Preface
In 1857, even before the contract for the El Paso to Fort Yuma wagon road had been awarded to Leach, the Sacramento Daily Union reported that:
It is the purpose of the Postmaster General and the Secretary of the Interior to require the mail contractor and the contractor for the construction of the southern wagon road … to act in concert with each other, and it is not improbable that they will have a joint interest in the respective works.²⁶
An effective postal system was, and always had been, the lifeblood of the country. As early as 1831 the postal system had developed a network of routes covering more than 116,000 square miles; in 1840 the Postal Department handled over 40 million letters and 39 million newspapers.²⁷
California’s main line of postal communication with the States and Territories was the ocean mail service, which was both costly and precarious, and which involved the mails being transported overland across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec (Mexico).
In 1857, the ocean mail service to California was costing the United States in the region of $800,000 a year, and the States were, as Senator William McKendree Gwin of California said, “entirely at the mercy of a steamship company – a gigantic monopoly that can never be broken down unless you give us a mail across the continent.” Gwin also pointed out that California had been in the possession of the United States for over ten years, and yet had “no communication across the continent within our own territory.” He appealed to the Senate saying:
You have agreed to give us wagon-roads; but they will be of no use unless you put mails upon them. The Indians will burn up the bridges if they are not kept in constant use; and what you have done will be of no service to us unless you give us a mail communication … for sooner or later we must have communication across the continent with the Pacific coast, and the sooner we commence the better … Now give us this mail. It will show that we shall be connected with our brethren on this side of the continent by a route within our own territory, without being dependent on any foreign nation.²⁸
Gwin’s speech was part of the debate on proposed amendments to the Post-Office Appropriation Bill which took place in the Senate on February 27, 1857. The Appropriation Bill determined the funds which would be appropriated to the Post-Office Department for the year ending June 30, 1858. This was the Bill which laid the foundations for the establishment and development of Route No. 12578, the contract for which would eventually be won by John Butterfield and his associates.
Before giving an account of Butterfield’s Overland Mail Company, we first look at the history of what was the first Post Office Department sanctioned mail service to run west across the Gadsden Purchase lands, focusing particularly on that section between Mesilla and Tucson. This mail service operated on Route No. 8076 and was the San Antonio to San Diego mail route, often – though mistakenly – referred to as having been absorbed by Butterfield’s Overland Mail Company.
Route No. 8076: San Antonio, Texas, to San Diego, California
This route of approximately 1,500 miles is that route which came to be known as the “San-San” line; so often written about and often imbued with an air of romance while simultaneously derided by the epithet “The Jackass Mail.”
Many myths have grown up around the story of Route 8076, a great number of those myths have their origins in a reliance on sources which contain inaccurate information. In this account we rely on information contained in Federal documents, such as the annual report to Congress made by the Postmaster General, and the Congressional Globe for factual details of contracts, routes, etc. Some newspaper accounts are also used to provide details about this mail route that are not found in Government documents.
Birch’s “bid” for the contract
Very often accounts of Route 8076 begins with the awarding of a contract for this route to James E. Birch in July of 1857, and there are many opinions and much speculation on exactly how it came to be that Birch secured it. Often it is implied that the contract was awarded to Birch as the result of some unidentified private agreement between Birch and Aaron V. Brown, the Postmaster General at the time, and that Birch secured the contract due to politically motivated considerations. These are points which we do not intend to discuss here other than to say that in 1857 the country was, of course, in a great state of political turmoil; the North-South debate was raging and no Federal decision was completely free of political wrangling and maneuvering. In this account we adhere to a narration confined for the most part to who, what, when and where.
Federal law dictated in exact and precise terms how mail contracts had to be advertised, how the bids and proposals had to be handled when they were received by the Post Office Department, and how they had to be awarded.
Chapter III, Contracts, of The Postal Laws of 1856 states:
That it shall be the duty of the Postmaster General to give public notice in one newspaper published at the seat of Government of the United States and in one or more of the newspapers published in the State or States, or Territory, where the contract is to be performed for at least twelve weeks before entering into any contract for carrying the mail.
The bids, when received, had to have been delivered to the Postal Department sealed:
And shall be kept sealed until the biddings are closed, and shall then be opened and marked in the presence of the Postmaster General and one of the Assistant Postmasters General, or in the presence of two of the Assistant Postmasters General.²⁹
There is one further critical piece of information to be revealed on how Birch came to be awarded the contract for Route 8076. The Postal Laws of 1856, which were still in effect at the time, stipulate that Postal contracts “in all cases shall be awarded to the lowest bidder …”³⁰
So it would appear that Birch must have submitted his proposal to the Post Office Department following publication in the press of a request for bids on Route No. 8076, and that Birch was awarded the contract because, as well as meeting other Post Office Department specifications, his was the lowest bid. In fact, Birch did not submit a bid for this route and was, therefore, not the original Post Office Department contractee.
