Wyoming And The Railroad

The month of May is important for railroad historians in Wyoming. Tomorrow, marks the anniversary, May 9, 1868,  of the tracks for the Union Pacific reaching Laramie. One year, and one day, later, May 10, 1869, the Golden Spike was driven at Promontory Point Utah as the transcontinental railroad is completed.

Wyoming Train - Circa 1890s

How Important Was The Transcontinental Railroad?

It replaced the long slow and expensive travel by wagon train. It also did away with the pony express, many stage coach lines, and long distance freighters who moved goods east and west. The railroad also eliminated most of the dangers of going west. The old trip, by wagon, would have taken six months by train one week.

Looks Like This Old Wagon Tired Out

Was it Really Transcontinental?

It could be, depends on how one looks at it,  but the tracks in the east were already quite extensive all the way through Iowa. The building of the new rails started at Omaha and ended on the west coast.  Nearly 1800 miles of tracks were laid between 1863 and 1869 by three different builders. Although the railroad is often attributed to President Lincoln, who was in office when it was started. It’s building went on through the administration of President Andrew Johnson and finished with U. S. Grant in office.

Railroads Are Still Going Stong In Wyoming Today

But Wasn’t it Expensive to Travel This Way?

No. As a matter of fact, the cost to travel west by wagon would have run from several hundred to more than a thousand dollars. By the new rail system, the cost, third class, sleeping car, was around $150, and if one started in Omaha, the cost to go to the Pacific Coast was $65.00.

For many years, I asked students, for a project, to pick two events they wish they could have been part of in the old west. After they had finished, I gave them my own list of three. I would have gone to the first rendezvous, rode in a wagon train west and taken a trip on the 1869 Transcontinental Railroad. Fun times and great adventure. 

Here I Am Hanging Out At A Rendezvous - Looks To Me Like I Fit Right In

Trains Then and Now

Today we take railroads and rail traffic for granted, at least, where I live we do. Dozens of trains pass through on the north side of our little town each day and no one notices, just part of life. But that was not always the case. When trains first passed through towns and cities much of the community would turn out to cheer and watch the powerful locomotives pulling a handful of cars.  When passenger cars were involved and the train stopped, even if but for a few minutes, it was the best entertainment in town. Funny how times change.

Modern day Coal Train rolling toward the mines to refill

When I was a kid growing up in 1950s Nebraska we still, on occasion, went down to watch the Rock Island Rocket, come in and leave. It was quite a site. The rocket would reach speeds of 70 or so miles per hour, making its Kansas City to Omaha trip in a few hours and that included several stops.

But long before our family, and many others watched and enjoined the trains, someone had to build the first track and what a job it was. 2,400 ties were needed every mile, and when they got out here our supplies of cottonwood, scrub cedar and pine were not good enough for the substantial ties needed. Most of the first ties laid through the west were Pennsylvania Oak. Eventually, enough good hard pine was found in the foothills and mountains to open several tie camps in Wyoming and the west.

At last the foothills and mountains provided Tie timber

Water and food were also a problem to supply as the tracks were built. Meat hunters like Buffalo Bill and others are well documented in history, but there is more to this story also. Building the railroad through an area where the native people did not want it was dangerous. Forts D.A. Russell, Sanders, and Fred Steel were built to house soldiers whose primary purpose would be to protect the workers and the process of building the railroad. In places, half the workers worked, and the other half stood guard duty, a tough build indeed. But they got it done, and today we hardly notice. 

The great herds were in decline but still supplied much of the
 meat for the crews building the railroad west

The Diet of a Mountain Man

We read and watch daily opinions about our overweight society, “Americans are too fat,” we are continually told. Maybe so, today anyway, but not always. I smile each time I remember the story of Jim Bridger making his own supper. He skinned and gutted a jack rabbit and a nice sized trout, skewered them and propped both over the fire for roasting. Once they were cooked to his taste, likely not long, he ate both quietly and drank an entire pot of boiled coffee to wash down the meat. No seasoning of any kind, maybe smoke flavor from the fire, but that’s it. This was not uncommon for early hunters/trappers in the American West. Meat and coffee. Surprising to some, that many of these men also drank a lot of tea, it was as popular as coffee for many of the early explorers.

Cooking in a Mountain Man Camp

It took several years before the diet in the west changed much. Changed, but it still remained monotonous, with western Americas often eating the same few things for days or weeks at a time.  Wild game, fruits, and wild onions, in season, and washed down with copious amounts of coffee and tea with little else. Meat could be preserved by smoking and drying and often was.

