Our new West. Records of travel between the Mississippi River and the Pacific Ocean. Over the plains--over the mountains--through the great interior basin--over the Sierra Nevadas--to and up and down the Pacific Coast. With details of the wonderful natural scenery, agriculture, mines, business, social life, progress, and prospects ... including a full description of the Pacific Railroad; and of the life of the Mormons, Indians, and Chinese

Front matter

Our New West.

RECORDS OF TRAYEL

BETWEEN

Preface

The Pacific Bailroad unlocks the mysteries of Our New West. It opens a new world of wealth, and a new world of natural beauty, to the working and the wonder of the old. The eastern half of America offers no suggestion of its western half. The two sides of the Continent are sharp in contrasts of climate, of soil, of mountains, of resources, of productions, of everything. Nature, weary of repetitions, has, in the New West, created originally, freshly, uniquely, majestically. In her gifts, in her withholdings, she has been equally supreme, equally complete. Nowhere are broader and higher mountains; nowhere richer valleys; nowhere climates more propitious; nowhere broods an atmosphere so pure and exhilarating; nowhere more bountiful deposits of gold and silver, quicksilver and copper, lead and iron ; nowhere denser forests, larger trees ; nowhere so wide plains ; nowhere such majestic rivers ; yet nowhere so barren deserts, so arid steppes; nowhere else that nature has planted its growths so thickly and so variously, and feeds so many appetites so richly ; yet nowhere that she withholds so completely, and pains the heart and parches the tongue of man so deeply by her poverty.

vi

PREFACE.

To give in detail some clear impressions of this vast and various region, its wonderful features of natural scenery, its illimitable capacities of growth and wealth, its present crude and conflicting civilizations, — its mining populations, its Mormons, its Chinese, and its Indians, — and still its sure promise of the finest race, and the broadest, freest, most active and most aggressive society, commerce and industry, that the world has yet developed, — this is the excuse and the promise of this book. The author has spent two summers in intimate travel over the regions comprehended in the volume. The first (1865) was before the Railroad was begun, when he traveled by stage from the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean, and thence north to Oregon, Washington Territory, and Puget's Sound ; stopping for leisure study of Colorado, of Utah and its Mormons, of Nevada and its mines; and visiting all the distinctive points of interest, either for scenery, for business improvement, or for social characteristics. Again in 1868, he passed over the then already completed Railroad to the crest of the great continental mountain ranges, and, thence descending among the great folds of Mountains and elevated Parks that distinguish Colorado, and make it the geographical center and phenomenon of the Continent, spent some weeks in camp life in that future Switzerland of America. The company of so distinguished and popular public men as Mr. Colfax, the Speaker and the Vice-President, and Lieutenant Governor Bross of Illinois, during both summers, smoothed all our ways, and unlocked for our study all the mysteries of social and business life. We were welcomed to generous hospitality of head and heart, and gained at once completest knowledge of the states and territories visited. Study, then and since, of all local records and authorities, has

PREFACE.

Vll completed and kept alive my acquaintance with the growth, character, and capacity of this new kingdom of our Continent.

The author must therefore be at fault if, in this compilation of the original records of his two summers' journeys, corrected and reviewed by the help of all other sources of information, he shall fail to convey some true idea of the present and promise of this Western Half of the American Continent. He invites particular attention to his chapters on the Central Parks and Mountains of Colorado ; on the Mormons and their polygamy and political pretensions; on the Sierra Nevadas and their scenery in California, including that wonderful valley of the Yo Semite, the one unrivalled sublimity of nature in all the known world, and its neighboring groves of Mammoth Trees; on the Chinese, and their place in the industry, domestic life, and business of the Pacific States; on the Willamette Valley of Oregon; on the Scenery of the Columbia, the only continental river that breaks through the continental ranges of mountains; on the forests of Washington Territory, and the beauties and capacities of Puget's Sound ; on the conditions and principles of Mining in Colorado, Nevada, and California ; on the Agriculture of Colorado, California, and Oregon; and on the grand commercial and industrial future of this interior and Pacific Coast Empire of ours. He will fail, if the reader does not come to share the impression, that here is a nature to pique the curiosity and challenge the admiration of the world ; an atmosphere to charm by its beauty and to heal by its purity and its dryness ; a wealth of minerals and a wealth of agriculture that fairly awe by their boundlessness; an aggregation of elements and forces that, with development, with increase and mixture of populations, with facility and cheapness of

Vlll

PREFACE.

intercourse, — with steamships on the Pacific Ocean, and railroads across the Continent to the Atlantic, — are destined to develop a society and a civilization, a commerce and an industry, a wealth and a power, that will rival the most enthusiastic predictions for our Atlantic States Empire, and together, if we stand together in the future, will present on the North American Continent such a triumph of Man in race, in government, in social development, in intellectual advancement, and in commercial supremacy, as the world never saw, — as the world never yet fairly dreamed of.

