Westward Ho!

It was bound to happen...In the late 18^th century, this young nation wasn’t content to be confined to the boundaries of the original thirteen colonies, so some eighty years after the Pilgrims landed, exploration shifted into high gear and thus began what was termed “manifest destiny,” the expansion across the continent. Several trails were blazed. People packed up their belongings and headed west. The historic trails reached their peak between 1830 and 1870. During that time period upwards of two-thirds of a million pioneers and traders used them. It took the pioneers six months to do what we can do in a few days. And we do it free of all the hardships and in relative comfort. We have no rivers to ford, no Indians to fight, no disease to contend with, and no shortage of food and water to suffer through. Best of all, we don't have to walk most of the way.

   In addition to the pioneer trails, I’ve added four other trails: the two that were developed so that goods could be brought for trade to new settlements in the southwest, the route used by the Pony Express and finally the all important first transcontinental railroad route.

Lewis and Clark Trail 
”The Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1803-1806 was perhaps the most important in the history of American exploration. It opened up vast new territories to American knowledge. After the Louisiana Purchase, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark were sent to explore the new American territory. They sought a land route to the Pacific, and along the way they made many scientific observations, collected many specimens of flora, and studied the Indians.” 




The Oregon Trail  The first serious attempt by a group to emigrate west along the Oregon Trail took place in 1841. The trail ran from the Missouri River in Kansas City, across Nebraska and Wyoming, on to southern Idaho, and finally into Oregon. Here we have a bit of a puzzle. The map I looked at had it ending in Vancouver, but I have seen a sign in Seaside, OR on the coast west of Portland, which says that that was the end of the trail.  Finally according to Wikipedia the terminus is Oregon City. When asked the question, Where does the Oregon Trail begin and end? WikiAnswers had this to say:

    Well, that depends on how you look at it. Officially, according to an act of Congress, it begins in Independence, Missouri, and ends in Oregon City, Oregon. To the settlers, though, the trail to the Oregon Country was a five-month trip from their old home in the East to their new home in the West. It was different for every family. Some people got ready to leave the East, or "jump off" as they called it, in towns like St. Joseph or Council Bluffs, and others jumped off from their old homes in Illinois or Missouri and picked up the Oregon Trail in the countryside. Along the way, they could choose to take shortcuts or stick to the main trunk of the Trail, and the end of their journey didn't really come until they settled a claim somewhere in the vast Oregon Country.

The Mormon Trail  The trail began in Nauvoo, IL, the year was 1846. Harassment, antagonism, and persecution forced the Mormons out of Nauvoo. The trail’s route ran 256 miles across Iowa to the Missouri River and then 1032 miles across the Great Plains following pretty much the same path as the Oregon Trail until eastern Wyoming where the trail headed southwest to the Valley of the Great Salt Lake. Over a twenty year period, 70,000 Mormons traveled by wagons and handcarts along this route. 

The California Trail  The trail followed, generally speaking, the same course as the Oregon and Mormon Trails. Near American Falls, Idaho, it headed south across Nevada, over the Sierras and into the golden state.

The Santa Fe Trail   William Becknell was a trader who wanted to take his goods to Santa Fe to sell. He felt the new settlers in New Mexico, who were lacking essentials, would welcome his business, which turned out to be true.

The Old Spanish Trail  The trail was used as a trade route linking Santa Fe, New Mexico and Los Angeles. It had a brief, but active heyday between 1830 and 1848. Traders took goods west and returned with mules and horses.

The Pony Express  The Pony Express was a brave enterprise. It took a lot of guts for the young riders to brave the environment, the Indians, and the weather. It was a job filled with danger. An advertisement recruiting riders asked that recruits be expert riders, willing to risk their lives. "Salary, $25 a month and Orphans Preferred," read the handbills. From St. Joe to Sacramento in ten days was the promise, and they did it. Remarkable! It only lasted 18 months (April 1860 to October 1861) because by that time transcontinental telegraph lines stretched across the continent, and as a result the Pony Express was forced out of business.

