More Wagons Ho

[W. Gray]

Pioneers were resourceful people.

Travelers on the trails from Independence to the west made use of their version of the telegraph for communication. Pioneers on the trail in 1850 learned of President Zachary Taylor's death via their telegraph.

How did they operate their telegraph?


Also, what was a Prairie Post Office?

[Bullwinkle]

        I'm guessing they had a key for tapping out Morse code and only had to reach the wires and connect it.

       As for the PPO. The way stations on the stage lines ?

[Diane Amberg]

Mirrors? Smoke signals? bugles?  How about flags? Semaphore? Messages left under special rocks or in special containers?
Since many wagon trains stopped at military forts along the way, they might have been involved in mail in several ways. I know many stopped at Fort Union, which we visited.The history there was very interesting.

[W. Gray]

Pioneers were resourceful people.

Travelers on the trails from Independence to the west made use of their version of the telegraph for communication. Pioneers on the trail in 1850 learned of President Zachary Taylor's death via their telegraph.

How did they operate their telegraph?


Also, what was a Prairie Post Office?

I recall in junior high school history reading about the laying of the first transatlantic telegraph cable in 1857. There was an illustration of a ship with a huge reel letting out telegraph line as it sailed toward England. There would had to have been a method on board to splice all the reels the ship was carrying and wrap each splice to provide insulation from the water.

So, the last wagon of a westbound wagon train had to have had a huge cable reel and reeled out the telegraph line as it progressed toward California and Oregon from Independence, Mo. But then again, maybe not.

According to John D. Unruh, Jr., author of "The Plains Across: The Overland Emigrants and the Trans-Mississippi West, 1840-1860," the "Roadside Telegraph" was a system of leaving notes along the trail for travelers who were following. The train most likely did not even know who was coming along behind, but the notes warning devices were left for humanitarian and informational purposes. Paper was scarce. Notes were written on animal skulls, tree bark, rocks, cloth scraps, and sometimes even paper.

These notes described everything from Indian troubles encountered, water crossing problems, deaths, disease, marriages, camping problems etc.

The author describes one west bound wagon train finding a note in 1850 stating that Zachary Taylor had died in office. He says that an east bound traveler must have posted the note, but he does not explain how that person found out. Although California had an extensive telegraph system in 1850, the government did not grant a contract to extend the system from Missouri to California until 1860.

A "Prairie Post Office" was described as a point on the trail where many of these roadside telegraph notes were left by different wagon trains.

[Diane Amberg]

So got a bit of this partly right also. Fun. I should have asked my great grandmother more questions many years ago. They did take a wagon train west when she was a small child. I would have thought that taping into an exisiting telegragh line, if there was one around, would have been illegal. I remembered a little about the prairie post office from 'way back in my memory. Thanks for the update.

[W. Gray]

Here is something interesting that I came across today. Back in 1916, a church that is headquartered in Independence, Missouri, and had a lot of activity in Lamoni, Iowa, were having difficulties communicating between the two towns. The church elders were complaining about delayed service, poor connections, and the generally bad long distance telephone service.

Back then long distance would probably have had to go through, via an operator, a number of independent telephone companies between the two towns--and probably laterally as well. If all circuits were busy in any one or more towns, the call was going nowhere.


Because of the poor service, the church conceived the idea of dropping the use of long distance telephone and adopting wireless telegraphy. Think of this service as being what the Titanic was using four years earlier in 1912. The telegraph had been around since the 1830s but wireless telegraphy had been around only since the 1890s.

The Independence transmitting tower was 100 feet high and had a range of 400 miles. Lamoni is 108 miles distant as the crow flies or the radio waves travel.

[Diane Amberg]

You must have some really interesting resources.Good reading.Thanks.

[Wilma]

It seems to me that Council Grove, here in Kansas, had a tree that was known as the Post Office tree where a letter could be left to be picked up later, much as a lover's secret message place.  I am not sure of this, but it is niggling in the back of my memory.  I think that I have been in Council Grove only once and that was with a school teacher and it was she that told me the story.

[W. Gray]

Here you are Wilma from the "There's No Place Like Kansas" web site.

"From 1828 to 1847, Santa Fe Trail travelers left messages in a cache at the foot of this tree, to inform others of trail conditions, giving it its name, "Post Office Oak". The tree died in 1990 and its stump has been preserved on the site. The adjacent stone house was built in 1864 as a residence, with a brewery in the basement. It now is a museum operated by the Morris County Historical Society."

There was a photo of the house but not of the stump.

[Wilma]

I saw the tree.  This was before 1969.  Thank you for assuring me that my memory isn't all gone yet.