The Butterfield Overland Mail
by Waterman L. Ormsby
Only Through Passenger on the First Westbound Stage
edited by Lyle H. Wright
and Josephine M. Bynum
JOHN BUTTERFIELD, A GOOD FRIEND of President James Buchanan and an
accomplished stagecoach manager, was the initial guiding force of
the Overland Mail Company. He was also vice president of the American
Express Company, founded in 1850 with Henry Wells and William G. Fargo,
who, in 1852, formed Wells, Fargo & Co. to bring banking and express
services to California.
Wells Fargo and American Express controlled the Overland Mail Company
and, between them, had seven of the Company's eleven directors. In
1857, Wells Fargo had funded the surveying of the overland route to
El Paso. In February 1858, the board of directors asked Louis McLane,
Wells Fargo's general agent, to "act for them in California."
In March 1860, uneasy at the mounting indebtedness incurred by John
Butterfield, Wells Fargo gained a fifth director and substituted a
more cost-conscious president.
At first, the Overland Mail Company operated along a southern route
that swung from Missouri through Texas and across the southwest into
Southern California with an eventual terminus in San Francisco.
The route shifted northward to a more central east-west during the
Civil War and Wells Fargo's interests solidified. On November 1, 1886,
the Overland Mail Company line through Salt Lake City became part
of Wells Fargo's grand consolidation of overland stagecoaching west
of the Missouri River.
From the introduction:
Contemporary accounts of travel on the Overland Mail Company's stage
line during the years 1858 to 1861, when it was operating between
St. Louis and Memphis, the two eastern terminals, and San Francisco,
are all too few. The best narrative consists of a series of eight
articles by Waterman L. Ormsby, published in six numbers of the New
York Herald at intervals from September 26 to November 19,
1858. Ormsby, a special correspondent of the Herald, was the
only through passenger on the first westbound stage. His articles,
here reprinted, supply a graphic picture of the country through which
he passed from St. Louis to San Francisco. They furnish a full and
accurate account of the controversy that raged over the various proposed
transcontinental routes for a mail-and-passenger stage line, which
had been authorized by an act of Congress in March 1857. They also
give the Postmaster-General's reasons for selecting the "thirty-second
parallel route," with an eastern bifurcation, and awarding the
contract to John Butterfield and his associates.
Ormsby says in his first article that, "in view of the importance
of this enterprise at this time, and the bearing which it has upon
the future destinies of this country, I propose to give to you a condensed
account of the origin and history of the contract and the claims of
the competing routes." From the information presented concerning
the different routes, it is evident that, before his departure from
New York, he had made an exhaustive study of the overland project.
The fact that he traveled a considerable distance on the stage with
John Butterfield, president of the Overland Mail Company, lends authority
to his statements about the company. The articles covering the trip,
written for the most part en route, furnish a narrative of stagecoach
travel as told by an acute observer, who appreciated the dangers of
such a journey without dramatizing them. The series as a whole makes
an important contribution to the annals of transportation in the United
States.
Copyright © 2003 Huntington Library Press.
All rights reserved.
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