USA > California > History of the State of California and biographical record of Coast Counties, California. An historical story of the state's marvelous growth from its earliest settlement to the present time > Part 33
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The only inland commerce during the Mexi- can era was a few bands of mules sold to New Mexican traders and driven overland to Santa Fe by the old Spanish trail and one band of cattle sold to the Oregon settlers in 1837 and driven by the coast route to Oregon City. The Californians had no desire to open up an inland trade with their neighbors and the traders and trappers who came overland were not welcome.
After the discovery of gold, freighting to the mines became an important business. Supplies had to be taken by pack trains and wagons. Freight charges were excessively high at first. In 1848, "it cost $5 to carry a hundred pounds of goods from Sutter's Fort to the lower miines, a distance of twenty miles, and $10 per hundred weight for freight to the upper mines, a distance of forty miles. Two horses can draw one thousand five hundred pounds." In Decem- ber, 1849, the roads were almost impassable
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and teamsters were charging from $40 to $50 a hundred pounds for hauling freight from Sacra- mento to Mormon Island.
In 1855 an inland trade was opened up be- tween Los Angeles and Salt Lake City. The first shipment was made by Banning and Alex- ander. The wagon train consisted of fifteen ten-mule teams heavily freighted with merchan- dise. The venture was a success financially. The train left Los Angeles in May and returned in September, consuming four months in the journey. The trade increased and became quite an important factor in the business of the south- ern part of the state. In 1859 sixty wagons were loaded for Salt Lake in the month of January, and in March of the same year one hundred and fifty loaded with goods were sent to the Mormon capital. In 1865 and 1866 there was a considerable shipment of goods from Los Angeles to Idaho and Montana by wagon trains. These trains went by way of Salt Lake. This trade was carried on during the winter months when the roads over the Sierras and the Rocky mountains were blocked with snow.
Freighting by wagon train to Washoe formed a very important part of the inland commerce of California between 1859 and 1869. The im- mense freight wagons called "prairie schooners" carried almost as much as a freight car. The old-time teamster, like the old-time stage driver, was a unique character. Both have disappeared. Their occupation is gone. We shall never look on their like again.
The pony express rider came early in the his- tory of California. Away back in 1775, when the continental congress made Benjamin Frank- lin postmaster-general of the United Colonies, on the Pacific coast soldier couriers, fleet mounted, were carrying their monthly budgets of mail between Monterey in Alta California, and Loreto, near the southern extremity of the peninsula of Lower California, a distance of one thousand five hundred miles.
In the winter of 1859-60 a Wall street lobby was in Washington trying to get an appropria- tion of $5,000,000 for carrying the mails one year between New York and San Francisco. William H. Russell, of the firm of Russell, Ma-
jors & Waddell, then engaged in running a daily stage line between the Missouri river and Salt Lake City, hearing of the lobby's efforts, offered to bet $200,000 that he could put on a mail line between San Francisco and St. Joseph- that could make the distance, one thousand nine hundred and fifty miles, in ten days. The wager was accepted. Russell and his business man- ager, A. B. Miller, an old plains man, bought the fleetest horses they could find in the west and employed one hundred and twenty-five riders selected with reference to their light weight and courage. It was essential that the horses should be loaded as lightly as possible. The horses were stationed from ten to twenty miles apart and each rider was required to ride seventy-five miles. For change of horses and mail bag two minutes were allowed, at each station. One man took care of the two horses kept there. Everything being arranged a start was made from St. Joseph, April 3, 1860. The bet was to be decided on the race eastward. At meridian on April 3, 1860, a signal gun on a steamer at Sacramento proclaimed the hour of starting. At that signal Mr. Miller's private saddle horse, Border Ruffian, with his rider bounded away toward the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas. The first twenty miles were covered in forty-nine minutes. All went well till the Platte river was reached. The river was swollen by recent rain. Rider and horse plunged boldly into it, but the horse mired in the quicksands and was drowned. The rider carrying the mail bag footed it ten miles to the next relay sta- tion. When the courier arrived at the sixty- mile station out from St. Joseph he was one hour behind time. The last one had just three hours and thirty minutes in which to make the sixty miles and win the race. A heavy rain was falling and the roads were slippery, but with six horses to make the distance he won with five minutes and a fraction to spare. And thus was finished the longest race for the larg- est stake ever run in America.