Springfield, Mass., March, 1869.

INTRODUCTORY LETTERS

FROM VICE -PRESIDENT COLFAX AND GOVERNOR BROSS.

Washington, February 10, 1869.

My Dear Mr. Bowles: —

The notice of your publishers that you intend to incorporate the sketches of the two long journeys we had together, amplified, revised, and illustrated, in a new and more permanent work, brings again vividly before my mind, like a panorama, the stirring incidents of these expeditions, the magnificent scenery, the constantly changing and novel experiences, the explorations down into the bowels of the earth and up to the summits of lofty mountains, the dashing rides down the Sierras and at the Geysers, the Oceans of Water, and of Land, and the open door of Opportunity which everywhere invited us to enter, and to add so largely to our stock of information as to "Our New West." I have not forgotten the Indian hostilities, which threatened us on both journeys ; but I remember far more delightfully the boundless Plains ; the snow-capped Mountains ; the majestic Columbia ; our Mediterranean of the North-west, Puget's Sound ; that magic City, San Francisco ; the wonderful Geysers; the Mammoth Trees; and the peerless Yo Semite.

If our people, who go to Europe for pleasure, travel and observation, knew a tithe of the enjoyment we experienced in our travel under our own flag, far more of them would turn their faces toward the setting sun ; and after exploring that Switzerland of America, the Rocky Mountains, with their remarkable Parks and Passes, go onward to that

X

INTEODUCTOKY LETTERS.

realm which fronts upon the Pacific, whose history is so romantic, and whoso destiny is so sure; and which that great highway of Nations, the Pacific Kailroad, will, this Spring, bring so near to all of us on the Atlantic slope.

These cannot now realize our long-drawn two thousand miles of staging West, and one thousand Northward from the Golden Gate ; for palatial cars and lightning trains will render travel a pleasure, instead of a fatigue; but your graphic sketches of what is to be seen will, wherever they are read, increase the numbers of those who will not only add to their enjoyment and knowledge, but also strengthen the patriotic ties which bind together such distant regions, as the Atlantic and Pacific States, into one harmonious Republic, by following so far as possible in our path across the Continent.

Very truly yours,

Schuyler Colfax.

Tribune Office, Chicago, "> February 20, 1869. >

To the Hartford Publishing Company: —

I learn, with much pleasure, that you propose to publish a revised and illustrated edition of Mr. Bowles's already famous book, "Across the Continent," to include also his sketches of travel and camp life in the Rocky Mountains the past summer. The journey of Vice-President Colfax and his party to California, in the summer of 1865, seems to have marked the commencement of a most important era in the progress of the country. When we left the Missouri River in May, work had scarcely begun on the Union Pacific Railway; but we found the energetic President of the Central Pacific, Governor Stanford, and his contractors, vigorously engaged in pushing their line up the western slope of the Sierra Nevada mountains, and forty-two miles of the road were completed. When we returned, in the latter part of September, the forces of the Union Pacific were fully organized, since which time

INTRODUCTORY LETTERS.

xi they have performed the most astonishing feats in railway building ever achieved. The managers of the Central Pacific have been working, perhaps, with equal energy, as the engineering difficulties to be overcome by them were immensely more formidable, and I have every reason to believe that the lines will connect at or near the head of Salt Lake within the next two months. Thus the great Continental Kailway, regarded only four years ago by perhaps a majority of our people as a chimerical project, will become an accomplished fact, — a magnificent reality.

