WAGON ROADS WEST

With the discovery of gold in California the need for communication and a continental transportation network became paramount.  This was so pressing that unique experiments, such as the Pony Express and the use of camels, were undertaken.  The period between the Mexican War and the Civil War would be one of intense, scientific exploration of the American West. The goals were to establish a transcontinental transportation network, and to delineate the United States boundaries with Mexico and Canada.  The army took the lead both in keeping the lines of communication open, and in exploration. Fort Lancaster was established to protect a major route to California.

Although the Spanish, having explored the Rio Grande and Pecos Rivers for most of their courses, were familiar with West Texas, at the beginning of the republic period the maps of this part of Texas were still devoid of detail; and, though there was great desire to take some of the Santa Fe trade away from Missouri, the Republic of Texas did nothing with its western domain.  The Missouri merchants controlled the main supply route to Santa Fe, and with this monopoly they, in effect, also controlled the lucrative Chihuahua City trade as well. In an attempt to shorten the Missouri to Chihuahua City route, the first effort to explore West Texas in the republic period was lead by Dr. Henry Connally, a Missouri trader. In 1839-1840, leading a party of Texans and Mexicans, Connally crossed the Red River and journeyed through Central Texas to Horsehead Crossing on the Pecos.  From there he proceeded via Comanche Springs (Fort Stockton) to Paisano Pass (Alpine), then down Alamito Creek to La junta, the junction of the Rio Conchos and Rio Grande (near present-day Presidio), and from there to Chihuahua City.   Ten years later, this route became part of the major trading route from San Antonio.

No other formal survey was undertaken until after the Mexican War.   The war itself generated much interest and information about the Southwest.   The key to the American victory was the military leadership in the four primary theaters of operation.  Gen. Zachary Taylor invaded Mexico from the mouth of the Rio Grande, fighting key battles at Monterrey and Buena Vista and securing the boundary of Texas. Gen. Stephen Watts Kearney invaded New Mexico and captured, without firing a shot, the important trade center of Santa Fe. From there he marched overland, and with Lt. John C. Frémont and Commodore Robert Stockton, was instrumental in taking California for the Union.  Gen. Winfield Scott made an amphibious landing at Vera Cruz, fought his way overland, and captured Mexico City.  With the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 and the Gadsden Purchase in 1853, Mexico ceded the entire Southwest. In 1848 gold was discovered in California.  The necessity for roads to connect the East with California and the effort to establish an exact boundary with Mexico touched off a flurry of exploration.

The need for an all-weather route to California, the desire to tap the lucrative trade with northern Mexico through Chihuahua City, and the budding national interest in a transcontinental railroad route stimulated the exploration of West Texas.   There were several allies aiding this endeavor.  The first two were the powerful senators from Texas, Sam Houston and Thomas Rusk. Soon after statehood they both called for a transcontinental survey through Texas, and advocated a railroad through the state, to terminate in California.  Above all they were ready and willing to call upon Washington to administer to the needs of Texas.  The other primary assistance came from the Army Corps of Topographical Engineers. Commanded in Washington by Col. John James Abert, the corps was responsible for Federal road, coast, and resource surveys.   Some of the best officers in the corps were stationed in Texas, under the local command of Bvt. Lt. Col. Joseph E. Johnston.  His various subordinates included Lieutenants William H. C. Whiting, William F. Smith, Francis Bryan, and Nathaniel Michler.

In 1848 commercial interests in San Antonio raised eight hundred dollars, and enlisted John Coffee Hays to find a practical route to El Paso.  Hays was escorted by a contingent of Texas Rangers under the command of Capt. Samuel Highsmith.   The party of thirty-seven left San Antonio on August 27, and returned three and a half months later, after encountering great difficulty.  Close to starvation, the expedition had made it only as far as Presidio, making no attempt to reach El Paso.   Trying to traverse the harsh Big Bend country, both Hays and Highsmith reported that they had found a trail.  In reality this survey accomplished little.  By the time Hays and Highsmith returned to San Antonio, the news of the discovery of gold in California had reached the East.

A southern all-weather route across the continent then became an imperative.  As 1849 dawned, gold seekers began to arrive at the major population centers of Texas, ready to leave at the first opportunity. When cholera broke out, many started west before the end of winter, and before a satisfactory trail had been surveyed.

