The Last American Frontier

by Frederic L. Paxson

The first overland coaches left the opposite ends of the line on September 15, 1858. The east-bound stage carried an agent of the Post-office Department, whose report states that the through trip to Tipton, Missouri, and thence by rail to St. Louis, was made in 20 days, 18 hours, 26 minutes, actual time. "I cordially congratulate you upon the result," wired President Buchanan to Butterfield. "It is a glorious triumph for civilization and the Union. Settlements will soon follow the course of the road, and the East and West will be bound together by a chain of living Americans which can never be broken." The route was 2795 miles long. For nearly all the way there was no settlement upon which the stages could rely. The company built such stations as it needed.

The vehicle of the overland mail, the most interesting vehicle of the plains, was the coach manufactured by the Abbott-Downing Company of Concord, New Hampshire. No better wagon for the purpose has been devised. Its heavy wheels, with wide, thick tires, were set far apart to prevent capsizing. Its body, braced with iron bands, and built of stout white oak, was slung on leather thoroughbraces which took the strain better and were more nearly unbreakable than any other springs. Inside were generally three seats, for three passengers each, though at times as many as fourteen besides the driver and messenger were carried. Adjustable curtains kept out part of the rain and cold. High up in front sat the driver, with a passenger or two on the box and a large assortment of packages tucked away beneath his seat. Behind the body was the triangular "boot" in which were stowed the passengers' boxes and the mail sacks. The overflow of mail went inside under the seats. Mr. Clemens tells of filling the whole body three feet deep with mail, and of the passengers being forced to sprawl out on the irregular bed thus made for them. Complaining letter-writers tell of sacks carried between the axles and the body, under the coach, and of the disasters to letters and contents resulting from fording streams. Drawn by four galloping mules and painted a gaudy red or green, the coach was a visible emblem of spectacular western advance. Horace Greeley's coach, bright red, was once charged by a herd of enraged buffaloes and overturned, to the discomfort and injury of the venerable editor.

It was no comfortable or luxurious trip that the overland passenger had, with all the sumptuous equipment of the new route. The time limit was twenty-five days, reduced in practice to twenty-two or twenty-three, at the price of constant travel day and night, regardless of weather or convenience. One passenger who declined to follow this route has left his reason why. The "Southern, known as the Butterfield or American Express, offered to start me in an ambulance from St. Louis, and to pass me through Arkansas, El Paso, Fort Yuma on the Gila River, in fact through the vilest and most desolate portion of the West. Twenty-four mortal days and nights—twenty-five being schedule time—must be spent in that ambulance; passengers becoming crazy by whiskey, mixed with want of sleep, are often obliged to be strapped to their seats; their meals, despatched during the ten-minute halts, are simply abominable, the heats are excessive, the climate malarious; lamps may not be used at night for fear of non-existent Indians: briefly there is no end to this Via Mala's miseries." But the alternative which confronted this traveller in 1860 was scarcely more pleasant. "You may start by stage to the gold regions about Denver City or Pike's Peak, and thence, if not accidentally or purposely shot, you may proceed by an uncertain ox train to Great Salt Lake City, which latter part cannot take less than thirty-five days."

Once upon the road, the passenger might nearly as well have been at sea. There was no turning back. His discomforts and dangers became inevitable. The stations erected along the trail were chiefly for the benefit of the live stock. Horses and mules must be kept in good shape, whatever happened to passengers. Some of the depots, "home stations," had a family in residence, a dwelling of logs, adobe, or sod, and offered bacon, potatoes, bread, and coffee of a sort, to those who were not too squeamish. The others, or "swing" stations, had little but a corral and a haystack, with a few stock tenders. The drivers were often drunk and commonly profane. The overseers and division superintendents differed from them only in being a little more resolute and dangerous. Freighting and coaching were not child's play for either passengers or employees.

The Butterfield Overland Express began to work its six year contract in September, 1858. Other coach and mail services increased the number of continental routes to three by 1860. From New Orleans, by way of San Antonio and El Paso, a weekly service had been organized, but its importance was far less than that of the great route, and not equal to that by way of the Great Salt Lake.