The completion of the road and the rush of tens of thousands of our people to the Central Territories and to the Pacific Coast will render the new edition of Mr. Bowles's book none the less acceptable and valuable to the public. His descriptions of the country, through which the road runs, and through most of which we passed, are so comprehensive and accurate ; his observations are so discriminating, graphic and just ; his estimates, based on figures and personal inspection of the vast mineral resources and the commercial advantages of the country, are so new, suggestive and exciting, that his work should be carefully read by every tourist before he sets out upon his journey ; and it will be consulted by him with great advantage at every stage of his progress. The information it has imparted to the Nation has, in my judgment, been immensely more varied and valuable than they have derived from all previous sources put together. Certainly no former work has ever circulated so widely among the people, and they have profited largely by the new, varied and most valuable facts it contains.

Wishing you all possible success,

I am very truly,

Your obedient servant,

William Bross.

Contents

I. INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.

PAGE.

Our New West — Its Extent and Importance, and Four Great Divisions — The Cordilleras of South America and their Progress Through North America — The First Great Division, the Plains — The Second, the Rocky Mountains — The Third, the Great Interior Basin — The Fourth, the Sierra Nevadas and the Pacific Coast — The Characteristics of Each — The Promise of the Book, 23

I. Introductory Chapter

Our New West — Its Extent and Importance, and Four Great Divisions— The Cordilleras of South America and their Progress Through North America — The First Great Division, the Plains — The Second, the Rocky Mountains — The Third, the Great Interior Basin — The Fourth, the Sierra Nevadas and the Pacific Coast — The Characteristics of Each — The Promise of the Book,

Our New West, — cut through its center by the gast and west line of the Pacific Railroad, and only now and thus opened freely to the knowledge and the occupation of the American people, — is the larger half of the territory of the United States. From the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean is fifteen hundred to eighteen hundred miles; from British America on the north to Mexico on the south is from one thousand to twelve hundred miles. The great mountain chain of the Continent wTith its subdivisions separate this region into four marked sections.

The Cordilleras of South America, marching in unbroken and firm column from its south to its north,

OUR NEW WEST.

and making the most magnificent mountain range in the world by its length, its bight, and its unity, humbles itself almost to the sea in crossing the Isthmus, but rears its columns anew in Central America and Mexico, with occasional individual peaks that are as famous for hight and majesty as any in all its hemispherical sweep, and yet nowhere renews that unyielding unity that is its distinguishing southern characteristic. Approaching the broader sections of Western North America, as if feeling the appeal for a wider parentage, it breaks into several lines, two especially so majestic and firm and distinctive, that each might almost fairly claim to be the parent range. The main line, unmistakably, however, passes easterly with but little disorder, and becomes what we call the Rocky Mountains of North America, on from Central Mexico through New Mexico into Colorado, where it centers and readjusts its powers, and, again and more widely spreading, stretches northward through British America to the Arctic Ocean. The rival line of the Sierra Nevada has its birth or separation in Lower California, and, forming the bold and magnificent eastern boundary of California, goes north through Oregon and Washington Territory, and spreads itself over the coast lines of British Columbia, furnishing, both in California and Oregon, some of the highest and finest individual peaks to be found in the whole territory of the United States. As it enters California on the south, it sends a minor line of mountains west near the coast, which is carried with considerable uniformity into Northern California, there rejoins the Sierra Nevada, but again opens to form

THE PLAINS AND THE MOUNTAINS.

that garden of Oregon, the Willamette valley. Between these mountain ranges in California, and among the folds of each, lie the great wealth, the great beauty, the great variety of soil, climate and production, of that wonderful and representative state of the Pacific coast.

Beginning on the east with the Missouri Eiver, and going west, there is an open, treeless, nearly level stretch of plains, five hundred miles wide, to the Rocky Mountains. For the most part, it is high tableland, gradually but imperceptibly rising from the river to the mountain line; stretching from the British borders on the north to the like table-lands of Mexico on the south j with three or four great rivers flowing through its whole width, and many lesser streams freely watering its eastern and southern borders; yet for the great part too dry for general agricultural purposes, and only now inviting use as the great pasture-ground of the Nation. It seems to be covered with the wash of the mountains; and this grand ocean of land makes up the first section of the journey across the Continent, and is called The Plains.

Next comes the Rocky Mountains section, and this, too, from where the Plains end over into the basin of Salt Lake, is five hundred miles, — a broad line of mountains and rolling table-lands, ranging from seven thousand to fourteen thousand feet high ; full of the most unique forms of nature; rich in inspiration to the poetic traveler; and rich in mineral wealth to the patient, persevering miner.

