The Overland Stage and Telegraph Lines

The Overland Stage and Telegraph Lines

But the stages, lumbering at best, were too slow in their transportation of mail to the impatient, news-hungry people of California, who were demanding that a more speedy method to carry the mail must be inaugurated. As a result of persistent demand, through the efforts of William H. Russell, the Pony Express was put on the Oregon Trail, which carried mail to California in ten days. The road for the Pony Express, from St. Joseph to Placerville, a distance of almost two thousand miles, followed frequently the Oregon and California Trails, though cut-offs were taken to avoid the Indians, or to find places where stations could be maintained near a stream of water.21 The horses employed were all small, and of western breed. There were five hundred of them, and the riders were light of weight to match their mounts.

The company operating the Pony Express had two hundred station-keepers, and one hundred and ninety stations at which the eighty riders were given only two minutes in which to change horses and transfer their saddlebags of mail. The stations were from nine to fifteen miles apart, depending upon the proximity to water.

Strawberry Valley Station, Placerville Route, Yuba County, California, photo by Lawrence & Houseworth, 1886.

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Letters, costing five dollars a half-ounce were limited to fifteen pounds for the average rider, the weight being equally divided into two flat leather securely locked mail pouches. During the years of operation of the Pony Express, from April 23, 1860, to October 22, 1861, the mail was lost but once, when it was stolen by the Indians. The best time made with this overland service by these relay riders was seven days and seventeen hours, when President Lincoln's inaugural message was whisked over the route. There is no more picturesque achievement of the plains than the operation of the Pony Express, which shortened the time for Pacific mail service, thus bringing the people of the coast many days nearer to their former homes and to the national government.

General Raynolds, when at his winter headquarters, in 1859-60, not far from the junction of Deer Creek with the North Platte, on the south side of the Oregon Trail, was one of the first west of Fort Laramie to receive mail by the means of the Pony Express. "The Pony Express was established while we were in winter quarters, and by it we several times received interesting news but three days old. The sight of a solitary horseman galloping along the road was in itself nothing remarkable, but when we remember that he was one of a series stretching across the continent, and forming a continuous chain for two thousand miles through an almost absolute wilderness, the undertaking was justly ranked among the events of the age, and the most striking triumph of American energy."

Alexander Majors, in 1858, when helping the government to fill its contracts to carry supplies to Utah, used three thousand five hundred wagons, four thousand men, one thousand mules, and more than forty thousand oxen.22 During May, 1859, no less personages than Horace Greeley, Henry Villiard, and Albert D. Richardson rode into Denver on Majors' first stage coach, "Horsepower Pullman," making the distance of six hundred and sixty-five miles in six days, a distance that previously had been covered in twenty-two days. This first through stage coach made the trip of six hundred miles between Denver and Salt Lake "without a single town, hamlet or house being encountered on the way," there being, of course, a few necessary stage stations.

As the emigrants crowded the Oregon Trail, the question of transportation became one for solution by our government by cooperating with the regularly established freighting companies previously operating on the roads to the West. These regularly established trains materially reduced the cost of freight, and as a consequence immediately increased the sum total of emigration and the supplies incident to a larger western population. During the decade of 1859-1869 it has been estimated that at least two hundred and fifty thousand people went west by the route of the Oregon and Overland Trails. The greatest period of freighting was between the years 1863-1867, at the latter date the Union Pacific, in its extension to the west, reached Cheyenne, Wyoming.

Ben Holladay Ben Holladay, between the years 1861-1866 operated daily about five thousand miles of stage coaches, having an equipment of five hundred coaches and express wagons, five hundred freight wagons, five thousand horses and mules, and numerous oxen. The cost to take care of the stock of this company averaged a million dollars annually, while to equip and run the line for the first year incurred the added expense of two million four hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars. After five years of freighting Holladay sold out his entire business to the Wells Fargo Company, which remained in active operation until 1869 in that particular line of transportation, when the Union and Central Pacific Railroads were completed. Holladay, in 1865, to help out the Overland Route to the Montana gold fields, established a branch line of his road, which went from Fort Hall, Idaho north to Virginia City, Montana. In addition to freighting Holladay carried the mail for the government during the period of the Civil War, receiving annually one million dollars for the service.

Interesting statistics show that in 1861 over twenty-one million pounds of freight went west from the shipping points of Atchison, which brought with it to the plains four thousand nine hundred and seventeen wagons, six thousand one hundred and sixty-four mules, twenty-seven thousand six hundred and eighty-five oxen, and one thousand two hundred and fifty-six men.

Russell, Majors and Waddell, for many years the government contractors to transport military supplies to the forts along the trails, used in their trail-freighting train, six thousand two hundred and fifty oversized wagons, with a carrying capacity of six thousand pounds each, and seventy-five thousand oxen. This array of transportation facilities, if placed one in front of the other, would have covered the trail for a stretch of forty miles. Charles F. Lummis states that there is a question if there were at this time as many oxen working in the United States as Russell, Majors and Waddell owned and used. This mighty traffic scarred the face of the trail to the West so deep that in many places, for miles, there are still discernible traces of the heavy traffic of this period, even after more than half a century of disuse.

"It is doubtful if there was another section of the country on the face of the globe over which, in the sixties, passed so much traffic by ox, horse, and mule team. A goodly portion of the travel, for two hundred to four hundred miles, was along the right, or south bank of the South Platte. At times there was hardly an hour but what, as far as the eye could reach, there appeared to be almost a solid train of moving, white- covered wagons, or, as they were more familiarly termed, 'prairie schooners.' Usually the most of these schooners were drawn by from four to six yoke of cattle, and the writer counted, from his seat on the stage coach, along the Platte, between Fort Kearny and old Julesburg, in one day during the Civil War, nearly nine hundred-to be exact, eight hundred and eighty- eight, destined westward on the great Overland Route. These wagons were drawn by no less than ten thousand six hundred and fifty animals-cattle, horses, and mules."

Of course all of these did not belong to the Russell outfit, but the impetus given the trade by this well-organized company made itself immediately felt. After the freighting system had been in intense operation, it was not an uncommon thing to see stretched across the plains each week over one thousand of these patient, plodding ox-teams, with wagons loaded many feet beyond the side-boards.

It was a colossal business to supply those things most needed for the towns and cities that were springing into existence in the West, and the Oregon Trail became wider and deeper, until the snows and rains of many years have not been able to obliterate the road made by the feet of man, the hoofs of cattle and horses, and the heavy, broad tires of the compactly loaded freight wagons.

With the discovery of gold in Colorado and the consequent growth of the city of Denver, the trail to the West was somewhat changed by using the banks of the South Platte, as well as those of the North Platte, for a thoroughfare. The opening of the route up the south branch of the Platte did not mean the abandonment of the northern branch of this river, for the emigrants used the old trail to the exclusion of the newer road, over which went the stage coaches and teams of freighting.

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