Firstly, it is important to state that the transportation of passengers over the route was an enterprise undertaken by Birch himself; it was completely independent of the transportation of the mails. Under the terms of his contract with the Postal Department Birch was obliged only to provide a service of “two trips per month on horseback” for the mail.³⁹ Note the words “on horseback”.
Modern accounts describe the use by Birch of four-horse wagons or coaches over the line from the outset, and there has been much debate over where the stage stations of the line were located. Documentary evidence relating to the line is scarce – hardly surprising when one considers that, intact, it operated for only a little over one year. Such official documents as do exist provide dates and names, but offer very little of a qualitative nature; for this kind of information we have to turn to newspaper reports and the accounts of those who actually traveled over the route and/or were employed by Birch’s company.
We have concentrated on those newspaper articles which make particular mention of the mode of transport employed, and of any stage stations.
Modes of Transport
On September 14, 1857, the Sacramento Daily Union gave an account of the first three mails sent out over Route 8076; those which left San Antonio on July 9 and July 24, and that which departed San Diego on July 9.
The mail which left San Antonio on the 9th had been in the charge of a Mr. Mason who traveled in the company of four other men. The Daily Union account says that:
The time afforded for preparation was exceedingly short, so that no relays of mules could be sent ahead, and even animals ridden by the party had to be picked up as they could be found, at an hour’s notice. The same conditions had applied to the party which had left from the San Diego terminus.
Upon reaching El Paso (from San Antonio) the mail of the 9th was transferred to an ambulance, a type of passenger wagon. The mail of the 24th originating at San Antonio was transported by ambulance from its point of origin.
A delay resulted in the mail party which had left San Antonio on the 24th – in the charge of Henry Skillman – catching up with that of the 9th at Cienega de Sauz,⁴⁰ and from that point onward the two parties traveled together as far as the Pima Villages⁴¹ where “Mr. Mason took both mails and with one companion, pushed on with pack mules.”
Next we refer to an item, also from the Sacramento Daily Union, dated August 6, 1857. The information contained in this article was reported as having been provided by James Birch himself and is interesting for several reasons. It states that Birch’s contract allowed for “the mail to be packed through, or to be carried in wagons or coaches, at the option of the contractor.” The article also confirms the report of September 14th that the first mail to leave San Antonio was indeed being packed through on mules, but goes on to say that “the one to leave on the 24th of July, it was intended, should leave in a Concord wagon.”
Birch apparently saw “packing through” as only a temporary measure, the result no doubt of the very short space of time available to him between securing the contract and having to commence the service.
The August 6th item also reported that, as per Birch, eleven Concord coaches had been shipped from New York, and that:
The first mails started will travel comparatively slow, of course, as teams can only be relieved by the loose stock taken along with them. After the necessary stands are arranged, so that an occasionally fresh team can be obtained, the time within which the service is performed will be brought within the twenty-five days.
Birch also stated that he had:
Also sent parties on to the line to locate stands, provide forage and distribute stock at such points as it was deemed necessary to make changes of wagons and horses.
The Daily Alta California of August 11, 1857, similarly reported that it had been informed by R. E. Doyle, Superintendent in California for Birch’s line, that “passenger coaches are to be placed on this route without delay”, and that “stations are to be established at distance of thirty miles along the route. ”On August 26, 1857, that same newspaper, reporting on the departure of the first SA&SD mail run from the San Diego terminus, stated that:
The mail was, of course, carried on pack animals, as will be the case until the wagons, which are being pushed across, will have been put on the line.