The third section, another five hundred miles still,

OUK NEW WEST.

begins with the end of the Rocky Mountain ranges in the Salt Lake valley, and stretches on west to the Sierra Nevadas. The central parts of this section, comprising the bulk of Utah and Nevada, form the great interior basin of the Continent. It is five hundred miles from east to west, and an average of half that distance from north to south. The scanty waters of this interior region find no outlet to either ocean. The great Salt Lake of Utah is its principal body of water, and this has no visible outgo, though richly fed from various quarters. Lines of mountains or high hills pass north and south every twelve or twenty miles through it. The streams, that flow out of them, lose themselves in the sands of the valleys. There are few trees and but little verdure on hill or plain. Great patches of salt and alkali deposits intensify the general barrenness of the scene, and load the dry air with painful exhalations. The whole region is high ; rising gradually from four thousand feet above the sea level at Salt Lake to seven thousand and eight thousand feet at the center, it as gradually falls away to the original four thousand feet under the Sierra Nevadas. The valleys adjoining the Rocky Mountains in Utah, and those near the Sierras in Nevada, with one or two intermediate ones, are sufficiently watered to return good crops, and irrigation widens this area and enriches the yield; but for the most part the whole basin is a desert, not so much from poverty of soil as from lack of moisture.

But for the patient industry of the Mormons in Utah and the temptations of the rich silver mines in Nevada, this country would have still remained un-

THE INTERIOR BASIN — CALIFORNIA. 27

peopled and unknown, and the Pacific Railroad still a mere problem of our progress. To the north of this independent basin, the Columbia and its branches enter; and to the south, the Colorado, and yet they do not essentially change the character of the region they water; and Idaho and Eastern Oregon on the one hand, and Southern Utah and Nevada and Arizona on the other, save in narrow valleys that the streams cannot get through without enriching, present little that is lovely in nature or inviting to the farmer. The richness of mineral deposits tempts the greedy explorer, and where he is fortunate, agriculture will follow under whatever restrictions; and occasional rare phenomena in rock or river, like the Grand Canyon of the Colorado and the rival of Niagara in the Shoshone Falls in Idaho, seduce the traveler from the through route.

Fourth, and finally, are the Sierra Nevadas and the country between them and the Pacific Ocean, — a width of about two hundred miles, which, both in California and Oregon, compensates for the dreary wastes behind in a wealth and majesty of forest, such as the world can offer nowhere else, and in a variety and richness of agricultural production, that unites the offerings of temperate and tropical zones, forms the sure basis of a permanent and unmeasured wealth, and laughs poverty and famine to scorn.

Into and through these regions, — with more of familiarity than form, with more of grand result of knowledge than of detail of facts, with the authority of two summer journeys among them, and with conscientious study of their nature and resource and so-

OUR NEW WEST.

ciety, — this book invites the reader. It opens to him the present state and the future promise of the larger part of the American Republic, — new yet to the world in every sense, but destined surely to a mighty influence upon all the after growth of Republic and world, and to be counted prominently in the advance of all our civilization.

II. Oyer The Plains By Stage

The Rival Depots for the Traffic of the Plains — An Indian Scare to Begin With — The Richness of the Country for Two Hundred Miles — Scenes on the Plains — The Prairie Schooners by Day and Night — A Hail and Thunder-Storm — The Week's Ride and the Plains Summed Up — The Civilization of the Country — The Meals at the Stations — Life and Death in Contrast — Personal Sketches: Vice-President Colfax and Governor Bross — The Advent of the Mountains.

From the Missouri River to the Mountains, — now a railroad ride of twenty-four hours, — was in the summer of 1865 a stage ride of six days and nights. Atchison, in northern Kansas, was then the point of departure ; Omaha, above, was but a feeble rival for the outfitting of emigration and freight trains to Colorado and Utah; Leavenworth and Kansas City, below, were struggling vainly to maintain a supremacy they had but lately enjoyed. Long trains of heavily loaded wagons, drawn by mules and oxen, were moving out daily; but warehouses and yards were crowded with heavy machinery for saw-mills and gold-mills, with food to eat and clothes to wear, with agricultural implements for new farms beyond, waiting their turn in the great summer's commerce.

