Chapter 28
Pa and I Take to the Trail
With the history it had and the reputation the Pony Express had already gained, when Pa and I left Sacramento it was almost as if we were following in the footsteps of George Washington. It seems odd to talk about California and the West as being part of history when everything was so new out here. But if the gold rush and the Pony Express didn’t make us westerners part of history, nothing ever would.
A fellow named Sam Hamilton rode the first leg between Sacramento and Sportsman’s Hall. The Express left Sacramento every Tuesday and Saturday. Since we had arrived late Monday, we stayed at Miss Baxter’s and decided to leave at the same time. Pa was excited, and wanted to see how long we could keep pace with him.
But Sam was a skinny little fellow, and his horse not much bigger. To give them an advantage when trying to outrun Indians, each animal’s load was limited to 165 pounds—20 pounds for the mail, 25 pounds for equipment, and 120 pounds for the rider. Zack must have lied about his weight, because I knew he weighed at least 130 or 140 pounds. But little Sam Hamilton might have been only 110!
When we took off down the street out of Sacramento, Hamilton was a block ahead of me and Pa before we’d gone a mile! He glanced back, lifted his hat in final greeting, gave us a shout of Good Luck, and gradually disappeared in a cloud of dust. Finally Pa pulled up his horse, turned around at me laughing, and said, “We gave it a gallant effort, Corrie! But there ain’t no way we’re gonna keep up with him for even two miles!”
“And if we keep running our horses like this,” I yelled as we reined them down to a gentle canter, “they won’t make it past Placerville!”
Already the dust cloud surrounding little Sam Hamilton was fading into the distance. I could hardly imagine that the mail pouch he was carrying would be in Missouri in ten days or less!
Pa and I slowed up and walked for about ten minutes, Pa breaking out in laughter every so often at how ridiculous it was for us to think we were going to keep up with the Express rider. Then we eased our two horses on into a trot. If we didn’t move at a little bit of a pace, we would never get to Nevada.
We were obviously not going to make it to a station house every night, so we would spend some nights alone out on the trail. With Pa along, I felt as safe as if we had our own private detachment of Cavalry. There would not be any danger of Indian attack until well into Nevada, and we hoped by then to have had some word about Zack.
The weather proved better for us than it had been back in April for that first “Pony” run. It was beautiful climbing up high into the Sierras, although the trail was narrow and rocky in places, with huge cliffs on the edge falling away into deep gorges and canyons. I couldn’t imagine how Warren Upson had made it through here at all in the snowy blizzard of that first run!
“Listen to this, Pa,” I said as we sat around our campfire on our second night out. I had been reading an account of the first runs of the Express from some papers I’d brought along, keeping track of what had happened as we followed along the same route. “It was snowing here on that very first run.”
“Hard to make their time in a blizzard.”
“But they did it! Want me to read it to you?”
“Sure,” said Pa, sipping his coffee. “I ain’t going nowhere. Maybe I’ll fall asleep with you reading to me!”
I began: “Everything had been arranged on that first day for the two riders to leave St. Joseph and Sacramento at the same time, one heading east, the other heading west. . . .”
I stopped for a second, then said, “I wonder what it was like when the two batches of mail passed each other. It must have been somewhere in Wyoming.”
“Getting a little ahead of your story, ain’t you?” said Pa.
“But don’t you wonder if the riders stopped and chatted or if they just blew by each other with a shout and wave?”
“To tell you the truth, I never thought of it.”
“How I wish I could have been there to watch it!”
“I’m gonna be sound asleep before you have that mail pouch out of Sacramento! Now you got my curiosity up—come on, read me the story, girl.”
“Yes, Pa,” I said with a smile. “First let me read you a short little notice out of the Alta.”
My paper had been involved in the Pony Express right from the beginning, and we had been watching it closely all year, especially after Zack’s leaving. But only the names of the most well-known riders were ever mentioned, so we had never seen anything about Zack. The April 3 edition of that year had an article on the festivities about the first rider leaving San Francisco, and that’s what I read to Pa.
