The returning Pike’s Peakers were called a variety of names during their backward rush down the Platte River - turnarounds, backsliders, go-backs, second thinkers, humbuggers, croakers - but the most common appellation of all was that of stampeders. Their headlong flight resembled nothing so much as the sudden stampede of frightened animals. It was impulsive. It was confused. It was a spontaneous mass movement that could not be stopped.
There had, of course, been other turn-backs during the preceding eighteen years of westward migration. Emigrants of all ages and destinations had seen the elephant, that ephemeral creature of 19th century imagination, which stalked the trails and always seemed to appear during violent thunderstorms or on the fringes of danger. For most of the emigrants it had been no more than a fleeting glimpse, a peep in the distance perhaps, or a smell from afar off. Those few who had seen enough of the elephant had turned back. But never had there been such a mass turnaround as that which characterized the great Pike’s Peak Gold Rush. It was almost as if the Fifty-Niners had collectively come face to face with a real, three-dimensional animal, had looked into its eyes, then turned tail and run.
Perhaps the best description of this phenomenon came from an observer on Big Sandy Creek, west of the Big Blue River. His dispatch to the New York Tribune was dated 14 May 1859: “We had already heard a faint murmur of a retrograde movement from the Peak, and no sooner did we arrive on top of the divide then we beheld the advance guard of the retreating columns. Such a stampede of human beings was never before seen. Mule teams, horse, cow and ox teams, hand-carts, men with carpet sacks, riders and runners, with every imaginable conveyance, loaded with every species of articles, from steam saw mills to blankets, all coming back in a hurry, as if flying from danger; some swearing lustily at Pike’s Peak, at themselves, and the rest of mankind. Some were laughing at their folly, and at us. Some wore faces as long as the Peak they sought. The prairies, as well as the road, seemed alive with the masses.”
A similar turnaround was located on the oxbow route, ninety-seven miles west of Plattesmouth. It was called the Elm Creek turning table or Elephant City. As John McTurk Gibson approached Elm Creek on 12 May 1859, he witnessed hundreds of wagons pouring back down the trail: “We met 350 teams today by 11 o’clock, all homeward bound, how many more since is more than I can tell, quit counting and just looked at them passing frequently in strings a mile long and so close together that one couldn’t drive between them.”
E.H.N. Patterson identified four more turntables along the Platte River: Fort Kearny, Cottonwood Springs, O’Fallon’s Bluffs, and the California Crossing. Patterson himself came in sight of Fort Kearny on 9 May 1859. He found the fort in the midst of a wild panic. “Five teams are going back where one is going forward,” he wrote. “I call this a panic because I cannot believe it to be anything else. Men can give no reason why they are retreating, except that they are satisfied that there is no gold there.”
Patterson’s explanation for the panic was simple. The footmen and handcartmen had arrived at the diggings first. They were without money or provisions. They could get no work and had no chance to prospect. Their only recourse was to return. Their stories turned back many outgoing gold seekers, who in turn influenced others. The contagion spread down the Platte so fast that the entire river road soon became the scene of a vast stampede.
Letters from the mines told much the same story. Oliver Case wrote back to the Kansas City Journal of Commerce in mid-April of 1859: “The emigrants are beginning to come in and it is a sight to see them. Some come with oxen and wagons and some with mules, but the most have come bringing hand carts, and when they have got here they have no provisions, no money and no clothes, and can make nothing here at mining.” Henry Allen penned a similar letter to the Council Bluffs Bugle: “The first companies that came through this spring were hand-cart trains. They were out of provisions, foot-sore and out of spirits. As soon as they arrived, they wanted work. We had no extra tools, nor provisions to give them; consequently were nearly out of provisions ourselves when the first train arrived. The most of these men started back without even prospecting, and reported along the road that there was no gold here, and that we were starving.”
These fresh supplies meant little, however, to those who had no money. Most of the handcart and footing gentry had come out not only without a sufficient stock of provisions, but also without the means to acquire any. When Libeus Barney offered to sell some of his surplus flour to the ragged, half-starved gold seekers, he found that they had neither the money nor the gold dust to purchase it. “With a little exercise of compassionate charity,” he wrote, “we gave it to the hungry crowd and took our pay in thanks.”
D.D. Powles of Jackson, Illinois, met on his arrival a large number of emigrants “in a starving condition, and as ravenous as wolves - so nearly were they famished that they were glad to eat bacon skins with the hair on.” Little wonder that one desperate young fellow from Missouri wrote home, begging his father for money. “I am out of money, and without a chance to make any. Therefore, dear father, send me one hundred and twenty-five dollars to take me back home where I know I can make something...If you don’t send me some money I will starve to death. Send it in haste.”
