Company.”  Among the firm members were John Butterfield, Wm. B. Dinsmore, D. N. Barney, Wm. G. Fargo and Hamilton Spencer.  The extreme length of the route agreed upon from St. Louis to San Francisco was two thousand seven hundred and twenty-nine miles; the most southern point was six hundred miles south of South Pass on the old Salt Lake route.  Because of the out-of-the-way southern course followed, two and one half days more than necessary were nominally-required in making the journey.  Yet the postal authorities believed that this would be more than offset by the southerly course being to a great extent free from winter snows.

On September 15, 1858, after elaborate preparations, the overland mails started from San Francisco and St. Louis on the twenty-five day schedule - which was three days less than that of the water route.  The postage rate was ten cents for each half ounce; the passenger fare was one hundred dollars in gold.  The first trip was made in twenty-four days, and in each of the terminal cities big celebrations were held in honor of the event.  And yet today, four splendid lines of railway cover this distance in about three days!

These stages — to use the west-bound route as an illustration — traveled in an elliptical course through Springfield, Missouri, and Fayetteville, Arkansas, to Van Buren, Arkansas, where the Memphis mail was received.  Continuing in a southwesterly course, they passed through Indian Territory and the Choctaw Indian reserve — now Oklahoma — crossed the Red River at Calvert’s Ferry, then on through Sherman, Fort Chadbourne and Fort Belknap, Texas, through Guadaloupe Pass to El Paso; thence up the Rio Grande River through the Mesilla Valley, and into western New Mexico — now Arizona to Tucson.  Then the journey led up the Gila River to Arizona City, across the Mojave desert in Southern California and finally through the San Joaquin Valley to San Francisco.

Today a traveler could cover nearly the same route, leaving St. Louis over the Frisco Railroad, transferring to the Texas Pacific at Fort Worth, and taking the Southern Pacific at El Paso for the remainder of the trip.

As has been shown, the outbreak of the Civil War in the spring of 1861 made it necessary for the Federal Government to transfer this big and important route further north to get it beyond the latitude of the Confederacy.  Hence the Southern route was formally abandoned[37] on March 12, 1861, and the equipment removed to the Central or Salt Lake trail where a daily service was inaugurated.  About three months was necessary to move all the outfits and in July 1861, the first daily overland mail — running six times a week — was started between St. Joseph and Placerville, California, 1,920 miles by the way of Forts Kearney, Bridger, and Salt Lake City.

The Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad had been built into St. Joseph and was doing business by February 1859.  For some time that city enjoyed the honor of being the eastern stage terminal; but within a year the railroad was extended to Atchison, about twenty miles down the stream.  The latter place is situated on a bend of the river fourteen miles west of St. Joseph, and so the terminal honors soon passed to Atchison since its westerly location shortened the haul.