Imperial County CA Archives History - Books .....Old Stage Routes 1918 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/ca/cafiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Joy Fisher sdgenweb@yahoo.com February 14, 2006, 6:28 am Book Title: History Of Imperial County California OLD STAGE ROUTES As a preliminary to the building of the railroads, various stage lines were run. One called the San Antonio and San Diego. Semi-monthly stages ran for about a year. Then the historic Butterfield Stage Coach Line was started. It ran semi-weekly, and had a six years' contract with the government for carrying mails, at $600,000 per year. The route lay between St. Louis and San Francisco, and was covered in from twenty to twenty-two days, although it is said to have made the trip in sixteen upon occasion. There were three stations upon this line, at Coyote Springs, Indian Wells, and at the east side chain of sand hills. The mail service of the Butterfield stage was not the first that California had. As early as the time when Benjamin Franklin was appointed postmaster general for the colonies, there were monthly mail trips between- Monterey in Upper California, and Loreto, at the end of Lower California. They even had a franking system in full force, which was seemingly as much abused in those days as in our own. The California mail system was not only four hundred miles longer than the Continental one on the eastern coast, but it made better time, which is a surprise to those of us who are in the habit of considering California and its institutions as new and rather undeveloped. Northern California had a number of stage routes beside the Butter-field—the first in Southern California was Gregory's Great Atlantic and Pacific Express. It brought the eastern mail down from San Francisco. The first overland stage by a southern route started from San Antonio. Texas, and followed the extreme southern route through New Mexico and Arizona to California. Owing to Indian outrages this route was abandoned. The Butterfield route was the largest and best organized of all the stage routes, but it suffered so much loss through the Civil war that it was abandoned. The last stage company was Wells Fargo & Company, which was established in 1868. The same year that the Butterfield stage line was established, Dr. Oliver Wozencraft began to agitate the question of bringing the waters of the Colorado River into the Salton Sink for irrigation purposes. Many people less informed on the subject of irrigation than he regarded him as a dreamer, but nevertheless his project might have gone through but for the breaking out of the Civil war. In 1859 a bill was passed by the California State Legislature which ceded to Dr. Wozencraft and associates about 1600 square miles of desert land in consideration of a water supply being introduced. The reclamation must begin in two years and be finished in ten, and as fast as it was introduced the government was to issue patents for the land reclaimed; the title to be granted when all conditions were filled. But the Civil war stopped proceedings. After the war, Dr. Wozencraft again endeavored to bring the matter up, but died suddenly in Washington just as it was about to come up for another hearing. He sacrificed his entire property to this project of reclamation. In 1881 to 1884 the tracks of the Southern Pacific were laid following the main survey of the government in 1853. Those who complain of the fatigue and dust of the trip across the desert in the comfortable Pullman of today should read the diaries of those pioneers of western progress and learn what discomfort in traveling really is. The completion of the Southern Pacific Railroad closed the first part of the story of the Colorado Desert. In 1883 the New Liverpool Salt Company filed on some land and leased more from the Southern Pacific and began to recover the layers of salt which covered the bottom of the Salton Basin—now the Salton Sea. They scraped the salt in heaps with steam plows and then purified it. This company made a great deal of money until the overflow which in 1906 destroyed the whole plant. Additional Comments: Extracted from: THE HISTORY OF IMPERIAL COUNTY CALIFORNIA EDITED BY F. C. FARR IN ONE VOLUME ILLUSTRATED Published by ELMS AND FRANKS BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA 1918 File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/ca/imperial/history/1918/historyo/oldstage232nms.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.net/cafiles/ File size: 4.7 Kb