Despite the handicaps of Indian opposition and Mexican tariffs, the Santa Fe trade became an important factor in the growth of St.Louis and the Missouri River steamboat lines.In 1825 the pathway was "surveyed" from Franklin to San Fernando, then in Mexico.This Santa Fe trade grew from fifteen thousand pounds of freight in 1822 to nearly half a million pounds twenty years later.
By 1826 steamboat traffic up the Missouri began to assume regularity.The navigation was dangerous and difficult because the Missouri never kept even an approximately constant head of water.In times of drought it became very shallow, and in times of flood it tore its wayward course open in any direction it chose."Of all variable things in creation," wrote a Western editor, "the most uncertain are the action of a jury, the state of a woman's mind, and the condition of the Missouri River." Afurther handicap, and one which was unknown on the Ohio and rare on the Mississippi, was the lack of forests to supply the necessary fuel.The Missouri, it is true, had its cottonwoods, but in a green state they were poor fuel, and along vast stretches they were not obtainable in any quantity.
The steamboat linked St.Louis with that vital stretch of the river lying between the mouth of the Kansas and the mouth of the Nebraska.From this region the great Western trail ran on to California and Oregon.In the early thirties Bonneville, Walker, Kelley, and Wyeth successively essayed this Overland Trail by way of the Platte through the South Pass of the Rockies to the Humboldt, Snake, and Columbia rivers.From Independence on the Missouri this famous pathway led to Fort Laramie, a distance of 672 miles; another 800-mile climb brought the traveler through South Pass; and so, by way of Fort Bridger, Salt Lake, and Sutter's Fort, to San Francisco.The route, well known by hundreds of Oregon pioneers in the early forties, became a thoroughfare in the eager days of the Forty-Niners.** For map see "The Passing of the Frontier," by Emerson Hough (in "The Chronicles of America").
The earliest overland stage line to Great Salt Lake was established by Hockaday and Liggett.After the founding of the famous Overland Stage Company by Russell, Majors, and Waddell in 1858, stages were soon ascending the Platte from the steamboat terminals on the Missouri and making the twelve hundred miles from St.Joseph to Salt Lake City in ten days.Stations were established from ten to fifteen miles apart, and the line was soon extended on to Sacramento.The nineteen hundred miles from St.Joseph to Sacramento were made in fifteen days although the government contract with the company for handling United States mail allowed nineteen days.A host of employees was engaged in this exciting but not very remunerative enterprise--station-agents and helpers, drivers, conductors who had charge of passengers, in addition to mail and express and road agents who acted as division superintendents.In 1862 the Overland Route was taken over by the renowned Ben Holliday, who operated it until the railway was constructed seven years later.Freight was hauled by the same company in wagons known as the "J.Murphy wagons," which were made in St.Louis.These wagons went out from Leavenworth loaded with six thousand pounds of freight each.A train usually consisted of twenty-five wagons and was known, in the vernacular of the plains, as a "bull-outfit"; the drivers were "bull-whackers"; and the wagon master was the "bull-wagon boss."The old story, however, was repeated again here on the boundless plains of the West.The Western trails streaming out from the terminus of steamboat traffic between Kansas City and Omaha had scarcely time to become well known before the railway conquerors of the Atlantic and Great Lakes regions were planning the conquest of the greater plains and the Rockies beyond.The opening of the Chinese ports in 1844 turned men's minds as never before to the Pacific coast.The acquisition of Oregon within a few years and of California at the close of the Mexican War opened the way for a newspaper and congressional discussion as to whether the first railway to parallel the Santa Fe or the Overland Trail should run from Memphis, St.Louis, or Chicago.
The building of the Union Pacific from Omaha westward assured the future of that city, and it was soon joined to Chicago and the East by several lines which were building toward Clinton, Rock Island, and Burlington.