The pony express required to do its work nearly five hundred horses, about one hundred and ninety stations, two hundred station keepers and over a hundred riders. Each rider usually rode the horses on about seventy-five miles,
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but sometimes much greater distances were made. Robert H. Haslam, Pony Bob, made on one occasion a continuous ride of three hundred and eighty miles and William F. Cody, now fa- mous as Buffalo Bill, in one continuous trip rode three hundred and eighty-four miles, stopping only for meals, and to change horses,
The pony express was a semi-weekly service. Fifteen pounds was the limit of the weight of the waterproof mail bag and its contents. The postage or charge was $5 on a letter of half an ounce. The limit was two hundred letters, but sometimes there were not more than twenty in a bag. The line never paid. The shortest time ever made by the pony express was seven days and seventeen hours. This was in March, 1861, when it carried President Lincoln's message. At first telegraphic messages were received at St. Joseph up to five o'clock p. m. of the day of starting and sent to San Francisco on the express, arriving at Placerville, which was then the eastern terminus of the line. The pony ex- press was suspended October 27, 1861, on the completion of the telegraph.
The first stage line was established between Sacramento and Mormon Island in September, 1849, fare $16 to $32, according to times. Sacramento was the great distributing point for the mines and was also the center from which radiated numerous stage lines. In 1853 a dozen lines were owned there and the total capital in- vested in staging was estimated at $335,000. There were lines running to Coloma, Nevada, Placerville, Georgetown, Yankee Jim's, Jack- son, Stockton, Shasta and Auburn. In 1851 Stockton had seven daily stages. The first stage line between San Francisco and San José was established in April, 1850, fare $32. A number of lines were consolidated. In 1860 the Califor- nia stage company controlled eight lines north- ward, the longest extending seven hundred and ten miles to Portland with sixty stations, thirty- five drivers and five hundred horses, eleven drivers and one hundred and fifty horses per- taining to the rest. There were seven indepen- dent lines covering four hundred and sixty-four miles, chiefly cast and south, the longest to Vir-
ginia City .* These lines disappeared with the advent of the railroad.
The pack train was a characteristic feature of early mining days. Many of the mountain camps were inaccessible to wagons and the only means of shipping in goods was by pack train. A pack train consisted of from ten to twenty mules each, laden with from two hundred to four hundred pounds. The load was fastened on the animal by means of a pack saddle which was held in its place by a cinch tightly laced around the animal's body. The sure-footed mules could climb steep grades and wind round narrow trails on the side of steep mountains without slipping or tumbling over the cliffs. Mexicans were the most expert packers.
The scheme to utilize camels and dromedaries as beasts of burden on the arid plains of the southwest was agitated in the early fifties. The chief promoter if not the originator of the project was Jefferson Davis, afterwards presi- dent of the Southern Confederacy. During the last days of the congress of 1851, Mr. Davis offered an amendment to the army appropria- tion bill appropriating $30,000 for the purchase of thirty camels and twenty dromedaries. The bill was defeated. When Davis was secretary of war in 1854, congress appropriated $30,000 for the purchase and importation of camels and in December of that year Major C. Wayne was sent to Egypt and Arabia to buy seventy-five. He secured the required number and shipped them on the naval store ship Supply. They were landed at Indianola, Tex., February 10, 1857. Three had died on the voyage. About half of the herd were taken to Albuquerque, where an expedition was fitted out under the command of Lieutenant Beale for Fort Tejon, Cal. ; the other half was employed in packing on the plains of Texas and in the Gadsen Purchase, as Southern Arizona was then called.
It very soon became evident that the camel experiment would not be a success. The Amer- ican teamster could not be converted into an Arabian camel driver. From the very first meet- ing there was a mutual antipathy between the
* Sacramento Union. January 1, 1861.
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American mule whacker and the beast of the prophet. The teamsters when transformed into camel drivers deserted and the troopers refused to have anything to do with the misshapen beasts. So because there was no one to load and navigate these ships of the desert their voyages became less and less frequent, until finally they ceased altogether; and these desert ships were anchored at the different forts in the southwest. After the breaking out of the Civil war the camels at the forts in Texas and New Mexico were turned loose to shift for themselves. Those in Arizona and California were condemned and sold by the government to two Frenchmen who used them for packing, first in Nevada and later in Arizona, but tiring of the animals they turned them out on the desert. Some of these camels or possibly their descendants are still roaming over the arid plains of southern Arizona and Sonora.