It was later reported that the first mail party to use coaches set out from San Antonio in August of 1857.⁴²
Locations of Stations
This brings us to the question of exactly where the stations of Birch’s line were located on that section of the route between Mesilla and Tucson; what materials were used to build them, and whether or not the Butterfield Overland Mail Company later shared those stations with Birch’s company, or took them over after the demise of that company. Again, there is a dearth of conclusive information to answer these questions. In order to try to provide at least some answers we again turn to newspapers of the time, in which we find three accounts given by people who had actually traveled sections of the route. These appeared in the San Diego Union on December 24, 1857, January 11, 1858, and March 12, 1858. The first was provided by J. J. Thomas, a conductor on that section of the route between San Diego and Fort Yuma. The second account comes from a letter, author unknown, written at Tucson on November 25, 1857; it describes the journey between San Diego and Tucson. The third account is also in the form of a letter; it was written at Albuquerque on January 17, 1858, by Charles F. Huning. Charles was the brother of Franz Huning, a prominent Albuquerque merchant. Charles traveled that portion of the route between San Diego and Mesilla, where he changed coaches in order to get to his destination, which was Albuquerque. Of the three, Huning is the only one who traveled on the New Mexico section of the route.
All three accounts name various stopping places along the route between San Diego, and the destinations of the three individuals, with the account published on January 11, 1858, being the most detailed in this respect. Both the accounts of Huning and the unnamed letter writer refer several times to extra mules being taken along. Huning for example writes that he had departed San Diego:
In a small coach drawn by four mules, having four more loose for relay, (this is the way they do it over the whole route, changing every ten or twelve miles.)⁴³
The unknown author states that he had to wait over for several days at both San Pasqual (36 miles from San Diego) and Cariso Creek (Carrizo Creek, 125 miles from San Diego) until more mules were brought. Notably, he refers to those animals brought to San Pasqual as being “muy broncos”, that is, very wild or unbroken. He also says that the journey from San Diego to Tucson had taken 23 days as a coach passenger, but that “the mail is carried through in seven, the mail carriers running night and day.”
The coaches apparently traveled in pairs due to the large quantity of supplies that had to be taken along; “Unknown” writes:
Our coaches were heavily laden, each having about 1500 pounds of freight for the Pino [Pima] Villages, to be used in trade for corn and wheat with the Indians there.
At the Cariso/Carrizo Creek station, he says, he “left the stage and mounted a mule”, his greatest difficulty being “to go as slow as the heavily laden stages.”⁴⁴ Huning too refers to having to ride on horseback over some sections.
Both Huning and “Unknown” describe being accommodated with meals and a place to sleep at several points in their respective journeys, for example at Ames Ranch and at Lassiter’s Ranch, also at the town of Vallecito; all three places located in California. These were not company-owned properties. Birch’s line made use, by prior arrangement, of existing, privately owned facilities where they could be found. Vallecito was an established town in Calaveras County, California, a gold mining town originally known as Murphy’s Old Diggings; Ames Ranch was about 25 miles east of San Diego and was the property of Julian Ames.
There are only two purpose-built Company stations mentioned between San Diego and Mesilla, both of which were in the bounds of present day Arizona, but which at the time were in New Mexico Territory. These two stations were located at Colorado City (present day Yuma) and at Maricopa Wells, and it seems that they were very primitive “facilities” indeed.
Of the station at Colorado City, which he reached in November of 1857, “Unknown” writes:
Colorado City, on the east side of the Colorado river contains the store house of Hooper & Hinton, one brush house, used by the Stage Company, and one brush corral.
Of that at Maricopa Wells, reached in January of 1858, he says:
The stage company purpose [intend] putting up an adobe house, corral, etc., at this place. At present a miserable brush house is the only shelter …
Bear in mind that these observations were made in November of 1857, and January of 1858 – a minimum of four months after the line began, strongly suggesting that by these dates no permanent structures had been erected by the company. Birch’s untimely death would surely compound the lack of any development of services.
Huning gives no description of the stations at Colorado City or the Pima Villages, referring to the former only as “the company’s station” and to the latter as “the Pimo villages called the Maricopa Station.” He does however say that they departed the station at Colorado City with a “change of coach and animals. Six mules were hitched on, and as many more for relays”, and that “there were three drivers, one for the coach, one side driver, and another for the loose mules.” He makes no mention of a station of any kind between Tucson and Mesilla, writing only that they found plenty of water and that they traveled until midnight almost every night, having left Tucson on January 1, 1858. They arrived in Mesilla on January 8th. Huning also writes that on leaving Tucson:
We had a very good coach, plenty of mules, and seven men, well armed with Colt’s pistols and Sharp’s rifles. From Tucson to Mesilla, the road is the most dangerous part of the route, being the stronghold of the Apache Indians.
