley station he found two young men who invited him to stay for dinner.

“Wilson accepted the invitation and turned his horse loose, thinking it would go to the stable in the corral. Instead it joined some others which were grazing behind the station. A short time later they saw Indians driving all of the horses across a meadow toward a cedar grove a short distance away. They ran after the thieves on foot, but the animals entered the trees before they could be overtaken. As he ran, Wilson fired his revolver, but without effect. Having outdistanced his companions he entered the cedars ahead of them.

“As he ran around a large one, an arrow struck him in the forehead about two inches above the left eye and lodged there. He fell to the ground unconscious. The young men came up and did what they could for him. When they tried to pull the arrow out the shaft came loose leaving the point stuck in his forehead. The Indians got away with all the horses.

“Being certain Wilson would die the young men rolled him into the shade of the cedar and set out for the next station on foot. On the following day they came back with some men to bury him. Finding him still alive they carried him into the station and a messenger was sent to Ruby Valley, a full days ride each way, for a doctor. Upon his arrival he removed the arrow point but there was little else he could do. He cold the young men to keep a wet rag on the wound and went back. For six days Wilson lay fighting for his life with only such rude nursing as his friends could give him.

“No doubt he would have died had not Howard Egan come along, possibly on his way back to Sale Lake City. The Division Superintendent took one look at him, then sent a rider post haste to Ruby Valley to bring the doctor back. For twelve days longer Wilson lay in a stupor, hovering between life and death. Then to everyone’s delight he began to mend. In a short time he was able to ride again. The wound left such an unsightly scar upon his forehead chat ever after he wore his hat outdoors and indoors to hide it.”

[Note: The Pony Express National Historical Study, and all reports based on it, state that Elijah N. “Uncle Nick” Wilson died as a result of his wound.]

Settle and Settle, Saddles and Spurs, p. 141, 158-159

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.

Coordinates: https://goo.gl/maps/oaZiKriR6cuZzvSY6

Expedition Utah, Nevada Pony Express Stations

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)

Military Roads
“First roads on the frontier were often known locally as military roads. More important for western development, these routes became migratory wagon roads for settlers, and when a community was occupied they were quickly used for commercial purposes. Many roads built by the War Department in the western territories, politically justified on the basis of national defense, were of much greater significance in facilitating access to the public lands.

W. Turrentine Jackson, Wagon Roads West, p. 1

Tobacco and Soap
“Great disappointment was felt at our not staying there [Fort Kearney] at least a few hours to buy some of the articles we most needed; tobacco and soap were very scarce in camp, and on the plains are of equal necessity. Our cattle evidently sympathised with us, as the main of them turned back that night, and were found near the fort. We, however, lay camped by the broad channel of the Platte, in which at this season a few shallow streams of water hardly make their way through sand and shingle.”

William Chandless, Chandless, W. (1857). A Visit to Salt Lake, p. 62-63

Russell Gets Into the Santa Fe Trade
One day in 1847 he met his friend E. C. McCarty, wholesale merchant at Westport. “How would you like to try the freighting business,” asked McCarty. “I’ve several customers in Santa Fe who have always run small trains of their own. Now they want somebody to take their goods out under contract.” The idea of trying something new always challenged Russell. “Bullard & Russell will do the job if you will be a partner in it,” he said.

Settle and Settle, "Napoleon of the West," Annals of Wyoming Vol. 32, No.1, April 1960, p. 9

The Wagonmaster
“The kingpin of the whole freighting operation was the wagonmaster, and quite a man he must have been. He had full responsibility for $18,000 to $30,000 worth of wagons, livestock, and accessories that belonged to someone else . . . He had the responsibility for $25,000 to $250,000 worth of goods that did not belong to him. . . .

He had to be a farrier able to shoe oxen and mules and a wheelwright able to repair wagons with the simplest of tools. He had to know how to get wagons out of bog holes, up and down steep hills, and across rivers. He had to know where water and grass were to be found for the noon halt and the night camp. He was expected to be a physician to his men and a veterinarian to his animals. He had to be a hunter to provide fresh game as a relief from the usual sowbelly. He had to have the magic ability to be everywhere at one and the same time—riding out a mile or so ahead, scouting for campsites or bad places in the road, watching out for Indians . . . or looking up and down the lines of wagons stretched over a mile or more of prairie.”