Understanding the immediacy of the problem, Bvt. Maj. Gen. William Worth, the commanding officer in Texas, ordered Lt. William H. C. Whiting and Lt. William F. Smith to find a suitable route to El Paso. Departing from San Antonio on February 9, 1849, they were instructed to follow the Hays-Highsmith trail as far as Presidio, and then to continue up the Rio Grande to El Paso.  They were instructed that if this route was not feasible they were to find a more practical way home.  By February 21 they were at the frontier of settlement.  Whiting wrote, "at an hour late in the afternoon my party left Fredericksburg, the last settlement it was to see until Presidio del Norte should be reached.  This little town is a colony of the Dutch, many of whom have emigrated to Texas and pushed their settlements in every direction.  It has a pretty site on Barrons creek, one of the little streams that swell the Perdernales, and some day or other may become a place of importance, but now its people are miserably poor."   Here they were able to add to their numbers.  "Captain Eastman, First Infantry, is encamped near this place, and to his polite assistance I am much indebted in increasing my scanty outfit.  Here I employed another man, William Howard; he had been out with Hays.  We now number sixteen, including Lieutenant Smith, Dick Howard, the two Mexicans, my servant, and myself."

Crossing the San Saba near Fredericksburg, the expedition went three days without water before reaching Live Oak Creek near the Pecos River.  Here the party camped in the vicinity of the future location of Fort Lancaster.  Describing the area in his journal, Whiting wrote, "this little stream of limpid water, called Live Oak creek from the growth near its mouth, makes its way to the Pecos through a ravine, or canyon, remarkable for its striking formation - a basin enclosed by a general ridge, with detached peaks or spurs resting against its elevation in the form of truncated cones. They are marked by two distinct, horizontal beds of limestone at different heights.  These appear at the sides of the hills and look, in their regularity, like walls of masonry, the upper one bounding the top.  The summits are level and apparently at the same general elevation of the great table prairie, out of which they seem to have been cut by the same great aqueous convulsion."   The expedition found the area laced by Indian trails. Due to the exhausted condition of their animals, they remained in camp for a day.

Traveling through the Davis Mountains to Presidio, the expedition then followed the Rio Grande to El Paso.  This outbound route was unsatisfactory, so hoping to find a better trail and especially one with more water, they returned by following the Rio Grande for only the first hundred miles.  At that point they marched due east for the Pecos.  Following the river south for sixty miles they crossed to the Devil's River, proceeded to its junction with the Rio Grande, and then east to San Antonio via Fort Clark.  Whiting and Smith reported that their return route was satisfactory.  It would soon be one of two major routes west through Texas.

While Whiting and Smith were in the field, another expedition was formed as a cooperative venture between commercial interests in Austin and the military.  Austin merchants raised the funds necessary to send John S. Ford to seek a route to El Paso, and General Worth sent Maj. Robert Neighbors to represent the military and federal interests.  Neighbors was the federal Indian agent for Texas, and Ford, a former Texas Ranger, was publisher of the Texas Democrat in Austin.   This party left Austin in March 1849 heading northward along the Colorado River to Brady's Creek, a tributary of the San Saba River. Striking west to the Concho River and Horsehead Crossing on the Pecos, they traversed the stark desert north of the Davis Mountains to El Paso.  Not finding enough water to make this a practical road, the expedition returned by a more northerly route.  Leaving El Paso they followed the general course of the present Texas-New Mexico border through the Guadalupe Mountains to the Pecos.  Moving south down the river to Horsehead Crossing, they returned to Austin via Fredericksburg and San Antonio. Ford and Neighbors reported that the return route, with only minor improvements, would make an excellent wagon road.

General Worth died of cholera on May 7, 1849.  His successor was Bvt. Brig. Gen. William S. Harney.  Even before the Whiting-Smith and Ford-Neighbors expeditions returned, he had plans for a further survey of the two possible roads.   Harney was more interested in the southern route and assigned Lt. Col. Joseph Johnston to the survey.  Returning with Whiting just as Johnston was leaving, Smith was ordered to immediately turn around and accompany Johnston. Johnston's party of engineers, escorted by a company of the First Infantry, was to proceed in conjunction with Maj. Jefferson Van Horne and his six companies of Third infantry on their way to El Paso to establish a garrison there.  Also accompanying the expedition was a party of California bound immigrants.  The Topographical Engineers surveyed ahead of the main column, and Capt. Samuel G. French of the Quartermaster Department commanded a detail assigned to make the necessary road improvements.  They arrived without incident at El Paso on September 3, having made only small changes to Whiting and Smith's original route.  This trail would be known as the Lower, or Military Road.

Harney assigned Lt. Francis T. Bryan to survey the northern route of Ford and Neighbors.  On June 14, 1849, Bryan departed San Antonio westward to the Pecos.  The party found easy passage all the way to El Paso, which was reached on July 29.  The major problem with this potential road was a lack of water between the Concho and Pecos Rivers.  In his report Bryan suggested the possibility of digging wells in this area.  Once in El Paso, Bryan joined Johnston, and in October both officers and their men returned to San Antonio by this northern route.  By this time a trail was well established, and soon to be known as the Upper Road.  The final connection for the network of western roads across Texas was the establishment of a route from Fort Smith, Arkansas, that joined the Upper Road at the Pecos River. Capt. Randolph Marcy of the Fifth Infantry and Lt. Nathaniel Michler were responsible for this survey.