This confirms that there were no stations between Tucson and Mesilla – it was simply too unsafe, hence the traveling until such a late hour every day. This was a section of the route which needed to be crossed as hastily as possible.
From these descriptions we can conclude that, even by January of 1858, some six months after it began operating, Birch’s line was a primitive, bare-bones operation; particularly in the transportation of passengers.
While reading these accounts of things such as the lack of purpose-built stations and facilities for passengers, the use of “packing through”of the mails, the carrying along of supplies and extra animals, and passengers having to ride mules over some sections, it should not be forgotten that , as Mr. Mason stated, “the time afforded for preparation was exceedingly short”. Birch had but eight days between the securing of the contract and the commencement of service. How much preparation Nathan P. Cook had made up until then we could not ascertain. Most importantly we should remember that the priority was the transportation of the mails – and they required no creature comforts. They had to get through within the time allotted by the contract with the Post Office Department; failure to do so rendered a mail contractor subject to heavy financial penalties.
Birch’s Death – Giddings acquires the Route
In early September of 1857, James E. Birch was among those lost when the S. S. Central America sank after being caught in a hurricane. The ship, with over 477 passengers, 101 crew members and 10 tons of California gold on-board, left Colòn (Aspinwall), Panama on September 3rd bound for New York City. She sank off the coast of Cape Hatteras in the second week of September; barely two months after the commencement of Birch’s SA&SD mail route.
On January 1, 1858, the Post Office Department transferred Birch’s mail contract to George H. Giddings.⁴⁵ It was reported that Giddings, along with R. E. Doyle, had been involved with Birch’s SA&SD line since the beginning.⁴⁶
Details of exactly how the contract was transferred to Giddings are unclear; there is nothing in the Postal Laws of 1856 to specifically provide for such a situation as arose when Birch died.
On April 3, 1858, the Sacramento Daily Union published the following:
The Washington correspondent of the Bulletin says:
I have learned from the Post Office Department that W. Clifford, of the Birch estate, has arrived here. Upon an examination of the matters connected with the Birch mail contract, he at once advised Kelton, the assignee, to relinquish the contract; and yesterday morning he did so – selling out, with the Postmaster General’s approval and assent, to Giddings, who is now the contractor, and who will no doubt fully answer the expectations of the Department and the public. Mrs. Birch’s friends rejoice that she has thus been saved from serious pecuniary disaster.
Kelton, as we learn, was not calculated to superintend the operations – and Giddings, who owned the principal portion of the stock on the eastern end of the route, had no confidence in his management, and would have retired from the affair altogether.
Curtailments to the Route
In October of 1858, the first of a series of curtailments was applied to Route No. 8076 when, on October 27th, the Postmaster General ordered that Giddings should cease operating over the El Paso to Fort Yuma section of the route.⁴⁷
This, and the subsequent curtailments, would have come as no great surprise to Giddings; both his and Birch’s contracts with the Post Office Department had included “the express understanding that, if any other route should be put under contract that shall cover this, in part or in whole, the Postmaster General reserves the power to curtail or discontinue the service on this route at his discretion.”⁴⁸
In March of 1860, what remained of the route was further curtailed, leaving only that section between Comanche Springs, Texas⁴⁹ and El Paso.⁵⁰ That is, all that remained in operation was an approximately 240 mile long stretch of the original route, running solely within Texas. In fact, the Post Office Department had never intended that the SA&SD mail line would operate as the overland mail service; it was from the outset regarded as a local mail service, something requested by and designed to fulfill the needs of the people of Texas.