OUR NEW WEST.

Everything was carried by the pound; six to ten cents from the river to the mountains ; twelve to eighteen through to Utah; so that eastern prices were doubled and trebled to the settlers in and around the Rocky Mountains.

Our fine Concord coach and its team of six gay horses waited for the delayed incoming stage, and when it came, a bunch of Indian arrows lodged in its sides, and the broken nerves of its passengers, including a mother and children, confirmed their story of an Indian attack some one hundred and fifty miles out. But we were all well armed, and the brave General Connor, then commanding on the Plains, was our companion and escort. We represented the great American nation, — it would not do to be afraid or to hesitate, — and so we drove on and out, — our hopes our fears belying, our fears our hopes.

For the first two hundred miles west from the river, through northern Kansas and southern Nebraska, the country presents the characteristics of the finest prairie scenery of the West, — illimitable stretches of exquisite green surface, rolling like long waves of the sea, and broken at distances of miles by an intervale with a small stream, along whose banks are scattered trees of elm and cotton-wood. Here and there was a "ranch" or farm with cultivated land, but these grew rarer and rarer ; the uniform view was one wide rolling prairie, freshly green, spreading out as far as the eye could reach, with the distant fringe of thin forest by the water-course, and sending forth and receiving the sun at morning and evening, as the ocean seems to discharge and accept it when we travel its track-

SCENES ON THE PLAINS.

less space. No land could be richer ; no sight could more deeply impress one with the measureless extent of our country, and its unimproved capacities, than that of these first two days' ride west from the Missouri River.

Then the waves of land ceased ; the soil grew thin and dry; a dead level spread before the unresting eye ; and we entered upon the region of the Platte River and the Plains proper. The streams were few and scant, and the water muddy; but wells gave good drinking water all along the route, though oftentimes they had to be sunk as deep as fifty or seventy-five feet. It was too early then (May) for many of the prairie flowers ; but the rich, fresh green of the grass satisfied the eye. Scattered through it we caught frequent glimpses of the prairie hen, multiplying for the hunter's harvest in November ; from its bare, last year's stalks floated out the liquid music of the larks ; the plover, paired as in Paradise, and never divorced even in this western country of easy virtue and cheap legislation, bobbed up and down their long necks, or fluttered their wide wings in flight at every rod ; little blackbirds accompanied us in great flocks ; a lean, hungry-looking wolf stole along at a distance, with one eye on us and the other on the carcass of a horse or ox, dropped in sickness or fatigue from some passing train; away off near the horizon scampered, most daintily and provokingly, a half-dozen antelopes, — too near for restful palates, too far for waiting rifles ; and over all and illuminating all floated an atmosphere so pure, so rare, so ethereal, as pictured every object with a pre- Raphaelite distinctness, made distant things appear

OUR NEW WEST.

near, and sent the horizon far away in an unbounded stretch of slightly rounding green earth. Added to these a constant breeze, tempering the sun to a most grateful softness, and bearing an inspiring tonic to lungs and heart; sunsets and sunrises that rival Italy or the Connecticut valley; a twilight prolonged as in England ; and a dryness and purity to the atmosphere that is certainly not known in New England, and guards the most exposed against colds, — and the reader may form some idea of the life of our senses and sensibilities in our stage ride over the Plains.

One great feature in the constant landscape was the long trains of wagons and carts, with their teams of mules and oxen, passing to and fro on the road, going in empty, coming out laden with corn for man and beast, with machinery for the mining regions, with clothing, food and luxuries for the accumulating populations of Colorado, Utah and Montana, and all intermediate settlements. The wagons were covered with white cloth ; each drawn by four to six pairs of mules or oxen ; and the trains of them stretched frequently from one-quarter to one-third of a mile each. As they moved along in the distance, they reminded me of the caravans described in the Bible and other ancient Eastern books. Turned out of the road on the green prairie, for afternoon rest or a night's repose, the wagons drawn around in a circle, as a barricade against Indians or protection against storm, and the animals turned loose to feed, and wandering over the rounding prairie for a mile, — " cattle upon a thousand hills ; " at night their camp fires burning ; — in any position or under any aspect, they presented a

A STORM ON THE PLAINS.

picture most unique and impressive, indeed, summoning up many a memory of oriental reading. The mule trains made from fifteen to twenty miles a day; and the oxen about twelve to fifteen. They depended entirely upon the grass of the Plains for food as they went along; and indeed the animals grew stronger and fatter as they moved on in their summer campaign of work, coming out of their winter rest poor and scrawny, and going back into it in the fall, fat and hearty. It was thus that, before the Kailroad, all emigration and all merchandise moved into our great New West.