Transcontinental Railroad  By 1869 the transcontinental railroad was completed, Leland Stanford pounded in the golden spike (supposedly) and travel over the various pioneer trails declined. I’ve read that old man Stanford tried three times to hit the spike and missed all three times. Finally a railroad employee did the deed and history was made at Promintory Point, north of Salt Lake City.

Waterhole Ike, tale of a beer guzzler

Once upon a time there was a famous resident 

of Golconda, Nevada.  His name was “Waterhole Ike.”  He lived there in the 1970s.  Mark Cowley ran the local saloon called Waterhole  #1.  There was one customer who was regular as clockwork.  Every morning about 10:30 here he’d come for his bucket of beer.  There was one thing about the customer that was mighty peculiar; he was Cowley’s pig, named appropriately “Waterhole Ike.”  Cowley learned that big money could be made putting famous animals out to stud.  So he decided to form a syndicate, sell stocks and then watch the money roll in.  He read that the very same thing had been done when the champion racehorse, Secretariat, was sold to a syndicate.  Cowley began selling shares and soon the money was mounting up, so much so that Cowley figured he needed to open a bank account in Ike’s name.  The local bankers refused, because Waterhole Ike didn’t have a social security card.  Cowley got an application, gave Ike a last name, a father and mother, and a birth date (5/1/1974).  Cowley submitted the application, having signed for Ike and in no time at all Waterhole Ike had himself a Social Security number (530-80-4623) and later a proper bank account, so Cowley could deposit money for Ike’s retirement.  The $25 stud fees soon began rolling in.  The press got hold of this and soon Ike was in the national press.  Over several years Ike fell on hard times and his bank account started to shrink.  About that time Ike fathered nine little piglets.  Crowley went to the welfare office in Winnemucca.  He told them his friend with a proper social security card was out of work with nine children to support and long story short, Ike began receiving $600 a month and food stamps.  But Cowley never cashed the checks or used the stamps.   Cowley grew tired of the saloon business, so he sold it and moved away.  And what became of Waterhole Ike, a Golconda legend, he lived to a ripe old age, as far as pig life goes.  The End.

This is mostly fact believe it or not.  Sorry about the poor quality picture of Ike.  It’s the only one I could find.

Henry P. T. Comstock and His Big Mistake

Two Irish gold miners, Pat McLaughlin and Peter O’Reilly, were digging around a small spring up on Mount Davidson, near what would soon become Virginia City.  The year was 1859.  They found gold, but the two miners were annoyed by a bluish mud that fouled their sluice boxes and caked itself on picks and shovels.  When that mud was carried to an assayer in Placerville, it was found to be almost pure sulphuret of silver. 

    Not long after the discovery, Henry P.T. “ol’ Pancake” Comstock just happened to be passing by.  He had earned the nickname because people claimed he was too lazy to bake bread, making easy flapjacks instead.  He was born in Ontario, Canada in 1820 and as an adult drifted around a lot working in the United States and Mexico as a gold prospector, a trapper and a shepherd.  He arrived in the Nevada Territory just ahead of the greatest mining discovery ever made.  Comstock had earned the reputation as a braggart and somewhat of a charlatan.  Apparently Comstock had a keen understanding of ore.  The moment he accidently came upon the two miners and saw what they were doing he immediately announced that he owned the property. The gullible miners took him at his word and agreed to make Comstock a partner, which Comstock quickly accepted.  Because of his assertion, he insisted that the claim be named for him, so it became known, of course, as “The Comstock Lode” and went on to be the richest gold and silver strike in history.

    Gold and silver in Nevada also caught the attention of Abraham Lincoln, who needed additional capital in order to keep the Union solvent during the Civil War, so in 1864 Lincoln made Nevada a state even though officially it didn’t contain enough people to constitutionally become a state.  From this the state earned the nickname, “Battle Born State.”