Henry Pickering Walker, The Wagonmasters (1966), p. 76-78

Low Rate for Newspapers
It was not a coincidence that Postmaster General Franklin waited until 1758, after he had made his fortune, to order that all the newspapers the post riders agreed to carry could travel in the mail for the same uniformly low rate. This egalitarian change encouraged the fledgling field of journalism, made it more competitive, and motivated ambitious publishers to expand their readership by offering, along with the still dominant foreign news, a less provincial, more broadly American perspective that transcended colonial boundaries. Few newspapers traveled all the way from Boston to Baltimore, but by the early 1760s, the New-York Mercury could claim readers in Connecticut, New Jersey, and even Rhode Island as well as its home colony.

Winifred Gallagher, How the Post Office Created America, p. 21

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

Valley Tan
“But we knew afterward that it was something he had been drinking. It was the exclusively Mormon refresher,’valley tan.’ Valley tan (or, at least, one form of valley tan) is a kind of whisky, or first cousin to it; is of Mormon invention and manufactured only in Utah. Tradition says it is made of (imported) fire and brimstone. If I remember rightly no public drinking saloons were allowed in the kingdom by Brigham Young, and no private drinking permitted among the faithful, except they confined themselves to ‘valley tan.'”

Mark Twain, Roughing It, p. 109

Missourians
Harriet Ward and Harriet Clarke were sharply aware of emigrants of lower social standing on the road. Very rowdy emigrants were described as being from Missouri, and the epithet “Missourians” covered everything that was mean and common. Next to Missourians were the travelers bound for the gold fields. Harriet Clarke wrote that “there were a good many desperadoes among them but they were generally bound for California.”

Lillian Schlissel, Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey, p. 105-106

Prairie Schooner
“The vehicle was known simply as a ‘wagon’ or a ‘farm wagon,’ and was designated as ‘one-horse’ or ‘two-horse,’ though such description was retrospective, and in the actual journey the wagons were not pulled by horses and and always by more than one or two animals. In addition, the term ‘light’ was generally applied to both sizes of wagons. Such vehicles could carry a ton or more, but three-fourths of a ton was considered enough of a load to start with. Even the romantic name ‘prairie schooner’—almost never used by the emigrants themselves—makes the analogy not with a big three-master, but with a small, maneuverable, and almost homelike vessel. . . .

“At length, the wagons reached ‘the coast of Nebraska.’ Many people have taken this to be a figure of speech continuing the frequent analogy between the prairies and the sea, and such people have ben like to wax eloquent at the thought of the ‘prairie schooners’ approaching the coast. But the phrase is a translation of the French le côte de la Nebraska, in which ‘Nebraska‘ serves as an alternate name for Platte, and ‘côte’ is a term to indicate a line of bluffs along a stream.”

[N.B. For a reference to sighting the “Coast of Nebraska,” see Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 81]

George R. Stewart, The California Trail, p. 110 and 128

Kansas City
“The complex of sites around Kansas City is the best known, partly because this area was the principal jump-off for the Oregon migration, partly because it was in the business of outfitting explorers, fur traders, and emigrants longer than any of its rivals. Kansas City was important because of a simple accident of geography. It was located as the point where the Missouri River, after its westward course through the state of Missouri, makes a sharp bend northward to Nebraska; hence the seemingly logical point to get out of a boat and pursue westward objectives overland. . . . there were once four focal points of emigration.

The earliest of these was Fort Osage, a government post established in 1808 at a point recommended by William Clark several miles downstream from present Kansas City . . .Next came Cyprian Chouteau’s trading post in 1821, below the mouth of the Kansas, or Kaw, River . . .In time Chouteau’s Landing, moved frequently because of floods, evolved into historically obscure settlements variously tagged Kanzas, Kansasmouth, Kanzasville, Westport, and Westport Landing.

Independence became the third and most important point of overland departure. . . .Since Independence was a few miles inland, it was served by various steamboat landings rearranged annually by Missouri River floods.In 1849 there were two: old Independence Landing, and a new excrescence of shacks by the glorified name of Wayne City. . . .D. Jagger refers to this as the Independence Upper Landing.

The town of Westport [the fourth point of departure] was on the uplands between Turkey Creek and Bush Creek, a few miles north of Westport Landing and just inside the state line. . . .Westport and Westport Landing eventually merged to become the metropolis of Kansas City; but like Independence, after 1849 they also yielded to towns upriver as primary jumping-off places for the Platte.”

Merrill J. Mattes, The Great Platte River Road, p. 105-110

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

St. Joseph Contract
In consideration of these things the C.O.C. & P.P. got a block of twelve lots in Pattee Addition, eighteen in the town of Elwood, Kansas, the use of a building for an office, free passage over the Roseport & Palmetto Railroad for express packages, officers and employees of the Company for twelve months and free ferriage across the Missouri River for express coaches, wagons, etc., for two years.