The article entitled “Mail Contract” published in the Sacramento Daily Union of August 6, 1857, referred to earlier, contained the following information on the role which Birch’s line was to play:
This contract is for the carrying of a local mail from San Antonio to San Diego, for the accommodation of the various points on that line and the Government posts. It has no connection whatever to the great Overland Mail. The Government reserves the right to suspend the service upon any part of the line over which another contract may extend, and when the great Overland Mail is put on, the contract with Birch may be suspended from the Rio Grande to Fort Yuma, or it may not. As it is a local way mail,⁵¹ the probabilities appear to be that the great mail will not materially interfere with it, as that is a through mail entirely.
The Daily Union of December 11, 1857, in an article titled “New Territory of Arizona”, also referred to the distinction between the SA&SD line and Butterfield’s Overland Mail Company:
The letting and successful opening of the way mail from San Diego to San Antonio, and the fact that the great overland mail line will also run the same route for over a thousand miles will further operate in favor of the formation of a new Territory on the Southern limit of the country.
Here we remind the reader of Weller’s 1856 resolution which requested the establishment of a mail route to operate between San Antonio and San Diego.
The above quotation, that of December 11, 1857, could be somewhat misleading. As previously stated there has been some degree of debate over the possible sharing of facilities by the two companies during that period of time when they operated concurrently, and over the possibility that Butterfield’s company took over stations established by Birch and/or Giddings. Neither of these are viable propositions as far as that section of the route between Mesilla and Tucson is concerned. We have already shown that the SA&SD line had erected no permanent structures to serve as stations between those two points; there were no “stations” for the Butterfield line to take over.
As for the two lines having operated concurrently for some period of time; the Butterfield line commenced operating on September 16, 1858, with the curtailment of the El Paso to Fort Yuma section of the SA&SD mail route being ordered on October 23rd or 27th, 1858.⁵² The SA&SD mails left their termini on the 9th and 24th of each month, thus between September 16th and October 23rd of 1858, a maximum of only three trips from each terminus could have overlapped with Butterfield’s Overland Mail – September 24th, and October 9th and 24th.
There is evidence that the two mail lines did overlap, albeit briefly. J. M. Farewell, the Overland Correspondent for the Daily Alta California in his report to that newspaper which was written at El Paso on October 27, 1858, writes that at San Simon there was “a new station, just established” and that at that station his party “met the San Diego mail.” This was on October 25, 1858.⁵³
It would seem from this that the two mail lines did share use of at least this one station during the brief time that they ran concurrently. That the stage station at San Simon was newly established in late October of 1858, suggests that it was Butterfield’s company who had established it, and that it was Giddings who was sharing a Butterfield facility, and not the other way around.
©2007-2023 Jim & Erica Parson
REFERENCES FOR THIS INSTALLMENT:
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. Maricopa Wells is located 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, 185
⁴⁵Index To The Miscellaneous Documents Of The Senate Of The United States For The Second Session Of The Thirty-Sixth Congress. Senate Miscellaneous Document No. 15. Report of The Committee on Post Offices and Post Roads. Page 1.
⁴⁶Daily Alta California. April 27, 1858
⁴⁷Congressional Globe. 36th Congress, 1st Session. Page 2458. (1860). Note: Although the Globe gives October 27, 1858, as the date on which the section between El Paso and Fort Yuma was ordered to be discontinued, the Index To The Miscellaneous Documents of the Senate for the Second Session of the Thirty-Sixth Congress (Report of the Committee on Post Offices and Post Roads, contained therein) says that this curtailment order was made on October 23, 1858.
⁴⁸Ibid.
⁴⁹Now known as Fort Stockton in Pecos County, 329 miles northwest of San Antonio, 240 miles east of El Paso.
⁵⁰Congressional Globe. 36th Congress, 1st Session. Page 2458. (1860).
⁵¹“Way mail” is mail that is either picked up or delivered along a mail route. Way mail bags were opened at each post office along the mail route, with mail being added to or taken from the way mail bag at each Post Office as necessary. “Through mail” was transported in a separate locked mail bag which was to be taken from one terminus to the other and was not opened at any mail station in between.
⁵²Daily Alta California. November 16, 1858.
⁵³Ibid.
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