The first telegraph was completed September 11, 1853. It extended from the business quar- ter of San Francisco to the Golden Gate and was used for signalling vessels. The first long line connected Marysville, Sacramento, Stock- ton and San José. This was completed October 24, 1853. Another line about the same time was built from San Francisco to Placerville by way of Sacramento. A line was built southward from San José along the Butterfield overland mail route to Los Angeles in 1860. The Over- land Telegraph, begun in 1858, was completed November 7, 1861.
The first express for the States was sent un- der the auspices of the California Star (news- paper). The Star of March 1, 1848, contained the announcement that "We are about to send letters by express to the States at fifty cents each, papers twelve and a half cents; to start April 15; any mail arriving after that time will be returned to the writers. The Star refused to send copies of its rival, The Californian, in its express.
The first local express was started by Charles L. Cady in August, 1847. It left San Francisco every Monday and Fort Sacramento, its other terminus, every Thursday. Letters twenty-five cents. Its route was by way of Saucelito, Napa and Petaluma to Sacramento.
Weld & Co.'s express was established in Oe- tober, 1849. This express ran from San Fran- cisco to Marysville, having its principal offices in San Francisco, Benicia and Sacramento. It was the first express of any consequence estab- lished in California. Its name was changed to Hawley & Co.'s express. The first trip was made in the Mint, a sailing vessel, and took six days. Afterward it was transferred to the steamers Hartford and McKim. The company paid these boats $800 per month for the use of one state room; later for the same accommoda- tion it paid $1,500 per month. The Alta Cali- fornia of January 7, 1850, says: "There are so many new express companies daily starting that we can scarcely keep the run of them."
The following named were the principal com- panies at that time: Hawley & Co., Angel, Young & Co., Todd, Bryan, Stockton Express, Henly, McKnight & Co., Brown, Knowlton & Co. The business of these express companies consisted largely in carrying letters to the mines. The letters came through the postoffice in San Francisco, but the parties to whom they were addressed were in the mines. While the miner would gladly give an ounce to hear from home he could not make the trip to the Bay at a loss of several hundred dollars in time and money. The express companies obviated this difficulty. The Alta of July 27, 1850, says : "We scarcely know what we should do if it were not for the various express lines established which enable us to hold communication with the mines. With the present defective mail communication we should scarcely ever be able to hear from the towns throughout California or from the remote portions of the Placers north or south. Hawley & Co., Todd & Bryan and Besford & Co. are three lines holding communication with different sections of the country. Adams & Co. occupy the whole of a large building on Mont- gomery street."
Adams & Co., established in 1850, soon be- came the leading express company of the coast. It absorbed a number of minor companies. It established relays of the fastest horses to carry the express to the mining towns. As early as 1852 the company's lines had penetrated the re- mote mining camps. Some of its riders per-
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formed feats in riding that exceeded the famous pony express riders. Isaac W. Elwell made the trip between Placerville and Sacramento in two hours and fifty minutes, distance sixty-four miles; Frank Ryan made seventy-five miles in four hours and twenty minutes. On his favorite horse, Colonel, he made twenty miles in fifty- five minutes. Adams & Co. carried on a bank- ing business and had branch banks in all the leading mining towns. They also became a po-
litical power. In the great financial crash of 1855 they failed and in their failure ruined thou- sands of their depositors. Wells, Fargo & Co. express was organized in 1851. It weathered the financial storm that carried down Adams & Co. It gained the confidence of the people of the Pacific coast and has never betrayed it. Its business has grown to immense proportions. It is one of the leading express companies of the world.
CHAPTER XXXII. RAILROADS.
