This school year we learned about the Westward Expansion, and the journeys Pioneers took 200 years ago. The Butterfield Overland was a trail to deliver mail from St. Louis to San Francisco. This trail was in use between 1858 – 1861. One reason this trail was made was to connect the middle of the country with the West Coast. Foremost, the trail had many physical features. Some of these features included mountains & the Sonoran desert. One of these mountain ranges included the Rocky mountains. Difficulties on this trip were that there was no water for 75 miles, & no settlements for 900 miles. Some of these settlements included Tucson, & El Paso.
Most of the people on this trail were mail carriers. These people risked their life to deliver mail halfway across the country. A danger, for example was there was no water for 75 miles! That’s more than 1/37 of the trail! One of these people was Horace Greeley an editor of the New York Tribute. When Greeley traveled, the trail was well used, but still dangerous. Travelers relied on mules, and mules couldn’t always be trusted. He wrote while fording the Laramie River, “At the first crossing, one of our lead mules turned … and ran into his mate, whom he threw down and tangled so that he could not get up; … in a minute, another mule was down, and the two in … danger of drowning.”
Though the mules survived, his luggage did not. His carpetbag was fished out, but, to his great distress, his trunk was left at the bottom of the Sweetwater River. Usually, a typical day for a traveler on this trail was 25 days at 5 mph. The mail carriers on this trip usually rode on mules or horses, or if delivering money on a stagecoach. The carriers usually carried things like mail & money, but sometimes carried people from place to place. Including how there was the danger of no water, there was the danger of the Native American tribe, the Chickasaws. These natives attacked the postal service regularly. The Chickasaws were war-bound indians.
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These people even fought against other native americans, including the Choctaws, the Creeks, & the Cherokees. Luckily for the postal service, there was always a shotgun next to the driver of a stagecoach. Finally, there were many dangers, difficulties, people, and native americans. I thought it was crazy when the mules almost drowned. In conclusion, the Butterfield Overland had many interesting facts.