Before the official surveys were complete, the Lower and Upper Roads were in use by gold-seekers on their way to California.  Over three thousand argonauts left from Texas in 1849, with many going by way of northern Mexico.  Others followed the surveyors, or attached themselves to military columns such as that of Johnston and Van Home.  Emigrants starting for the gold fields from Fort Smith or Dallas used the Upper Road.  The Lower Road was used by those booking sea passage to the ports on the Gulf of Mexico, and then traveling overland to San Antonio.  The Lower Road also came into prominence as an alternative trade route to Chihuahua City.

The Chihuahua Trail, longer than the Santa Fe Trail, had the advantage of a port terminal on the Gulf of Mexico at Indianola on Matagorda Bay.  The trail passed through San Antonio, where it joined the Lower Road as far as Comanche Springs (Fort Stockton), and then headed south to Presidio and Chihuahua City.  More difficult than the Santa Fe Trail, this was still a profitable route for those strong enough to survive the hardships.  Two hundred companies were engaged at the height of trade. Business along the Chihuahua City Trail was interrupted by the Civil War, but survived until the coming of the railroads.

The Lower, or Military Road was the army's primary supply route west to El Paso and Fort Bliss.  In 1850 the largest supply train ever to use this road gathered at Fort Inge near Uvalde.  Bound for El Paso and consisting of 340 loaded wagons, 450 civilians, and 175 soldiers, the expedition was under the command of Bvt. Maj. John Sprague.  Four thousand animals including cattle, mules, oxen, and horses accompanied the wagons.  To conserve water and forage the train was divided into two divisions. Sprague's mission was to supply the garrison at El Paso and escort civilian merchants, as well as protect gold-seekers rushing to California.

Accompanying the military escort was Lt. Parmenas T. Turnley of the First Infantry.  Although Turnley's company would be part of the garrison that established Fort Lancaster, he was by then on detached duty, and was promoted out of the regiment before he could return to Texas.  Turnley was an engineer of some skill.   He developed a prefabricated building system that would be used at Fort Lancaster. As the expedition's quartermaster and commissary officer, he also had on hand the materials to build a simple iron bridge across the Pecos River near Live Oak Creek, close by the future site of Fort Lancaster.  At best, this bridge was designed to be temporary and was initially poorly constructed. The normal crossing was a nearby ford.

The establishment of the Upper and Lower Roads did not end the exploration of the Trans-Pecos.  In 1850 the United States Boundary Commissioner, John Russell Bartlett, used the Upper Road to travel to El Paso to meet his Mexican counterpart, Gen. Pedro Garcia Conde; and in 1851 the boundary commissioner and Maj. William H. Emory of the Topographical Engineers surveyed the Big Bend-Presidio area.

In 1853, Congress authorized the Pacific Railway Surveys, the first great scientific exploration of the West.  One of those surveys would be conducted along the Thirty-second Parallel in proximity to the Upper Road.  It was understood that, with limited national resources, there would be only one subsidized railroad route to the Pacific.  However, as a result of sectionalism the selection of a route was one of the most complicated political problems of the period.  Both the North and the South expected this road to have its eastern terminus in their region.

Congress authorized what was thought to be the final solution to the problem.  The War Department, under Secretary Jefferson Davis, was to survey all of the principle routes, and decide, objectively, which was most economical and practical. Four main parties, and several secondary groups, were sent into the field.  Initially under the command of Maj. William Emory, and then under Capt. Andrew Atkinson, most of the officers were from the Corps of Topographical Engineers.  While all of this activity was intended to unravel the political knots of selecting a transcontinental route, it was not to be.  After a year's work and a published report in twelve volumes, the surveyors found that there were several practical routes, four of which were economically viable.  Of these four, two would have a terminus in the North and two in the South.   The chance for a nonpolitical resolution died in 1854.  It would be ten more years before a solution could be found and then only after the South withdrew from the debate by seceding from the Union.