Wild fruits and berries were always a treat

Not until the Oregon Trail got busy and the railroad ran through the state did the variety of foods available start to change. With places like Fort Laramie, and a quarter of a century later railroad stops, getting regular shipments of foodstuffs it helped. Flour and cornmeal were generally available along with dried fruits (usually apples), sugar, rice, dried beans and peas. Not much but much better than it was.

Early food, including meats, were often boiled, unlike today’s diet, heavy with fried foods. There was not a lot of fried meats until bacon became a staple along the trail west, soup, and roasted meats were much more an everyday part of the diet than today.  

So there you have it roasted meats and a few boiled dried vegetables, day after day after day, guaranteed to keep one’s weight under control. But, be careful with the gravy, cornbread, and biscuits, all favorites when flour and cornmeal were readily available in the west.

Buffalo - Staple of the diet in the west for many years

Wyoming the Railroad and What If

The transcontinental railroad was a brainchild of Eastern businessmen and politicians in the 1830s. It took a while, about two decades before any real planning took place and another decade before work was started. It took President Lincoln to finally push through legislation to build it. The Central Pacific started building in 1863 and the Union Pacific in 1865. Promontory Summit was reached and the railroads joined in 1869.

Wyoming was a big part and a big challenge for the railroad. The original route was to follow the Oregon Trail, but the Pony Express proved there was a better route through southern Wyoming to South Pass, the only feasible way to cross the mountains. This route saved a couple of hundred miles and was no harder to build.  Although original plans called for a route that was nearly the same as the finished railroad, there was a controversy about the route. Texas wanted a southern route, using better weather as their public reason. Privately they wanted the railroad for the huge economic benefit they knew it would bring. When the Civil War started, Texas was out and the tracks through Wyoming were not far away.

Trains are a bit faster today

Not everyone was happy with this, Denver had lobbied for the railroad, but no route including Denver was ever considered. But the early people of Denver, knowing that they could connect to the railroad and reap most of the benefits of its northern neighbors. Thus was born the Denver Pacific, a bit over 100 miles of track connecting Denver to Cheyenne completed one year after the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad.

It was another 20 years before Wyoming became a state in 1890.  Most of the early population lived along the railroad, it brought jobs and with jobs came the people. It is always interesting to speculate as to what could have happened, what if.  How long would it have taken for Wyoming to become a state without the railroad? As the least populated state today, would it be even smaller if it would have taken another 20 or 30 years to have adequate rail service? Would the cattle drive era been a time when cowboys drove cattle south from Wyoming to the railroad in Texas?

I may have had too much time to think about offbeat subjects today. Hey, what if . . . . . .

The Two Laramie's

The two greatest roads for westward expansion, the Oregon/Mormon Trail, and the Transcontinental Railroad both passed through Laramie. But not the same Laramie.

Fort Laramie of trapper and Indian wars fame sits on the Laramie and North Platte Rivers in east-central Wyoming.

Fort Laramie

Laramie the city, once actually called, Laramie City, is in the southeast corner of the state.

University of Wyoming - Game Day

Today the two Laramie’s are often confused in print. Most of the confusion results from people thinking that Fort Laramie and Laramie, the home of the University of Wyoming, are one and the same, but they are not. Every once in a while I run across something that confuses the two.

I lived and taught at Laramie High School for many years retiring from teaching in 2012. Now I live just minutes away from Fort Laramie, where I used to live before moving to Laramie City. That should help clear everything up.

Easy to remember which is which – wagons to the west passed through Fort Laramie and Rail cars to the west passed through Laramie City.

Why the name? I have posted here before about early Wyoming trapper and explorer Jacques La Ramie. La Ramie was a free trapper in and around Fort William, later to become Fort John and then Fort Laramie. He either died, was killed or was lost and never heard from again in 1820 or 21. Many things are named after him in the southeast part of the state including the small river running through Laramie the city and Fort Laramie.

Laramie River near the Fort

I have posted other parts of Jacques La Ramie legend from time to time, but this is the first I have blogged about the confusion with all things Laramie.

So where did all this start? A recent book where a man, riding the all-new transcontinental RR, got off at Fort Laramie. Oops!

Break time in the park

The Talking Wire Changes the West

The Talking Wire

- .... .- -. -.- ... / ..-. --- .-. / .-. . .- -.. .. -. --. --..-- / .... .- ...- . / .- / --. .-. . .- - / -.. .- -.-- .-.-.-  

Hint – The above is a Morse Code Message – can you read it?