Jobs were scarce in the mines. Any to be had paid only fifty cents to one dollar a day. Among those who tried to make bread and board by working in the mines was William Salisbury from Cleveland, Ohio. He noted his lack of success in his diary: “We have been down to Golden City to git a job did not make a raise Times are dull money scarce.” A gold seeker named Pool from Morgan County, Illinois, sought work in the Gregory Diggings for himself and his six companions. All seven were willing to work for their bread or even as little as one meal a day, but no one would accept their offer. J.A. Swick managed to find work in the mines for three weeks, but made a total of only nine dollars. Thinking it best to “get out of that place,” he applied for work down river at the Lillian Springs Express Station. In a letter to Kansas City, he reflected on his experiences: “There has been some hard scenes here, Frank. It was hard to see men; who left their homes, wives and children to die from starvation. It would melt your heart with pity to hear them beg for work to pay for their bread.”
Unable to find work, the half-starved emigrants resorted to every possible means of obtaining food. Some sold off their picks, pans, handcarts and wagons. A sign posted on one wagon cover read, “This out Fitt for sail.” Auctions were held on a daily basis. Henry Villard reported back to the Cininnati Daily Commercial that “Every morning the rapidly articulating voice of a backwoods auctioneer may be heard exerting his eloquence to the utmost in the attempt to find buyers for articles of outfit belonging to the fundless gold-hunters.” Those who had nothing to sell hung around the doors of the better provided, begging in the most pitiful terms for something to eat. Some sought help from postmaster Henry Allen and merchandisers Thomas Pollock and Uncle Dick Wootton, all of whom soon became known as soft touches. Others turned to the City Bakery, which could always be counted on to distribute free bread.
Most of those who had spent the winter in the mines had little sympathy for the plight of the go-backs. “Surface scratchers,” they called them, “humbug shouters,””returning croakers.” Thomas Golden, the founder of Golden City, had only one thing to say to the returning emigrants: “Stay in the states, and we will bring the gold there. We ask no one to come here and would have been glad had they stayed at home.”
William N. Byers, editor of the Rocky Mountain News, was even more outspoken. In an article entitled “The Gobacks,” he wrote: “We hope this class are all again at home to their Pas and Mas, their sweethearts, or ‘Nancy and the babies,’ there may they dwell in sweet seclusion, retirement and repose, and whilst they sit around the old chimney corner they can fight their battles over again...Farewell to the ‘gobacks.’ They have had their day and soon will be forgotten.”
Not content with this diatribe, Byers later reprinted some sarcastic verses copied from the Evening Dispatch. The verses were entitled “Soliloquy of the Returned Gold Adventurer.”
“Been to Pike’s Peak, lost all my dimes,
And for a week had ‘darn’d hard times,
Hunting for gold ‘mong rocks and hills,
Catching a cold, the fever and chills,
Got mighty sick - felt very sad,
Stung to the quick, times were so bad;
Money all spent, worn out my shoes,
Clothing all rent - I had the blues;
Got in the lurch, my spirits down,
Gave up the search, came back to town....”
What bothered the resident miners most was that the go-backs seemed to be stampeding homeward not because there was no gold, but because they did not have heart enough to dig for it. It was as though they expected to pick up nuggets as they would potatoes. The story was told around the diggings of a company of twenty-one, who paused at Cherry Creek just long enough to scoop up a handful of sand. On examining the sand and finding no gold, one of the company remarked: “I told you so. There is no gold here.” In less than an hour nineteen of the twenty-one were on their way home.
The go-backs, for their part, felt that they were the victims of a gigantic hoax. Pike’s Peak was obviously an exploded bubble, the humbug to end all humbugs. While there might be traces of gold everywhere, the quantities were not sufficient to pay. Word among the go-backs was that only about $500 in nuggets had ever been taken from the diggings. The heavy bags sent back east were said to contain sand instead of gold; they were meant only to deceive a gullible public. So scarce was the genuine mineral, in fact, that as late as May of 1859 one bank in Nebraska City was reported to be offering $50 an ounce for Pike’s Peak gold, “and can’t get a particle.”
Disillusionment soon gave way to anger, and anger to ugly rumor. The Rocky Mountain News was informed that the retreating stampeders were “giving currency to many absurd and false stories as they wend their way towards the States, such for instance as that ‘Denver and Auraria were burned - that all the old citizens were hung or had fled the country - that a vigilance committee guarded the road, and whenever a emigrant wagon approached, it was surrounded and plundered, the cattle or horses killed, and the owners compelled to flee for their lives.’”