T HE agitation of the Pacific railroad ques- tion began only two years after the first passenger railway was put in operation in the United States. The originator of the scheme to secure the commerce of Asia by a transcontinental railway from the Atlantic to the Pacific was Hartwell Carver, grandson of the famous explorer, Jonathan Carver. He published articles in the New York Courier and Inquirer in 1832 elaborating his idea, and memorialized congress on the subject. The western terminus was to be on the Columbia river. His road was to be made of stone. There were to be sleeping cars and dining ears at- tached to each train. In 1836, John Plumbe. then a resident of Dubuque, Iowa, advocated the building of a railroad from Lake Michigan to Oregon. At a public meeting held in Du- buque, March 26, 1838, which Plumbe ad- dressed, a memorial to congress was drafted "praying for an appropriation to defray the ex- pense of the survey and location of the first link in the great Atlantic and Pacific railroad, name- ly, from the lakes to the Mississippi." Their application was favorably received and an ap- propriation being made the same year, which was expended under the direction of the secre- tary of war, the report being of a very favorable character.+
Plumbe received the indorsement of the Wis-
*Bancroft's History of California, Vol. VII., p. 499.
consin legislature of 1839-40 and a memorial was drafted to congress urging the continuance of the work. Phimbe went to Washington to urge his project. But the times were out of joint for great undertakings. The financial panic of 1837 had left the government revenues in a demoralized condition. Plumbe's plan was to issue stock to the amount of $100,000,000 divided in shares of $5 each. The government was to appropriate alternate sections of the public lands along the line of the road. Five million dollars were to be called in for the first installment. After this was expended in building, the receipts from the sale of the lands was to continue the building of the road. One hundred miles were to be built each year and twenty years was the time set for the completion of the road. A bill granting the subsidy and authoriz- ing the building of the road was introduced in congress, but was defeated by the southern members who feared that it would foster the growth of free states.
The man best known in connection with the early agitation of the Pacific railroad scheme. is Asa Whitney, of New York. For a time he acted with Carver in promulgating the project, but took up a plan of his own. Whitney wanted a strip of land sixty miles wide along the whole length of the road, which would have given about one hundred million aeres of the public domain. Whitney's scheme called forth a great deal of discussion. It was feared by some
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timorous souls that such a monopoly wouldl endanger the government and by others that it would bankrupt the public treasury. The agi- tation was kept up for several years. The acquisition of California and New Mexico threw the project into politics. The question of de- pleting the treasury or giving away the public domain no longer worried the pro-slavery poli- ticians in congress. The question that agitated them now was how far south could the road be deflected so that it would enhance the value of the lands over which they hoped to spread their pet institution-human slavery.
Another question that agitated the members of congress was whether the road should be built by the government-should be a national road. The route which the road should take was fought over year after year in congress. The south would not permit the north to have the road for fear that freemen would absorb the public lands and build up free states. It was the old dog-in-the-manger policy so character- istic of the southern proslavery politicians.
The California newspapers early took up the discussion and routes were thick as leaves in Valambrosa. In the Star of May 13, 1848, Dr. John Marsh outlines a route which was among the best proposed: "From the highest point on the Bay of San Francisco to which seagoing vessels can ascend; thence up the valley of the San Joaquin two hundred and fifty miles; thence through a low pass (Walker's) to the valley of the Colorado and thence through Ari- zona and New Mexico by the Santa Fe trail to Independence, Mo."
Routes were surveyed and the reports of the engineers laid before congress; memorials were received from the people of California praying for a road; bills were introduced and discussed, but the years passed and the Pacific railroad was not begun. Slavery, that "sum of all vil- lainies," was an obstruction more impassable than the mountains and deserts that intervened between the Missouri and the Pacific. Southern politicians, aided and abetted by Gwin of Cali- fornia neutralized every attempt.
One of the first of several local railroad projects that resulted in something more than resolutions, public meetings and the election of
a board of directors that never directed any- thing was the building of a railroad from San Francisco to San José. The agitation was be- gun early in 1850 and by February, 1851, $100,- 000 had been subscribed. September 6 of that year a company was organized and the pro- jected road given the high sounding title of the Pacific & Atlantic railroad. Attempts were made to secure subscriptions for its stock in New York and in Europe, but without success. Congress was appealed to, but gave no assist- ance and all that there was to the road for ten years was its name. In 1859 a new organization was effected under the name of the San Fran- cisco & San José railroad company. An at- tempt was made to secure a subsidy of $900,- 000 from the three counties through which the road was to pass, but this failed and the corpora- tion dissolved. Another organization, the fourth, was effected with a capital stock of $2,000,000. The construction of the road was begun in October, 1860, and completed to San José January 16, 1864.