    Comstock, a man who often made rash decisions, sold his interest prematurely for only a few thousand dollars.  He then purchased stores in Silver City and Carson City and bought a Mormon wife, who very soon upped and ran away.  Comstock’s businesses failed and he wandered off to Montana and wound up in Bozeman.  He died there in 1870 alone, having accomplished very little in his life. 

    It has been claimed that his turn of fortune and the missed opportunity with the Comstock Lode unhinged his mind.  It’s not clear exactly how he died.  One account says he was shot, either as a result of a robbery or as payback.  Another account claims he went insane because of his misfortune and committed suicide.  He had no family and so there was nowhere to send his remains.  He was buried in Bozeman. 

    But Henry P.T. “ol’ Pancake” Comstock lives on as one of Nevada’s colorful folk characters.

Q

O.D. Gass & the start of Las Vegas

While reading an article titled, The First 100 Persons Who Shaped Southern Nevada one name stood out from the others, not because of the person’s fame, but because I just liked his name...Octavious Decature Gass.

    He was born in 1829 in Richland County, Ohio of Scottish-Irish descent.  At 18 Gass began searching for a way to make a fortune.  Unfortunately his timing wasn't very good.  He’d arrived at the right places where either gold or silver deposits had been discovered, but always a little too late.  Since his mining claims never paid off, he decided to look elsewhere.  A friend asked him to be a partner in a store and ranch, which happened to be halfway between Salt Lake City and Los Angeles on the Mormon Trail in a valley that travelers in 1829 had named Las Vegas, which is Spanish for the meadows.  The valley was green and lush because of the many artesian wells. 

    In 1855 Mormons had built a fort and established a post office, which they named Bringhurst, in honor of the Mormon missionary who was directed by Brigham Young to establish a colony in the valley.  Two years later the site was abandoned because of political disagreements between the colony’s leadership.  Gass occupied the fort, renamed the site Los Vegas Rancho and built a ranch house using part of the fort's foundation and a wall.  He changed the spelling on purpose so as not to be confused with Las Vegas, New Mexico, a Mormon settlement 500 miles to the east.  The year was 1865.  

    Gass’s search for his fortune didn’t come from the pick and shovel work of mining; it came from selling to travelers and boomers (people who live in a boomtown) their daily necessities.  He and his partners restored and made many improvements to the old fort, hiring friendly Paiutes as laborers and soon it was a thriving way station.  Eventually Gass bought out his partners, which gave him sole ownership of 640 acres, to which he eventually added more acreage.  The ranch prospered, because it had sufficient water to support enough livestock, fruit trees and vegetable crops.  It kept O.D. in business for nearly twenty years.

    By the time Gass was 50 years old, he had all the appearance of a successful man.  He had expanded the ranch to 960 acres and had employed 30 men, which included a veterinarian, blacksmith, barn keeper, several Indian women to handle laundry and a cook.  O.D. was the Justice of the Peace of Lincoln County and had married the niece of U.S. Grant.  But he was also very much in debt, so he tried to sell the ranch.  At about that time  what was to be a bumper crop failed.  Gass had hoped it would bring in enough money to pay off his debts.  That was the last straw, so in 1881 he pulled up stacks and with his wife and children and 1,500 head of cattle abandoned the rancho and headed for California and oblivion.

    It would have been impossible in the late 1800s for O.D. Gass to imagine that his Los Vegas Rancho would eventually become a mega tourist attraction with high-rise hotels and all that glitz.  Ironically the man and the ranch are long forgotten, but there is a street downtown that bears his name.  And what would Gass say about not being well remembered?  I really don’t think he’d mind, because according to the article I read, apparently he didn’t care much for Nevada, anyway.