The most significant and important concession the Express Company got was the exclusive privilege of carrying express matter over the Roseport & Palmetto Railroad and extensions thereof for 20 years. It was also agreed that the railroad would withold all connections from any other road running west to Denver which did not grant the same privileges.

By this contract Russell paved the way for the C.O.C. & P.P. to engage in the railway express business. He, as well as everyone else, knew that the day when steel rails would span the prairies and mountains to reach the Pacific Ocean was not far distant. Both he and the people of St. Joseph fully expected that the infant Roseport & Palmetto Railroad would be extended to Denver and eventually to the Pacific Coast.

Settle and Settle, "Napoleon of the West," Annals of Wyoming Vol. 32, No.1, April 1960, p. 33

Reasons for Emigrating
“What made people head west in rising numbers, even before the days of gold? One important factor was disease. Midwestern farmers, especially those in the swampy bottomlands along the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, regularly endured outbreaks of malaria, smallpox, flu, and cholera during the 1830s and 1840s. Western promoters described Oregon and California as disease-free paradises.

Another push was the financial panic of 1837, whose effects spilled forward into the 1840s. By the 1830s, midwestern farmers were producing huge amounts of food—far more than the economy could absorb once it entered the 1837 depression. Prices for farm goods plummeted. Wheat sold for far less than the cost of raising it; prices of bacon and lard fell so low that river steamboats burned it for fuel. Meanwhile the U.S. population was surging, with farms pushing out to the Missouri River. By the 1840s, the combination of economic pressure and land hunger was pulling more and more people overland to Oregon or California.

And the land was there for the taking–as long as one ignored Indian claims to it. The Preemption Act of 1841 held that anyone who squatted on public land for fourteen months had first right, once the land was surveyed, to buy up to 160 acres at a set minimum price. The Preemption Act presaged the Oregon Donation Land Claim Act of I85’0 and the famous Homestead Act of 18 62. These laws granted free land, up to certain limits, to anyone who demonstrated commitment to living on the land and improving it. Even during the gold rush years, many emigrants headed west for land, not gold. California promoters stoked the emigration fires with hyperbolic descriptions of the mild climates, fertile soils, and the beauty of the Sacramento Valley. Lansford Hastings, for instance, claimed that compared to California, “the deep, rich, alluvial soil of the Nile, in Egypt, does not afford a parallel.”

Beyond these concrete motives for emigration, there was the simple allure of new beginnings in an expansionist age-an age of Manifest Destiny. It is “the fulfillment of our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence,” journalist John O’Sullivan wrote in 1845, thus coining the famous phrase. Many saw westward expansion as America’s God-given right, and to hell with those who claimed otherwise—like Mexico. ”

Keith Heyer Meldahl, Hard Road West, p. 72-73

Brigham Young's Kingdom
The “Kingdom” had once been projected from the crest of the Rockies to the crest of the Sierra Nevada, and a number of anchor points had been settled: Fort Limhi on the Salmon River in Idaho, Genoa in the Carson Valley in Nevada, San Bernardino in California, Las Vegas on the Spanish Trail in the Nevada desert, and Fort Supply, once Fort Bridger, on the Overland Trail. If the original plans had matured, the Gathering would shortly have had a second route—or rather a third, since it was already possible to go by ship to San Francisco and cross the desert backward on the California Trail—by sea to San Diego and inland by San Bernardino and Las Vegas and the Southern Utah settlements.

The war stopped that, and stopped it for good. San Bernardino, founded by Amasa Lyman and Charles Coulson Rich, was abamdoned and its settlers recalled to Zion. The same thing happened to Genoa in the Carson Valley, and to the other Genoa far to the east on the Loup Fork, which had been hopefully colonized as a major supply station on the Mormon Trail, and to all the more ephemeral posts set up to serve the Y.X. Express. Deer Creek, Pacific Creek, Big Sandy, Fort Bridger and its close neighbor Fort Supply were evacuated ahead of the expeditionary force, and Bridger and Supply were burned to the ground to prevent their being put to use by the enemy.

Wallace Stegner, The Gathering of Zion, p 280

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

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”

Posted on the Pony Express National Historic Trail Facebook page, 2/9/18

Emigrant Camp
” . . . you can always tell the camping-place of an emigrant train, there are the remains of so many small fires; those of other trains are fewer and larger; we never had more than half-a-dozen, and very seldom as many.”

