OCR Text |
Show Chapter 9 PONY EXPRESS In diverting attention to a consideration of the industrial life of our pioneers, we must remember that we are dealing with the history of a people who for a period covering over twenty years before colonizing Slaterville, were not free from persecutions long enough to exercise their God-given right to enter and expand in any field of industry other than in producing necessities to sustain life. Several years passed after trials, persecutions, and loss of much of their earthly possessions plagued their lives before they were sufficiently rehabilitated to enter any field of endeavor other than farming. Present-day expansion in any pursuit other than agriculture after over a hundred years since Slaterville was settled, would indicate that farming in the sparsely settled colonies and during their devel-opment through the years, has been the most reliable, remunerative, and safeguarding enterprise that actually could have been pursued. In exploring various phases of Pioneer life in the main early settlements of Utah, among which Slaterville is included, we find thirteen years passed after the Pioneers entered the Salt Lake Valley before the Pony Express came into existence. Settlers in the colonies during those years came to realize the need of a freight and mail service to bring goods and news from the outside to Utah and its scattered colonies. President Young in whose leadership the Saints had implicit faith, organized the Young Express and Carrying Company during the early 1850's to facilitate immigration to Utah and carry mail, freight, and passengers between Salt Lake City and St. Joe and Independence; cities in the Missouri Valley, Western terminals to which telegraph and railroad systems had been extended. Hyrum Kimball, a member of the Young firm, was awarded a contract by the Government in 1855 to carry mail between Salt Lake City and cities of the Missouri Valley, which fit in nicely with operations of the Young Company, but in order to facilitate matters and avoid company operations of interfering with mail deliveries, a subsidiary organization was effected expressly to take care of that phase of business known as the Y.S. Company, The company planned a swift pony express to carry mail and expected to make deliveries between the designated points in a record twenty days. The venture received tremendous labor contributions from faithful Church members in setting up a string of stations along the route. Genoa, a settlement with a population of 162, located on the Bear River 100 miles west of Omaha, raised gardens, grain, hay, and livestock to supply the wagon train. In his book, " The Great Basin Kingdom," Professor Leonard J. Arrington informs us that just as the Mormons were well along to realizing their goal, the entire structure was demolished by the sudden and secret action of the Government cancelling the mail contract, which was done on the 10th of June 1857, but was not made known to the Y.S. Company until the 1st of July, almost a month later, when the postmaster at Independence refused to hand over mail to the company representative with instructions that the Mormon contract to carry mail had been cancelled. This action coincided with a decision to send a large consignment of troops to the territory of Utah to put down a rebellion of the Mormons against the Government. As was learned -110- earlier in this history, that ill-directed expedition labelled by Eastern newspapers "Buchanan's Blunder, not only discredited the veracity and loyalty of the Mormon people, but cost the Federal Government millions of dollars and a hundred innocent men their lives, who died from hunger and exposure in army camps with nothing accomplished. Three years after the Mormon contract to carry mail was annulled, and with drawal of the army occupation from Utah was near completion, the nation was faced with one of its great crisis in history. Bitter hatred and re-sentment aroused in the South over Government attitude favoring abolishing slavery, a practice which had long contributed to the production of cotton and tobacco, the two leading remunerative crops grown in that section of the Nation, posed a threat of dividing the Union. In the event of Civil Wan, there was no way by which the Nation's capitol could contact the isolated west with its half-million people which became increasingly more necessary. The unsettled state of National affairs that continued to get worse instead of better, posed a challenge which was accepted by a partnership of individuals: Russell, Majors, and Waddell who operated a freighting firm, to establish a badly needed mail service between East and West as a remunerative venture in connection with their freighting business. They organized what became familiarily known later as the famous Pony Express. One hundred ninety way stations were set at intervels, in most cases of 15 miles over the 1,966 mile stretch from St. Joe, Missouri to Sacramento, California, the Western terminal, and 40 men charged with the arduous task of carrying and delivering mail were employed. The first rider to leave on the swing westward was Johnson William Richardson, who left St. Joe at 7:00 in the evening of April 3, 1860. Riders pounded their way along the South pass to Salt Lake City, thence across alkali flats and barren wastes, to the Sierras, averaging from nine to fifteen miles an hour in favorable weather and five to eight over the most hazardous territory in winter. The same time the rider left St. Joe with mail for the West, mail left San Francisco for the East by boat to Sacramento, where it was transferred to the mailbag of William Hamilton, first rider to leave Sacramento who left at 2:00 A.M. on the 4th of April on the first leg of mail deliveries to the East. These riders crossed each other somewhere east of Salt Lake City, April 8, in rapid flights to reach their destinations. Indians who resented the white men trespassing their territory, and herds of buffalo that roamed the plains were always problems. Inclement weather conditions which required changing horses frequently, at times, caused delays in mail deliveries. The pony express, an epoch in the early development of our present-day western civilization, was established in a crucial time of our nation's history. When Civil Wan became eminent, it opened a passage across the Nation giving the Government contact with West; carried President Lincoln's Inauguaral Address and proceedings of the Civil War to this Western country and more important, it tied the great territory of California with its gold to the Union. Days of the pony express were numbered, however. The nation was slowly being spanned by lightning of the telegraph, which cut the distance gradually between the East and West terminals over which it operated until October -111- |