Shorty Harris, man of the desert

If you travel to the ghost town of Rhyolite, just outside of Beatty, Nevada, you’ll find this whimsical sculpture of a miner and his able bodied companion, a penguin.  What a hard rock miner would be doing with a penguin is beyond me, but then again nothing in the Goldwell Open Air Museum is a true reflection of reality (see my blog entry of May 2011).  The sculpture is a tribute to a local legendary character of the early days in Nevada, one Shorty Harris.  Shorty’s life mirrored the many mining towns that became Nevada ghost towns...rags to riches and back to rags.  (Side note: the artist, Fred Bervoets, said the penguin represented himself.  A penguin would be out of place in the desert and that’s just how Bervoets felt.)

    Frank “Shorty” Harris was born in Rhode Island in 1856.  He became an orphan at the tender age of seven and by age fourteen traveled from mining town to mining town, from Colorado to Arizona to Idaho.  Eventually he made his way to Death Valley and it must have agreed with him because he stayed in the area for the rest of his life.

    He stood 5’ 4”, had big ears, blue eyes and a bushy mustache.  Shorty was a teller of tall tells and a friend to anyone who was down on his luck.  In fact he was generous to a fault.

    Evidently Shorty could “smell” gold.  He made several discoveries, many worth a great deal of money, but Shorty rarely profited from them.  He was more interested in the searching than he was in amassing fortunes.  Then there was the fact that he like drinking and didn’t like the hard work of mining, so ultimately with each find he would sell it off for a pittance of its true value.

    His biggest discovery came as a lucky hapintance.  One morning he was camped with his partner, Ernest “Ed” Cross.  While Cross was fixing breakfast, Shorty was out chasing after his mule that had run off during the night.  Shorty tripped over a rock and as he stood up and brushed himself off he was amazed by the rest of rocks in the area.  He immediately yelled for Ed and they scooped up a bunch of the rocks and headed for Goldfield and an assayer.  The rocks where rich in gold and that was the beginning of the fabulous Bullfrog Claim.  Shorty named it that because of the color of the rocks.  To celebrate he went on a bender that lasted for days.  When he finally sobered up he learned he had lost or sold his interest in the discovery.

    Undaunted Shorty continued to wander the desert.  In 1904 he managed to get a grubstake and with a new partner headed for the Panamint Mountains where they found rich gold pockets.  And once again Shorty got drunk and spent much of time completely out of it while others were profiting.  As usual he came up penniless.

    A year later once again he convinced backers to grubstake him.  Now his partner was Jean Pierre “Pete” Aguereberry.  It was Aguereberry who made the discovery and this time Shorty’s backers kept Shorty from getting drunk and rushed him to San Francisco to find investors.  Finally Shorty came out of a discovery with money in his pocket: 50,000 shares in the Cashier Gold Mining Company and $10,000 in cash.  The town that sprung up around the claim was named Harrisberry and then a couple years later it was changed to Harrisburg.  Today there is very little left.

    Shorty Harris lived a long adventurous life.  He continued to prospect, but never really owning a mine of his own.  He simply loved the looking more than the having.  He died in 1934 in his cabin in Big Pine, California.  Shorty was laid to rest just as he requested, beside his old friend, Jim Dayton in the valley both of them loved, Death Valley.  The site is at base of the Panamint Range on the West Side Road.  He wrote his own epitaph.  He wanted it to read, “Here lies Shorty Harris, a single blanket jackass prospector.”

Hank Monk, one helluva stagecoach driver

So there I was in Carson City in my motel room watching a movie I’ve seen umpteen times and still enjoy.  It’s one of my top ten, and it’s none other than Stagecoach.  While the movie played on, I couldn’t help but think about what it must have been like to travel in one of those awkward looking contraptions.  It must have been pretty uncomfortable at any normal time and especially bad when racing across a playa with hostile Indians in hot pursuit.

 Stagecoach drivers were revered and in a class all their own.  They were the road warriors of their day.  I did a little research and found that they were called Jehus.*  The title was bestowed on them because of a quote from the Old Testiment, Kings 9:20,..” and the driving is like the driving of Jehu the son of Nimshi; for he driveth furiously.”  And some of them did indeed drive like Jehus.