In October 1853, as one of the four major surveys, Lt. John Pope was ordered to find a possible route along and near the Thirty-second Parallel from Doña Ana, above El Paso, to Preston on the Red River. Lt. John G. Parke was to make the survey from California to Doña Ana.  Not starting until February 1854, Pope had two main tasks.   The first was to find a suitable pass through the Guadalupe Mountains, and the second was to seek out sources of water on the Llano Estacado.  Since most of the route was already known through the work of Bryan, Marcy, and Michler, Pope encountered few problems.  With the provision that artesian wells could be developed to provide water, he found a route acceptable for a railroad.  The next year Pope was sent back to the Staked Plains to dig wells.  He made several attempts, but his equipment was inadequate and the mission was deemed a failure.

There was no railroad survey of the Lower Road, which in many ways was an excellent choice for a route.  During the 1880s, the Southern Pacific used this for the most southern of several transcontinental railroads.  In the meantime one of the more unusual transportation experiments ever conducted by the United States Army was undertaken through West Texas.

In 1855, Secretary of War Jefferson Davis urged Congress to appropriate funds for the purchase of camels in order to conduct experiments in the desert Southwest.   There was an initial appropriation of thirty thousand dollars.  On May 14, 1856, thirty-three camels, three Arabs, and two Turks landed at Indianola.  On February 10, 1857, forty-one more camels arrived.  The permanent base for these animals was Camp Verde, sixty miles northwest of San Antonio.  The first assignment of this unusual contingent was to survey a wagon road from Fort Defiance, New Mexico, to the Colorado River.  Under the command of Lt. Edward Beale of the U.S. Navy, the camels used the Lower Road, stopping at Fort Lancaster.

In May 1859, Lt. William Echols was ordered to test the practicality of the camels by finding a shorter route through the Trans-Pecos to Fort Davis.  The expedition included an escort under Lt. Edward Hartz.  With twenty-four mules and twenty-four camels, Echols surveyed much of the Big Bend country.  He reported that the camels performed well, while many of the mules died due to the lack of water.  In 1860, Echols was asked to repeat his effort.  Over rougher terrain he was to find a direct trail from the Pecos River to Fort Davis.  At one point the expedition was without water for a period of five days, with the camels saving the command.   Although they demonstrated their worth, the camels were not used again.  The Civil War ended the experiments and the herd at Camp Verde was dispersed.

Both the Upper and Lower Roads served as overland mail routes.  In September 1851, Henry Skillman received a government contract to carry the mail from San Antonio to El Paso and Santa Fe.  Operations began in San Antonio on November 3, and the first mail was delivered to Santa Fe on November 24.  By December of that year, Skillman was offering passenger service.  In October 1854, Skillman joined in partnership with George H. Giddings, a San Antonio merchant. Giddings soon became the major force in this endeavor.

At first mules carried the mail, but in order to transport passengers the partners soon converted to wagons.  The mail usually consisted of one or two wagons with an armed escort.  In 1857, John Birch won a contract to carry the mail from San Antonio to San Diego on a semimonthly schedule.  Pooling his stock with Birch, George Giddings signed on as the agent for the eastern division.  Giddings continued to operate independently between San Antonio and Santa Fe. Regardless of ownership and contracts, Indian attacks along the route and at the various stations were incessant, including raids at the Fort Lancaster station in December 1857, and April 1858.

On March 3, 1857, a bill passed Congress that would authorize a subsidy for an overland mail contract to San Francisco.  In September, John Butterfield and his associates won the contract for twice-weekly service with a subsidy of six hundred thousand dollars.  The mail would go from St. Louis to Fort Smith, El Paso, Yuma, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.  This southern route was bitterly criticized, but the decision stood.  The Butterfield Overland Mail went into operation in September 1858.   Initially there were 141 stations.  These soon increased to over two hundred.   Originally the route followed the Upper Road through Texas.  However, on August 1, 1859, the Post Office Department ordered the service changed to the Lower Road from the Pecos River to El Paso, as this route provided more water, and Forts Lancaster, Stockton, Davis, Quitman, and Bliss provided protection.

For the mail and the many parties of emigrants to arrive safely in California, the roads had to be secured.  With a small army, primarily of foot soldiers, there were few options open to the military command.  Under the circumstances the only viable method was to concentrate on protecting the roads. Neither infantry on foot, mounted on mules, or in wagons were effective off the beaten path.   In the rugged terrain of West Texas, regular mounted troops were not much more capable, especially on long marches where water and forage were sparse.

Patrolling the roads was a cumbersome, and not particularly effective task.  When patrols were sent in search of hostile Indians, contact was more serendipitous than planned.  The only feasible solution in the grand scheme was to build forts within reasonable distance of each other and guard the roads. "Reasonable distance" was always dictated by the need for shelter and water.  Both were available along Live Oak Creek on the Lower Road between Fort Clark and Fort Davis.

Lawrence John Francell, "Fort Lancaster – Texas Frontier Sentinel" (Texas State Historical Association, 1999), pp. 20-31.