Dangers of the Trail in 1865: A Narrative of Actual Events

DANGERS OF THE TRAIL—1865
COPYRIGHT, 1912 BY CHARLES E. YOUNG Press of W. F. Humphrey, Geneva, N. Y. H. DeF. Patterson, Illustrator, Geneva, N. Y.
I present this narrative of actual events on a trip across the plains to Denver, Colorado, in 1865 and of life in the Far West in the later sixties.
An interesting and valuable feature is a map of the country, made in 1865, by Henry Bowles of Boston, showing the old Platte River and Smoky Hill Trails of that day before there was a railroad west of the Missouri River.
Everything is told in a plain but truthful manner, and this little volume is submitted to the reader for approval or criticism.
Chas. E. Young
July, 1912

Early in 1859 gold was discovered in Colorado, and Horace Greeley, the well known writer and a power throughout the country both before and during the Civil War, made, in the interest of the New York Tribune , of which he was editor, an overland trip to Denver by the first stage line run in that day. He started from Leavenworth, Kansas, and with the exception of Mr. Richardson, of the Boston Journal , was the only passenger in the coach. The trip was not all that could be desired, for they met with numerous hardships and many narrow escapes, as did hundreds of others who had preceded them over that dangerous trail, many never reaching their destination—having met death at the hands of the cruel Indians of the plains.
During his stay in Denver Mr. Greeley wrote a number of letters to the New York Tribune , confirming the finding of gold in the territory and advising immigration. The people in the East were skeptical in regard to its discovery and awaited a written statement from him to this effect.
At the close of the war Mr. Greeley's advice to young men, through the columns of his paper, was to go West and grow up with the country, and it became a byword throughout the State of New York and the Nation, Young man, go West and grow up with the country.
Could Mr. Greeley have foreseen the number of young lives that were to be sacrificed through his advice, I think he would have hesitated before giving it; yet, it was the most valued utterance of any public man of that day for the settlement of the then Far West.