    I ran across a piece on Henry James “Hank” Monk who was a real Jehus.  Monk drove the stage from Carson City, Nevada to Placerville on the other side of the Sierra and was famous for driving the route at breakneck speeds.  It was reported that he could make the 109 miles in less than 9 hours, which was amazingly fast then.**

    Hank Monk was born in Waddington, New York in 1826 and grew up with a great admiration for horses.  He first drove stage for Clark County in New York State.  His age at the time...12!  In 1852 he migrated to California and it’s believed he started driving stage between Sacramento and Auburn for the California Stage Company.  By 1857 he was driving for a different outfit that eventually was owned by Wells Fargo and Company.  He drove Nevada stages for them for more than twenty years.

    The trip that would eventually immortalized Monk was when Horace Greely, the famous New York Tribune editor, hired Monk to drive him from Carson City to Placerville.  As the story goes, Greely was running behind schedule.  He asked Monk if it was possible to cross the Sierra in time to make an appointment he had in Placerville that evening.  Monk assured Greely that he’d get him there on time.  What followed was the ride of Greely’s life.  Monk would later tell a newsman, “I looked into the coach and there was Greely, his bare head bobbing, ... holding on to whatever he could grab.”  Greely arrived in Placerville on time but completely disheveled and somewhat shaken.  He mailed the Tribune his version of the harrowing ride along with other accounts of Monk’s skills as a stagecoach driver. 

    The story eventually reached mining towns in Nevada and California where it was told and retold.  It then caught the attention of none other than Mark Twain.  If you go to chapter XX of Roughing It, you’ll find Twain’s heavily embellished version of the ride.  The following is from that chapter:

                  “Hank Monk cracked his whip and started off at an awful pace. The coach bounced up and down in such a terrific way that it jolted the buttons all off of Horace’s coat, and finally shot his head clean through the roof of the stage, and then he yelled at Hank Monk and begged him to go easier—said he warn’t in as much of a hurry as he was a while ago. But Hank Monk said, ‘Keep your seat, Horace, and I’ll get you there on time!’—and you bet you he did, too, what was left of him!”

    Humorist Artemus Ward, a pseudonym of Charles Farrar Browne, wrote a comical account of what he called the stagecoach ride from hell.  Apparently his version was less than flattering toward Greely.  It was read by Congressman Calvin Hulburd into the Congressional Record as a jab at Horace Greely, Hulburd’s political nemesis.

That's not Monk, but that's a typical stagecoach.

    Apparently Greely wasn’t pleased with what he considered less then flattering accounts of the trip.  He tried in vain to distant himself from Monk.  During this time Greely was a presidential candidate and he felt these stories could cost him the election, but actually it was his stand on major issues that led to a resounding defeat. 

    There’s even a song dedicated to the memory of Hank Monk.  It was published in 1885 with poet Joaquin Miller writing the words and none other than John Philip Sousa writing the music.  It was entitled Tally-Ho, which was the name Hank gave to his stagecoach.

    Hank Monk died of pneumonia in Carson City in 1883.  I’m sure that Mark Twain and the others had a lot to do with the fact that Monk is considered by many to be the greatest stagecoach drivers in American history.  And those same people called him one of our folk heroes.  On his tombstone these words are inscribed, “Sacred to the memory of Hank Monk, the whitest, biggest-hearted and best-known driver in the West.”

*Apparently Jehu can be pronounced several ways, JEE-hew, YAY-hoo, Gee-hu, or JAY-hugh.

**Stagecoaches averaged speeds of 4 to 7 mph for trips of 70 to 120 miles.  Monk made the 109-mile trip averaging 12 mph!

Wovoka

Wovoka was born a Northern Paiute In Nevada’s Smith Valley some time around 1856.  Very little is known of his childhood and his father is a bit of mystery also.  Some have speculated that his father was Tavibo, a Paiute religious leader and mystic, who prophesized that all whites would be swallowed up by the earth and all dead Indians would come back to life and they would be free of the white man forever.  He preached that before this could happen they must perform a traditional dance, while singing special songs.  Tavibo didn’t find an audience for his preaching, but his son, Wovoka, would.

