The Chronicles of Western Pioneers
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Exciting Biographies
of the Men and Women
Who Shaped the American West
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The
Last Cattle Drive
It fell to J. C. Stubbs, General Traffic Manager of Arizona
Operations for the Southern Pacific Railroad, to tell the cattle ranchers
of southeastern Arizona Territory that his employers - Collis P. Huntington,
Charles Crocker, Leland Stanford and Mark Hopkins - were raising live
cattle freight rates to California by 25 percent in the fall of 1889.
Stubbs undoubtedly breathed a sigh of relief when those range-hardened
men acquiesced without a fight.
Mountains
of Gold, Mountains of Silver
Few men struck it rich in the western mines in the last
half of the 1800s. Most returned home poor, disillusioned, with muscles
aching from the back breaking work. But one man from Missouri, barely
educated, with a widowed mother and sister to support, hit pay dirt
time after time in mining camps scattered across the West. He started
out with next to nothing, riding a horse across the country to get to
the California gold fields, and ended a United States Senator. In the
process he acquired mountains of gold, silver and copper, building one
of the largest mining fortunes the world has ever seen.
Going
for the Gold:
Travel by Sea to the California Gold Fields
When President James K. Polk stood before Congress in December
1848 and announced to the world that gold had been discovered in California's
foothills, and that he had a tea caddy with more than 230 ounces of it
as proof, he kicked off arguably the most legendary voluntary emigration
of people the world has ever known. Adventurous men from around the world
- Europeans, South Americans, Australians and hardy Yankees - streamed
to California to claim their share of the precious metal through backbreaking
work. By far, most of them traveled to the gold fields by sea.
The
Day Jack Powers Turned Outlaw
Too scared to show their faces, women watched
through shuttered windows on April 30, 1853, when the Santa Barbara Plaza
swarmed with riders forming a posse called by Sheriff William W. Twist
to evict Jack Powers from the Arroyo Burro. Whether or not they came in
answer to Sheriff Twist's call and intended to take part in the affair,
scores were on hand and eager for the day's developments: it would be
livelier than a cock fight, bull fight or bear baiting.
Empire
Builder;
Walter Vail and the Empire Ranc
It would be hard to imagine a pair less
likely to build a cattle empire than the two men getting off the stagecoach
in Tucson, Arizona Territory, in mid-July, 1876. The stage driver must
have shaken his head in disbelief at the 24-year-old New Jersey farmboy
and sickly Englishman stepping down into the dusty dryness and glaring
sun of southern Arizona. "How long will they last?" he might have wondered.
"Give 'em a month, two at the most." When the tenderfoots mentioned they
were headed for the high desert country some fifty miles southeast of
Tucson to buy a small ranch, the stage driver might have softened some,
offering this friendly advice. "Mighty dry out there; be sure you have
water. And look out for Apaches, rattlers, Gila monsters and other critters."