5. Railroad building, the Homestead Law, and the success of the Dakota wheat farms, led to the rapid development of the new Northwest.
6. Quite as noticeable is the mechanical and industrial progress of the country, the rise of great corporations, and the flood of immigrants that came to our shores each year.
FOOTNOTES
[1] For descriptions of the wild life in the new Northwest in the pioneer days read Langford's Vigilante Days and Ways.
[2] A large wagon with a white canvas top.
[3] A kind of heavy coach, so called because first manufactured at Concord, New Hampshire.
[4] When the war opened and Texas seceded, this route was abandoned, and after April, 1861, letters and passengers went from St. Joseph by way of Salt Lake City to California.
[5] All letters had to be written on the thinnest paper, and no more than twenty pounds' weight was allowed in each of the two pouches. The trail was infested with "road agents" (robbers), and roving bands of Indians were ever ready to murder and scalp; but in summer and winter, by day and night, over the plains and over the mountains, these brave men made their dangerous rides, carrying no arms save a revolver and a knife. Each letter had to be inclosed in a ten-cent stamped envelope and have on it in addition for each half ounce five one-dollar stamps of the Pony Express Company. The story of the Pony Express is told in Henry Inman's Great Salt Lake Trail, Chap. viii.
[6] As the government had no post offices in the mining camps, the stage company became the postmasters, delivered the letters, and charged twenty- five cents for each. Sometimes the owner of a little store in a remote mountain camp would act as postmaster, and charge a high price for sending letters to or bringing them from the nearest stage station. One such used a barrel for the letter box, and sent the mail once a month. A hole was cut in the head of the barrel, and beside it was posted a notice which read: "This is a Post Office. Shove a quarter through the hole with your letter. We have no use for stamps as I carry the mail."
[7] The lighter articles went in wagons drawn by four or six horses or mules, the heavier in great wagons drawn by six and eight yoke of oxen, which made the trip to Denver in five weeks. The cost of provisions brought in this way was very great. Thus in 1865, in Helena, Montana, flour sold for $85 a sack of one hundred pounds. Potatoes cost fifty cents in gold a pound, and coal oil, at Virginia City, $10 in gold a gallon. Board and lodgings rose in proportion, and it was not uncommon to see posted in the boarding houses such notices as this: "Board with bread at meals, $32; board without bread, $22." Read Hough's The Way to the West, pp. 200-221.