Staging over the Platte trail began on a large scale with the discovery of gold near Pike's Peak in 1858. The Mormon mails, interrupted by the Mormon War, had been revived; but a new concern had sprung up under the name of the Leavenworth and Pike's Peak Express Company. The firm of Jones and Russell, soon to give way to Russell, Majors, and Waddell, had seen the possibilities of the new boom camps, and had inaugurated regular stage service in May, 1859. Henry Villard rode out in the first coach. Horace Greeley followed in June. After some experimenting in routes, the line accepted a considerable part of the Platte trail, leaving the road at the forks of the river. Here Julesburg came into existence as the most picturesque home station on the plains. It was at this station that Jack Slade, whom Mark Twain found to be a mild, hospitable, coffee-sharing man, cut off the ears of old Jules, after the latter had emptied two barrels of bird-shot into him. It was "celebrated for its desperadoes," wrote General Dodge. "No twenty-four hours passed without its contribution to Boots Hill (the cemetery whose every occupant was buried in his boots), and homicide was performed in the most genial and whole-souled way."

Before the Denver coach had been running for a year another enterprise had brought the central route into greater prominence. Butterfield had given California news in less than twenty-five days from the Missouri, but California wanted more even than this, until the electric telegraph should come. Senator Gwin urged upon the great freight concern the starting of a faster service for light mails only. It was William H. Russell who, to meet this supposed demand, organized a pony express, which he announced to a startled public in the end of March. Across the continent from Placerville to St. Joseph he built his stations from nine to fifteen miles apart, nearly two hundred in all. He supplied these with tenders and riders, stocked them with fodder and fleet American horses, and started his first riders at both ends on the 3d of April, 1860.

Only letters of great commercial importance could be carried by the new express. They were written on tissue paper, packed into a small, light saddlebag, and passed from rider to rider along the route. The time announced in the schedule was ten days,—two weeks better than Butterfield's best. To make it called for constant motion at top speed, with horses trained to the work and changed every few miles. The carriers were slight men of 135 pounds or under, whose nerve and endurance could stand the strain. Often mere boys were employed in the dangerous service. Rain or snow or death made no difference to the express. Dangers of falling at night, of missing precipitous mountain roads where advance at a walk was perilous, had to be faced. When Indians were hostile, this new risk had to be run. But for eighteen months the service was continued as announced. It ceased only when the overland telegraph, in October, 1861, declared its readiness to handle through business.

In the pony express was the spectacular perfection of overland service. Its best record was some hours under eight days. It was conducted along the well-known trail from St. Joseph to Forts Kearney, Laramie, and Bridger; thence to Great Salt Lake City, and by way of Carson City to Placerville and Sacramento. It carried the news in a time when every day brought new rumors of war and disunion, in the pregnant campaign of 1860 and through the opening of the Civil War. The records of its riders at times approached the marvellous. One lad, William F. Cody, who has since lived to become the personal embodiment of the Far West as Buffalo Bill, rode more than 320 consecutive miles on a single tour. The literature of the plains is full of instances of courage and endurance shown in carrying through the despatches.

The Butterfield mail was transferred to the central route of the pony express in the summer of 1861. For two and a half years it had run steadily along its southern route, proving the entire practicability of carrying on such a service. But its expense had been out of all proportion to its revenue. In 1859 the Postmaster-general reported that its total receipts from mails had been $27,229.94, as against a cost of $600,000. It is not unlikely that the fast service would have been dropped had not the new military necessity of 1861 forbidden any act which might loosen the bonds between the Pacific and the Atlantic states. Congress contemplated the approach of war and authorized early in 1861 the abandonment of the southern route through the confederate territory, and the transfer of the service to the line of the pony express. To secure additional safety the mails were sent by way of Davenport, Iowa, and Omaha, to Fort Kearney a few times, but Atchison became the starting-point at last, while military force was used to keep the route free from interference. The transfer worked a shortening of from five to seven days over the southern route.