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 o