The most striking new developments were prompted by the way station requirements of overland stagecoaching (to Denver and Pike’s Peak country as well as to Salt Lake City and California) and Pony Express. When coupled with the rapidity of rural and urban settlement west of the Missouri River, east of the traditional California and Oregon destination points, and on all sides of Salt Lake City, the net result was an overland trip which resembled the pioneering ventures of the early 1840s in name only. For in 1859 and 1860 there were literally hundreds of supportive facilities en route. Rarely did the emigrant travel more than twenty-five or thirty miles without encountering at least one habitation. Paul D. Unruh, Jr., The Plains Across.1
The above quote from one of the finest of all books about the ways west gives a picture of trail life in the late 1850s and 1860 — the period with which our present volume deals. There was a tapering off of overland travel in the early and mid-1850s, and then there was a build-up in 1859 and 1860.
There were some pertinent events or activities that relate to the experience of women travellers who wrote during the 1850s.
This was first of all, the decade of intense activity in the rise of the feminist movement in the United States. It had its beginnings in up-state New York, especially in Seneca Falls.2 The major symbol was the “Bloomer Costume,” named for Amelia Bloomer, an active person in the woman’s movements of the day. This has been mentioned in the diaries we have already published of women during the early 1850s. (See especially Volume IV, pp. 13–15,) Women traveling overland seem to have been even more active in wearing this costume than other American women for two reasons. They found it more comfortable to wear on the overland journey, and they could stride a horse and not be limited to riding side-saddle. These women on the western venture were also more independent and intellectually adventurous than those who remained in the east. Two of the women in this volume were active feminists: Julia Archibald (Holmes), who chose at times not to use her new surname and wore the “American Costume” during a journey to the Colorado gold fields in 1858. She became the first white woman of record to climb Pikes Peak — this in her bloomer costume. She also insisted on standing watch during the night the same as the men of the wagon train. The men resisted this. The other woman who was active in the movement of that day was Hannah Keziah Clapp, who told in a letter published in the following pages of wearing a bloomer dress on her overland journey and added drama by carrying a revolver at her side.
The late 1850s were also a time for driving large herds of cattle and flocks of sheep from Missouri to the Pacific Coast, particularly to California. There were herds of as many as 800 to 1,000 cattle. The numbers of sheep were phenomenal. One of our diarists, Martha Missouri Moore, records the herding of a drove of 5100 sheep. They sold off 1,000 of them along the way and drove the rest over the Lander Road to the Red Bluff area of northern California, where James Preston Moore had already laid a claim, having driven 4,500 across in 1853. Other droves of sheep were significant: Colonel W.W. Hollister herded 9,000 from Ohio, and several others drove flocks of smaller size.3
In the third place, the 1850s were also a time of road surveying and building by the Interior Department of the Federal Government. It might well be called the Frederick West Lander decade, for he was the surveyor who mapped out five overland transcontinental routes.4 The one most important to the California pioneers was the road that led from Fort Kearney to South Pass and down the Humboldt across present Nevada to Honey Lake on the eastern boundary of northern California. The western leg of the way became known as the Lander Wagon Road.
He recommended that “All stock drivers should take it at once. All parties whose stock is in bad order should take it, and I believe the emigration should take it, and will be much better satisfied with it, even the first season, than the old [California] road.”5 That was the way followed by the Moores with their large flock of sheep in 1860.
Fredrick Lander’s report to the Department of Interior in 1859 indicated that “over sixty-two thousand cubic yards of earth and rock have been removed, eleven miles of willow, and twenty-three miles of heavy pine timber cleared from the roadway.”6 This would indicate that for the purposes of wagon travel the great natural roadway was adequate.
For those who have not read the introduction to the first volume of this series, we reiterate some salient points which have been used to guide the editorial hand. It is a major purpose to let the writers tell their own story in their own words with as little scholarly trimming as possible. The intent in this publication of primary sources is to transcribe each word or phrase as accurately as possible, leaving misspellings and grammatical errors as written in the original.
Two gestures have been made for the sake of clarity:
1. We have added spaces where phrases or sentences ended and no punctuation appeared in the original.
2. We have put the daily journals in diary format even though the original may have been written continuously line by line because of the writer’s shortage of paper.
There are numerous geographic references that are mentioned over and over again in the various accounts. The final volume in the series will include a geographical gazetteer, in addition to an index and bibliography to aid the reader.
The scarce and unusual in overland documents have been sought out. Readily available accounts are not included, but they will be referred to in the final volume along with the bibliography. If the reader knows of such accounts written while on the journey, please let us know. Our goal is to add to the knowledge of all regarding this portion of our history — the story of ordinary people embarked on an extraordinary experience.
KENNETH L. HOLMES
Monmouth, Oregon, 1988
1(Champagne, Illinois, 1979), p. 298.
2 Miriam Gurko, The Ladies of Seneca Falls: The Birth of the Woman’s Rights Movement (New York, 1974), passim; Margaret Hope Bacon, Mothers of Feminism (San Francisco, 1986), passim.
3 The classic work on sheep drives is Edward Norris Wentworth, America’s Sheep Trails (Ames, Iowa, 1948), pp. 138, 169. See also Paul W. Gates, California Ranchos and Farms, 1846–1862 (Madison, 1967), pp. 13–37, also p. 190 for reference to James Preston Moore.
4“Lander, Frederick West,” Dictionary of American Biography, X (New York, 1933), pp. 569–570; E. Douglas Branch, “ Frederick West Lander, Road-Builder,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, XVI (September, 1929), pp. 172–187; Peter T. Harstad, “ The Lander Trail,” Idaho Yesterdays (Fall, 1968), pp. 14–28.
5 Branch, Opus Cit., p. 184.
6 Pacific Wagon Roads, Letter from the Secretary of the Interior, House Executive Document No. 108, 35th Congress, 2nd Session, 1859, p. 7.