William Chandless, Chandless, W. (1857). A Visit to Salt Lake, p. 37

Stagecoach Rate of Travel
“The rate of travel on an average is five miles an hour; six is good; between seven and eight is the maximum, which sinks in hilly countries to three or four. I have made behind a good pair, in a light wagon, forty consecutive miles at the rate of nine per hour, and in California a mule is little thought of if it can not accomplish 250 miles in forty-eight hours.”

Richard Burton, The City of Saints, p. 14

A Dramatic Gesture
“The Post Office Department’s greatest prize—the $600,000-a-year contract held by John Butterfield’s rival California mail operation—still had nearly five years to run. But Russell sensed that opposition to Butterfield’s ‘ox bow’ route was mounting because of its length as well as its southern location. He also sensed that George Chorpenning’s mail contract from Salt Lake to California, which paid $130,00 a year, might be vulnerable. Russell further surmised that his existing stagecoach lines to Denver and Salt Lake City, by themselves, wouldn’t persuade the Post Office Department to cancel Butterfield’s California mail contract and turn it over to Russell. What was needed was some dramatic gesture that would seize the imagination of the public and politicians alike.”

Dan Rottenberg, Death of a Gunfighter, p. 156

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 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.

https://bscottholmes.com/content/red-buttes-station-pony-express

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

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

Nile 754: Black Hills
“The road leading west from Fort Laramie was anathema to the overloaded Argonauts, for it marked the beginning of the Black Hills, whose low, rough summits shouldered the sky just ahead. The travelers . . . were tired and (in cholera years) badly frightened. Their sense of values had changed. things that had been great treasures when they were carefully packed for transportation to the new land, were now only extra weight wearing out the suddenly precious draught animals. . . .

Excess supplies of food were thrown away here too. The wagon masters had repacked at Fort Laramie, but it took the pressure of actual present necessity to key them up to the wholesale abandonment that was now in progress.

Irene D. Paden, The Wake of the Prairie Schooner, p. 168-169

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 1795: Route Alternate
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

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

Mile 1436: Simpson Springs/Pleasant Springs/Egan's Springs/Lost Springs Station
“Simpson Springs became one of the most prominent stations in the West Desert due to the availability of excellent water. Chorpenning, living in a Sibley tent first developed the area in 1851. A permanent structure was constructed, with others soon to follow. Chorpenning’s buildings were probably used by the Overland Mail and the Pony Express. The 1873 survey plat places the Express station about 300 feet west of the present reconstructed building. Probably more than one structure was utilized for the Express and stage at the location; depending upon the operator’s preference for family housing. Aerial remote sensing, using infrared film, shows what might be the location of a structure just north and east of where the springs originally flowed and west of the present reconstruction.

“After demise of the Pony Express and the Overland Mail activities, Simpson Springs utilization decreased. It wasn’t until the 1890’s when mining activities around Gold Mill increased that Simpson Springs again became a popular trail stop. The rock station was refurbished and used by the Walters and Mulliner Stage Co. BLM’s reconstruction of the building is based on oral accounts and excavations. The work under BLM direction, was completed in 1975 by the Future Farmers of America.

“In the 1890’s several other buildings were also constructed including the Dewey and Clara Anderson home destroyed by fire about 1957. According to an informant, Clara Wright Anderson died during childbirth either while the house was being constructed or shortly thereafter. That date was May 14, 1895. Other buildings existed in the area including a log grocery store apparently located southeast of the Anderson home.

“A Civilian Conservation Corp (C.C.C.) camp was built west of the site in the 1930’s; its remnants are evident today. BLM has developed the area and installed camping and interpretive facilities.”

The Pony Express Stations of Utah in Historical Perspective, Simpson Springs (Pleasant Springs, Egan's Springs, Lost Springs) Utah No. 17 Contract Statio

First Pony Arrives in Sacramento
For all the celebration, there were only eight letters for Sacramento, two for the Daily Union, one for Governor John G. Downey. But that hardly mattered to the crowds in front of the telegraph office that spring afternoon. . . .

The San Francisco Herald described the citizens as “electrified” by the arrival of the Pony Express, which had brought twenty-five letters across the continent to recipients in the bay city.

Christopher Corbett, Orphans Preferred, p. 58-59

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

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]

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

Old Ephraim
That same day Nat Wyeth’s sagacity lapsed. Hearing that another grizzly, bigger than a mule maybe, had been located in a thicket, he turned greenhorn momentarily: he fired a pistol into the thicket and then started throwing stones, to bring Old Ephraim out. Ephraim came out — charging. Wyeth shot him but might as well have thrown another stone for he shot him through the body, where a grizzly could stand a volley from a company of dragoons.

Bernard De Voto, Across the Wide Missouri, p. 113