Another of our marked early experiences was a terrible storm of thunder and lightning, hail and rain, upon the open Plains. First came huge, rolling, ponderous masses of cloud in the West, massing up and separating into sections in a more majestic and threatening style than our party had ever before seen in the heavens. Then followed a tornado of wind. Horses, coach and escort turned their backs to the breeze, and, bending, awaited its passing. It stripped us of every loose bit of baggage ; and we sent our scouts for their recovery. Next fell the hail, pouring as swift rain, and as large and heavy as bullets. The horses quailed before its terrible pain. Our splendid quartette of blacks careered and started over the prairie ; we tumbled out of the coach to save ourselves one peril, and so met the other, — the fire of the heavenly hail; it bit like wasps, it stunned like blows. But horses and coach were to be saved ; and after a long struggle, in which the coach came near overturning, and the horses to

running away, in dismay and fright, and our driver 3

OUR NEW WEST.

and military friends proved themselves real heroes, and everybody got wet, the hail subsided into a pouring rain, the horses were quieted and restored to their places, and we got into a drowned coach, ourselves like drowned rats, and hastened to cover, over a prairie flooded with water, in the barracks of old Fort Kearney.

From Monday to Saturday, day and night, stopping every ten or twelve miles to change horses, and every forty or fifty to eat a meal, were we upon this stage ride over the Plains. The days were warm and monotonous; the nights cold and tedious; sleep in a jolting stage-coach was hard and fitful; and we fast grew careless in toilettes and barbaric in manners. We were alert for an Indian attack, but none appeared ; and not even buffalo or antelope gave us opportunity to test our vaunted prowess with fire-arms. We had a wide and smooth road; an occasional gully or dry ditch offered the only break in its uniform levelness, and a rare stretch of sand interrupted its hardness ; it seemed easy, with light coach and frequent change of horses, to keep up a speed of eight to ten miles ; but the average rate of the coaches, with heavy mails and full loads of passengers, was but four to six. The road lay for the most part along the Platte River, — a broad, shallow, swift and muddy stream ; useful then and now only for drinking purposes, but destined to flow out in side ditches and make almost a second Nile Valley in agricultural richness. The soil of the Plains is a cold, dry, sandy loam, the wash of the great range of mountains beyond them; yielding a rich though

THE KANCHES ON THE PLAINS.

coarse grass,' that, green or dry, is the best food for cattle that the Continent can offer. From the river to the mountains, there is a steady though imperceptible rise in the land, averaging ten feet to the mile ; half way across, dew ceases to fall, and at Denver and Cheyenne, where the mountains begin, the Plains bear an elevation of near six thousand feet above the sea level.

This whole intermediate region was and still is substantially uninhabited; every ten or fifteen miles was a stable of the stage proprietor, and every other ten or fifteen miles, an eating-house ; perhaps as often a petty ranch or farm-house, whose owner lived by selling hay to the trains of emigrants or freighters ; every fifty or one hundred miles we found a small grocery and blacksmith shop; and about as frequently a military station with a company or two of United States troops for protection against the Indians. This made up all the civilization of the Plains. The barns and houses were of logs or prairie turf, piled up layer on layer, and smeared over or between with clayey mud. The turf and mud made the best houses, and the same material was used for military forts and for fences around the cattle and horse yards. The roofs were often a foot thickness of turfs, sand, clay and logs or twigs, with an occasional inside lining of skins or thick cloth. Floors were oftenest such as nature offers only ; and, as at some of the Washington hotels, the spoons at the table did not always go around. Mexican terms prevailed : an inclosure for animals was called a "corral;" a house of turf and mud is of "adobe;" and a farm-house or farm a « ranch." Our meals at the stage stations continued very good throughout the ride; the staples were bacon, eggs, hot biscuit, green tea and coffee ; dried peaches and apples, and pies were as uniform ; beef and antelope were occasional, and canned fruits and vegetables were furnished at least half of the time.