New technology made distances shorter. The telegraph made communication instantaneous. Before it, the pony express took many days to pass on the same information.

 The United States Government offered a subsidy of $40,000 a year for up to ten years to build a transcontinental telegraph line. This line would connect the populated east with the populated west by crossing the Great Plains and parts of Americas, Mountain West. The new line was built from Omaha in the east to Carson City and Salt Lake City in the west.

Edward Creighton finished it in 1861, mostly following the Oregon Trail. Many of the stations set up as Pony Express stops became the new Telegraph stations of the west.

Old Telephone Pole, Don't See Many of These Anymore

Did it change the west? The Pony Express went out of business two days after the first messages were sent along the new line. It lasted until 1869, when it was replaced by a new multi-line telegraph that followed the tracks of the Transcontinental Railroad, it lasted up to the time of the telephone,

The Message at the top - Thanks for reading, have a great day.

I was unable to find any historical documentation that proved the Indians called the telegraph the, “talking wires,” may be a Hollywood thing but I always enjoyed that story.

Did you know there is a Morse Code Translator online? Try it, great fun.  

These Guys Were Tough on Early Telegraph Poles

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Skinning Mules and Whacking Bulls

So easy for us today to go to the store and buy just about anything we want. A drive on any interstate will allow you to quickly see how all those goods get there every day. Trucks and trains and in some cases planes move our goods today, making sure I can grab a fresh pineapple on a cold snowy November day in Wyoming. But how did they do it in the old days, the really old days?  Mule Skinners and Bull Whackers moved the goods.

From about 1825, freighters started moving goods to outlying settlements and forts. When the 1860s came, with the transcontinental railroad, the freighting business became one of the busiest in the west. Freighters moved goods from and too the railroad, supplying goods needed for expansion and settlement of the new west.

Freighters, for protection and because of the amount of goods needed, traveled in huge slow moving overland trains. These trains consisted of two dozen or more wagons, each carrying as much as three tons of goods. The wagons were pulled by huge teams of six pair of oxen or several pair of mules, depending on the weight of the freight.   Not fast but most efficient.

Train Stopped for the Day

Mule Drivers were known as mule-skinners and the oxen drivers as bull-whackers, all using their bull whips most efficiently to nip black flies away from the oxen and mules. This slow but efficient way to move goods allowed the new citizens of the west to buy the same coffee, canned peaches and yards of calico that were offered on the two coasts. It lasted into the 1900s until motor trucks and better roads allowed for the bull-whackers and mule-skinners to die off in favor of truck drivers.

Jim Bridger Architect

In 1862, President Lincoln signed a bill that created the Union Pacific Railway Company. General Dodge and other government officials were unsure of which route through Wyoming would be the best, follow the Oregon Trail or take a more southern route. So they called in America’s foremost authority on the Rocky Mountains, Jim Bridger. Word was sent to Bridger in St. Louis that he was needed in Denver on important business.

When Bridger arrived in Denver, the engineers showed him their plans and asked the old mountain man where the best place to cross the mountains might be. Bridger asked for a piece of paper, grabbed a charcoal burned stick out of the fire and preceded to draw a map of the Rockies in Colorado and Wyoming. Never one to miss a chance to take a job at government officials, Bridger told them they should have saved their money, he could have drawn the map in St. Louis, but he was secretly grateful for this one last chance to visit his beloved Rockies.

On that little sheet of paper Bridger drew the exact rout that the transcontinental railroad followed across the state of Wyoming. The railroad still follows that same route today, through the rugged pass between Cheyenne and Laramie. Later Interstate 80 paralleled the transcontinental railroad across Wyoming. Making ol’ Gabe (Jim Bridger) not only a mountain man but a builder of railroads and interstates, Bridger may have never learned to read and write but he was one fine map maker and architect.

Stagecoaches, U.S. Mail and the Railroad

In 1860 the famous western company, Russell, Majors and Waddell, became the Overland Stage Company. They had recently obtained the contracts to carry all of the mail from the Missouri River to the Pacific coast. To supplement their income they also carried passengers. (Mark Twain gives a great account of travel by the overland stage in his book, Roughing It, 1872, didn’t sound like much fun to me) Stage stations were stretched across Wyoming and the west. A need for more speed brought in the Pony Express with stations 15 mile apart and young riders making wild dashes across the country.

By 1862 the overland stage line was changed to a southern route (the old Cherokee Trail) to help alleviate the Indian problems on the more northern route. The entire history of the Overland Stage lasted only six years; by then the Railroad was the means of moving both mail and people.