The Executive Documents for the First Session of the Thirty-Fifth Congress (December 7, 1857 – June 14, 1858) contain the Postmaster General’s Report which itself contains An abstract of the offers for carrying the mails made within the year preceding the first of July, 1857, and a report of all contracts made for the transportation of the mails within the year aforesaid.³¹
Included in this is the report on Route No. 8076; the names of those who tendered bids on this route are listed as Almanzon Huston, Wm. B. Jacques & Co., G. H. Giddings, F. P. Sawyer, Preston Roberts Jr. & William Stewart, and Nathan P. Cook.³²
The lowest bid was that submitted by Cook at “$74,900; or $60,000, from Franklin, Texas to San Diego, California once a month, and pro rata for weekly.” Interestingly, unlike the other bidders, Cook does not specify which form of transport he would employ. This suggests that this was not given by the Post-Office Department as being a formal requirement in bids tendered. The majority of the bids, despite stating a means of transport, give no details of route termini.³³
Birch came by the contract not because he was the successful bidder, but because Cook, at some point prior to the commencement date of the service, had “transferred all interest in his bid” to Birch.³⁴ The contract was subsequently made with Birch “from July 1, 1857, at $149,800 per annum, for a semi-monthly service.” It would expire on June 30, 1861, as per Postal Law which stated that “no contract shall be entered into for a longer term than four years.”³⁵
The San Antonio to San Diego route was a new one. On June 13, 1856, Senator Weller of California had presented to the Senate a set of resolutions which had been proposed and adopted at a public meeting held by the inhabitants of Ysleta, El Paso County, Texas. The resolutions stated that the citizens of Ysleta were in favor of the establishment of a mail route to run between San Antonio, Texas and San Diego, California. The resolutions were forwarded to the Committee on the Post-Office and Post Roads.³⁶ On August 18, 1856, Congress designated a route between San Antonio and San Diego as an official post-road.³⁷
Route No. 8076, San Antonio to San Diego, referred to as the SA&SD, commenced operation on July 9, 1857; just eight days after Birch had secured the contract. The mail was scheduled to leave each terminus on the 9th and 24th of each month, and under the terms of the contract had to arrive at the opposite terminus within 30 days.³⁸
For the purposes of this work we are confining our commentary, for the most part, to a discussion of only a few key areas of SA&SD history; that is, those aspects of its history which have given rise to the greatest amount of confusion and which are most often incompletely or incorrectly reported, these being the mode(s) of transportation utilized by Birch, and the locations of any stations on that section of the route with which we are concerned, that is, betweeen Mesilla and Tucson. These two topics will be covered in the next installment.
©2007-2023 Jim & Erica Parson
REFERENCES FOR THIS INSTALLMENT:
²⁶Sacramento Daily Union. May 2, 1857.
²⁷John, Richard R. (1998) Spreading The News. The American Postal System from Franklin to Morse. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England: Harvard University Press. Page 4.
²⁸Congressional Globe. 34th Congress, 3rd Session. Pages 307-308. (1857).
²⁹The Postal Laws, Classified By Subjects. Chapter III. Contracts. Sections 42 And 43. Page 8. In: Leech, D. D. T. (Compiler). Post Office Directory; Or Business Man’s Guide To The Post Offices In The United States (1856). New York: J. H. Colton And Company. Hereafter referred to as Postal Laws (1856).
³⁰Ibid. Page 9.
³¹House Of Representatives Executive Document No. 96. Abstract Of Offers For Carrying The Mails, &c. Letter From The Postmaster General. Thirty-Fifth Congress, First Session. Hereafter referred to as Executive Document No. 96.
³²Nathan P. Cook was a surveyor and engineer by profession. In August of 1856, a convention was held at Tucson at which was drawn up a Memorial to Congress petitioning for the organization of “Arizona” (the Gadsden Purchase lands) as a separate Territory. At the convention, Nathan P. Cook was elected Representative to Congress for that territory. Cook went to Washington, and in January of 1857 appeared before the House Committee on Territories, presenting the petition. He was refused a seat in Congress.
³³Executive Document No. 96. Page 430.
³⁴Ibid.
³⁵Postal Laws (1856). Page 7.
³⁶Journal Of The Senate Of The United States Of America, Being The First And Second Sessions Of The Thirty-Fourth Congress Begun And Held At The City Of Washington, December 3, 1855, And August 21, 1856. Washington: A. O. P. Nicholson, Senate Printer (1856).
³⁷Statutes And Treaties. Volume XI (1863). Chapter 168. Page 136.
³⁸Executive Document No. 96. Page 430.
³⁹Congressional Globe. 36th Congress, 1st Session. Page 2458. (1860).
⁴⁰The San Simon Cienega.
⁴¹The Pima or Pimo Villages were located a short distance east of Maricopa Wells which was located just south of the Gila River, 7.5 miles north-northwest of the city of Maricopa, AZ and approx. 20 miles due south of Phoenix.
⁴²Daily Alta California. February 6, 1858,
⁴³San Diego Union. March 12, 1858
⁴⁴San Diego Union.January 11, 1858
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