This time was one of great activity in all the West, and the restless population which had gained a taste of the adventurous life of that region was soon to have yet greater opportunities. The discovery of gold in California unsettled not only all the West, but all America, and hastened immeasurably the development of the West, not merely as to the Pacific coast, but also in regard to the mountain regions between the Great Plains and the Coast. The turbulent population of the mines spread from California into every accessible portion of the Rockies. The trapper and hunter of the remotest range found that he had a companion in the wilderness, the prospector, as hardy as himself, and animated by a feverish energy which rendered him even more determined and unconquerable than himself. Love of excitement and change invited the trapper to the mountains. It was love of gain which drove the prospector thither. Commercial man was to do in a short time what the adventurer would never have done. California, Oregon, Idaho, Montana—how swiftly, when we come to counting decades, these names followed upon those of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Ohio!
PACK-TRAINS MAKE NEW CITIES.
New cities began to be heard of in this mountain trade, just as there had been in the wagon days of the overland trail to Santa Fé. Pueblo, Cañon City, Denver, all were outfitting and freighting-points in turn, while from the other side of the range there were as many towns,—Florence, Walla Walla, Portland,—which sent out the long trains of laden mules and horses. The pack-train was as common and as useful as the stage line in developing the Black Hills region, and many another still less accessible.
EARLY WHEELED TRANSPORTATION—THE STAGE-COACH.
A prairie schooner.
The transportation of paddle and portage, of sawbuck saddle and panniers, however, could not forever serve except in the roughest of the mountain-chains. The demand for wheeled vehicles was urgent, and the supply for that demand was forthcoming in so far as human ingenuity and resourcefulness could meet it. There arose masters in transportation, common carriers of world-wide fame. The pony-express was a wonderful thing in its way, and some of the old-time stage lines which first began to run out into the West were hardly less wonderful. For instance, there was an overland stage line that ran from Atchison, on the Missouri River, across the plains, and up into Montana by way of Denver and Salt Lake City. It made the trip from Atchison to Helena, nearly two thousand miles, in twenty-two days. Down the old waterways from the placers of Alder Gulch to the same town of Atchison was a distance of about three thousand miles. The stage line began to shorten distances and lay out straight lines, so that now the West was visited by vast numbers of sight-seers, tourists, investigators, and the like, in addition to the regular population of the land, the men who called the West their home.
We should find it difficult now to return to stage-coach travel, yet in its time it was thought luxurious. One of the United States Bank examiners of that time, whose duties took him into the Western regions, in the course of fourteen years traveled over seventy-four thousand miles by stage-coach alone.
DIFFICULTIES OF WAGON-TRAINS.