The first railroad completed and put 'into suc- cessful operation in California was the Sacra- mento Valley road. It was originally intended to extend the road from Sacramento through Placer and Sutter counties to Mountain City, in Yuba county, a distance of about forty miles. It came to a final stop at a little over half that distance. Like the San José road the question of building was agitated several years before anything was really done. In 1853 the company was reorganized under the railroad act of that year. Under the previous organization sub- scriptions had been obtained. The Sacramento Union of September 19, 1852, says: "The books of the Sacramento Valley railroad company were to have been opened in San Francisco Wednesday. Upwards of $200,000 of the neces- sary stock has been subscribed from here." The Union of September 24 announces, "That over $600,000 had already been subscribed at San Francisco and Sacramento." Under the re- organization a new board was elected November 12, 1853. C. L. Wilson was made president ; F. W. Page, treasurer, and W. II. Watson, sec- retary. Theodore D. Judah, afterwards famous in California railroad building, was employed as
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engineer and the construction of the road began in February, 1855. It was completed to Fol- som a distance of twenty-two miles from Sacra- mento and the formal opening of the road for business took place February 22, 1856. Accord- ing to the secretary's report for 1857 the earn- ings of that year averaged $18,000 per month. The total earnings for the year amounted to $216,000; the expenses $84,000, leaving a profit of $132,000. The cost of the road and its equip- ment was estimated at $700,000. From this showing it would seem that California's first railroad ought to have been a paying invest- ment, but it was not. Money then was worth 5 per cent a month and the dividends from the road about 18 per cent a year. The difference between one and a half per cent and 5 per cent a month brought the road to a standstill.
Ten years had passed since California had become a state and had its representatives in congress. In all these years the question of a railroad had come up in some form in that body, yet the railroad seemingly was as far from a consummation as it had been a decade before. In 1859 the silver mines of the Washoe were discovered and in the winter of 1859-60 the great silver rush began. An almost continuous stream of wagons, pack trains, horsemen and footmen poured over the Sierra Nevadas into Carson Valley and up the slopes of Mount Davidson to Virginia City. The main line of travel was by way of Placerville, through John- son's Pass to Carson City. An expensive toll road was built over the mountains and monster freight wagons hauled great loads of merchan- dise and mill machinery to the mines. "In 1863 the tolls on the new road amounted to $300,000 and the freight bills on mills and merchandise summed up $13,000,000."*
The rush to Washoe gave a new impetus to railroad projecting. A convention of the whole coast had been held at San Francisco in Sep- tember. 1859, but nothing came of it beyond propositions and resolutions. Early in 1861, Theodore P'. Judah called a railroad meeting at the St. Charles hotel in Sacramento. The feasi- bility of a road over the mountains, the large
amount of business that would come to that road from the Washoe mines and the necessity of Sacramento moving at once to secure that trade were pointed out. This road would be the beginning of a transcontinental line and Sacra- mento had the opportunity of becoming its terminus. Judah urged upon some of the lead- ing business men the project of organizing a company to begin the building of a transconti- mental road. The Washoe trade and travel would be a very important item in the business of the road.
On the 28th of June, 1861, the Central Pacific Railroad company was organized under the general incorporation law of the state. Leland Stanford was chosen president, C. P. Hunting- ton, vice-president, Mark Hopkins, treasurer, James Bailey, secretary, and T. D. Judah, chief engineer. The directors were those just named and E. B. Crocker, Jolin F. Morse, D. W. Strong and Charles Marsh. The capital stock of the company was $8.500,000 divided into eighty-five thousand shares of $100 each. The shares taken by individuals were few, Stanford, Huntington, Hopkins, Judah and Charles Crocker subscrib- ing for one hundred and fifty each; Glidden & Williams, one hundred and twenty-five shares; Charles A. Lombard and Orville D. Lombard, three hundred and twenty shares; Samuel Hooper, Benjamin J. Reed, Samuel P. Shaw, fifty shares each; R. O. Ives, twenty-five shares; Edwin B. Crocker, ten shares: Samuel Bran- nan, two hundred shares; cash subscriptions of which 10 per cent was required by law to be paid down realizing but a few thousand dollars with which to begin so important a work as a railroad across the Sierra Nevada .*
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