“The first Pony Express started yesterday afternoon, from the Alta Telegraph Company on Montgomery Street. The saddlebags were duly lettered ‘Overland Pony Express,’ and the horse (a wiry little animal) was dressed with miniature flags. He proceeded, just before four o’clock, to the Sacramento boat, and was loudly cheered by the crowd as he started. . . . The express matter amounted to 85 letters, which at $5 per letter gave a total receipt of $425.”
“Didn’t you tell me that first fellow wasn’t even a Pony Express rider at all?” said Pa.
I laughed again. “He was just a messenger who worked at the paper,” I answered.
James Randall told me later how much he’d wished he could go farther. But he only rode three blocks to the waterfront, and then got on the steamer for Sacramento with San Francisco’s part of the mail. It was in Sacramento that the route of the Pony Express really started, despite Mr. Kemble’s attempt to make San Francisco and the Alta seem like the most important parts of the whole thing!
“You ever gonna get back to that story you started out of the Bee?”
“I’m trying, Pa.” I picked up the first paper again and finally read to Pa the whole article.
“Sam Hamilton was the first rider out of Sacramento on April 3. He rode sixty miles to the station at Sportsman’s Hall, where he handed off the mochila and leather pouches to Warren ‘Boston’ Upson, who had to cross the treacherous Sierra Nevadas. There had just been a fresh snowfall, and a new storm was on the way. The very first day out from Sacramento proved to be one of the most dangerous. Warren found himself in the middle of a blinding blizzard crossing over the mountains, having to walk his pony on foot part of the way, and many times nearly losing the trail. At last he made it safely to his station house at Friday’s Station, right on the California border.
“Robert Haslam took over next, riding across the perilous Great Basin to Fort Churchill, Nevada. This was one of the worst parts of the whole route, with many mountain ranges, rivers which often disappeared into ‘sinks’ in the ground and were hard to follow, and broken canyons, rocky terrain, wild animals, rattlesnakes, a critical lack of water in summer, snow in winter, and Indians besides. The long distance across Nevada and Utah was the most hazardous of all.”
“Not much wonder why Zack found himself an opening there,” Pa interrupted. Neither of us said it right then, but it also explained why we were so worried about him. Already, in the first five months of the Express, there had been numerous attacks reported, and several killings of station people. Some whole stations had been burned to the ground.
I put down the Sacramento paper to read the account from a Salt Lake City reporter who told about the midpoint of that first run. Many of the riders in Utah were Mormon boys who knew the difficult terrain in both directions out of Salt Lake City. Although this was not an exact halfway point, it was close enough to be considered the major intersection between eastbound and westbound mail. The first riders reached Salt Lake within two days of each other. The Alta later ran the article that had appeared in Salt Lake in the Deseret News on April 11.
The first Pony Express from the West left Sacramento at 12 p.m. on the night of the third inst., and arrived on the night of the seventh, inside of prospectus time. The roads were heavy, the weather stormy. The last seventy-five miles were made in five hours and fifteen minutes in a heavy rain.
The Express from the East left St. Joseph, Mo., at 6:30 p.m. on the evening of the third and arrived in this city at 6:25 p.m. on the evening of the ninth. The difference in time between this city and St. Joseph is something near one hour and fifteen minutes, bringing us within six days’ communication with the frontier, and seven days from Washington—a result which we, accustomed to receive news three months after date, can well appreciate.
The weather has been very disagreeable and stormy for the past week and in every way calculated to retard the operation of the company, and we are informed that the Express eastward was five hours in going from this place to Snyder’s Mill, a distance of twenty-five miles.
The probability is that the Express will be a little behind time in reaching Sacramento this trip, but when the weather becomes settled and the roads good, we have no doubt that they will be able to make the trip in less than ten days.