    At age fourteen Wovoka’s father died and the young boy was taken in by David and Mary Wilson and given the name Jack Wilson, which he used when dealing with white people.  His foster parents were ranchers and Jack worked on the ranch well into adulthood.  The Wilsons were devout Christians and they taught Jack their faith.   He learned English, learned theology and could recite many Bible stories.

    No one knows for sure why Jack Wilson left the Wilson home.  He returned to live among the Paiute people where he gained a reputation as a powerful medicine man.  He began to make prophecies similar to the ones his father had made.

    Wovoka asserted that he could control the weather.   People claimed he could cause a block of ice to fall from the heavens, could end droughts with rain or even snow, could light his pipe with the sun and could form icicles in his hands.  He demonstrated his power by performing several seemingly impossible feats.  One of them was being shot with a shotgun and miraculously surviving.  Apparently no one questioned this even though magicians for many years had performed the same trick.  

    The Paiutes considered Wovoka a messiah based on a vision he had had during the solar eclipse of 1889.  It was a prophecy of things to come.  In it he saw the destruction of the whites, a replenishing of wildlife, the Indian dead would be resurrected and reunited with their families, suffering, starvation, pain and disease would disappear completely.  He taught that in order to bring his vision to reality, all Indians would have to live righteously and perform a traditional round dance.  Because ancestors were going to be resurrected, the dance became known as the ghost dance.  He told his followers that they must “not hurt anybody or do harm to anyone.  You must not fight.  Do right always...Do not refuse to work for the whites and do not make any trouble with them.”  News of his vision and the ghost dance spread like wild fire across the Rockies and onto the plains.  The Lakota people, the largest tribal group on the plains, adopted it with a fury and began performing the dance.   Wovoka’s teachings were now known as the ghost dance religion.

a Lakota ghost shirt

    Believers made ghost shirts, which they claimed would ward off any bullet fired at it.  While Wovoka’s preaching emphasized nonviolence, the Lakotas saw a chance to eliminate the whites once and for all.  News of their dancing and the ghost shirts caused great concern among the white settlers who had homesteaded former Indian lands.

    The year was 1890 and most of the Indian tribes were now living on reservations under the control of the US government.   However settlers on the plains began demanding the army do more to protect them and the army was concerned that Sitting Bull, the great Lakota chief, would lead the ghost dancers into battle again, so Sitting Bull was ordered to put a stop to the ghost dance, but the dancing continued.  Sitting Bull was arrested and during the arrest shot and killed.  A reorganized 3,000 member 7^th Cavalry, who fourteen years previous had been desimated in the battle at Little Big Horn, was ordered to the Lakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation.  The Indians were told that they must bring all their guns to a central location, which was located on the banks of Wounded Knee Creek.  During the confiscation of guns, a deaf Lakota either refused to lay down his gun or simply didn’t understand the order.  A struggle ensued and someone fired a shot.  The calvary commander order his troops to open fire.  The resulting gunfire was choatic and indescriminant and at close range.  There is disagreement as to the number of casualties.  Estimates as to the number of dead range as high as 300 Indians, which included men, women and children.  Twenty-five troopers also died, while 39 were wounded (It’s believed that many of the army’s casualties were from friendly fire). The tragedy became known as the Wounded Knee Massacre.  It marked the end of an era of Indian wars.  Just as quickly as the ghost religion had grown it died there at Wounded Knee.

    Soon after the massacre, Wovoka all but vanished.  Many years later he turned up at sideshows in county fairs.  He even become for a short time an extra in silent movies.  Wovoka died in 1932 basically a forgotten man.  It wouldn’t be until the 1970s that activitists would resurrect his memory and the memory of what happened at Wounded Knee.