After putting down the Alta reprint, again I read from the Bee as Pa listened.
“Up through the Rockies out of Salt Lake, then through South Pass, past the famous landmark Independence Rock, and across the Platte River to Fort Laramie. This is the major stop where riders could feel a sense of civilization again. Fort Laramie is one of the major trading posts and army headquarters of the Rockies region, where trappers, Indians, emigrants, and travelers all mix with one another.
“From Fort Laramie down to the Cottonwood Springs station and into Nebraska, the riders regularly pass stagecoaches and wagon trains, as their route follows already well-worn paths. Through woodlands gradually descending down into the plains and across buffalo and antelope country, riders are again likely to encounter Indian lodges or tepee villages, until they arrive at Fort Kearny in Nebraska, which was originally built to protect travelers along the Oregon Trail.
“Across Nebraska and Kansas at this time of year, the trail is heavy with wagon trains. The Kickapoo Indians of Kansas are mostly peaceful and friendly farmers who had learned to get on very well with the white man, and thus gave the Pony Express Riders no trouble. And across the Missouri River from Kansas lay the final destination of the eastbound rider—St. Joseph!
“The first two runs arrived at their respective destinations at almost the same time. From St. Joseph to Sacramento it had taken nine days and twenty-three hours—one hour ahead of schedule. The eastbound trip had taken one hour longer—exactly ten days!”
I laid down the paper. If Pa wasn’t asleep yet, he would be soon. It was dark and the fire was getting a little low. Everything was quiet except for the night sounds—mostly crickets. I put a couple more pieces of wood on the fire and watched them spark and flare up. Then I settled down into my bedroll, watching the flames but reflecting back on that day when the first Pony Express rider from Missouri had reached Sacramento and then gone on to San Francisco.
What a celebration there had been that April 13! I wish we could have been there, but we heard about it as if we had been. Both the Senate and the Assembly of the legislature adjourned and the whole city turned out to welcome Sam Hamilton, returning from Sportsman’s Hall, where he had been waiting for Warren Upson to return with the eastbound pouches. Sam was given a hero’s welcome as he hurried to the steamer to take the mail on downriver to San Francisco. He didn’t arrive there until the middle of the night, but that didn’t stop the torchlight celebration, band music, fire engines, cheering, booming of cannons, and speechmaking, including one from my editor, Mr. Kemble! The people of San Francisco rejoiced, for it seemed that their isolation from the rest of the world was over.
It was a significant year for the Pony Express, with so much news going on between North and South, and over the election. The news that was carried back and forth between East and West was now less than a week and a half old, instead of nearly a month old! The news people were most excited of all. An article in the Sacramento Union read:
Yesterday’s proceedings, impromptu though they were, will long be remembered in Sacramento. The more earnest part of the “Pony” welcome had been arranged earlier in the day. This was the cavalcade of citizens to meet the little traveler a short distance from the city and escort him into town. Accordingly, late in the day, a deputation of about eighty persons, together with a deputation of the Sacramento Hussars, assembled at the old Fort, and stretched out their lines on either side along the road along which the Express was to come.
Meanwhile, the excitement had increased all over the city. The balconies of the stores were occupied by ladies, and the roofs and sheds were taken possession of by the more agile of the opposite sex, straining to catch a glimpse of the “Pony.”
At length—5:45—all this preparation was rewarded. First a cloud of rolling dust in the direction of the Fort, then a horseman, bearing a small flag, riding furiously down J Street, and then a straggling charging band of horsemen flying after him, heralding the coming of the Express; a cannon, placed on the square at Tenth Street, sent forth its noisy welcome. Amidst the firing and shouting, and waving of hats and ladies’ handkerchiefs, the pony was seen coming down J Street, surrounded by about thirty of the citizen deputation. Out of this confusion emerged the Pony Express, trotting up to the door of the agency and depositing its mail in ten days from St. Joseph to Sacramento. Hip, hip, hurrah for the Pony Carrier!