These rumors were so obviously false that only a few Fifty-Niners could be found who actually believed them. Of far greater concern were the threats being made against those who had written letters from the mines encouraging the gold rush. It was said that the outgoing emigration carried lists of all such letter writers with the intention of inflicting bodily harm on any they should meet. John H. Edwards, himself a stampeder, warned that all the returning gold seekers he met with on the Platte River Road were “particularly hard on the authors of certain letters who had positively stated that men had made from three to five dollars per diem; and during the then excited state of mind under which a great many seemed to be laboring I think it would have fared hard with such men as Curtis, Steinburger, Richards and others had fallen in with some of the returning parties.”
When Edwards wrote these words Curtis was safely at home in Council Bluffs with his family. One month later, however, E.H.N. Patterson chanced upon a mound of dirt near the Upper Crossing purported to be the grave of this same Samuel Curtis. “Mr. C. gave favorable accounts from the mines last winter,” Patterson wrote, “and when we left the Bluffs was making preparations for coming out again in a few weeks. Many of those who first turned back, whom we met near Fort Kearny, threatened to kill Mr. Curtis if they met him; but whether they would have carried their threats into execution is another question.”
Just one day later, Patterson camped near the supposed grave of D.C. Oakes, the man who wrote the guidebook. The grave was a lonely little mound near a bend in the river. It was marked with buffalo bones crudely inscribed with various epitaphs: “Here lies D.C. Oakes, dead, buried, and in hell!” and “Here lies the remains of D.C. Oakes, who was the starter of this damned hoax.!” Not far from the grave was the camp of Oakes himself. He was alive and well, and headed back to the mines.
Further down the Platte River, P.H. Roundtree discovered a gallows built by returning Pike’s Peakers. It was said to be for the men who had discovered the gold mines. When the report of this noose and scaffold reached Denver City it did not sit well with promoter Henry Allen. “I don’t mind being shot,” he wrote back to the Council Bluffs Bugle. “There is something honorable in that, but I am down on hanging, especially when I am the subject.”
Of all the letter writers, David Kellogg probably came closest to losing his life. As he traveled home along the Platte River Road in the spring of 1859, Kellogg was constantly beset with questions about the gold diggings. One day four men from Geneva Lake, Wisconsin, accosted him at some distance from his wagon. One of them asked his name, which he gave. “I thought all the time you were Kellogg,” the man said. “We were induced to come out here by reading your letters which have been widely published, and now we learn that the whole thing is a scheme to sell town lots and land.” The angry Badgers were about to tie Kellogg to one of their wagon wheels and give him thirty-nine lashes, when the gold seeker suddenly whipped out his revolver. “You are four against one,” he yelled, “but with the six shots in my revolver I am seven to your four. If one of you makes a move to draw his gun I will shoot him. Have you any more questions to ask? If not, I am going ahead.” With that said, Kellogg started out after his wagon, half-expecting at any moment to hear the whistle of bullets overhead. As luck would have it, none came his way.”
Like Kellogg, the returning stampeders were themselves subjected to the quizzing and questioning of a hundred men a day. “So you’ve seen the elephant, have you?” “No gold at Pike’s Peak?” “All a humbug, is it?” Crowds of outgoing Fifty-Niners gathered around to hear each party of go-backs tell their tale of woe. Some jeered. Some pronounced themselves more determined than ever to go on. Some stood there with their mouths open, listening to every word and swallowing it all, then wheeled around and joined the homeward rush.
Among the many who turned back on the hearsay of others was Fifty-Niner John H. Edwards. Edwards had left Omaha on 29 March with twenty other unfortunate individuals, all of whom were “bound to see the elephant.” At Fort Kearny, the officers tried to dissuade the party from going further, stating that they had received reliable assurances that there was no gold at Pike’s Peak. Edwards and his companions, however, decided to see for themselves. It was a decision they would come to regret. “The moment as it were that we left the fort,” Edwards later wrote a friend, “we began to hear discouraging reports; meeting quite a number of footmen and handcarts during the first day who gave as their experience that they had seen hard times, that the whole thing was a humbug etc. The second day out we met still more and thought certainly that something must be wrong.” At Cottonwood Springs, all doubts were dispelled by reports of suffering and starvation further west. The entire Edwards party stopped, turned around, and began their backwards march.
While camped near the foot of Grand Island, E.H.N. Patterson learned from six retreating footmen that “lots of teams” like the Edwards’ were returning down the other side of the Platte River - not teams that had been through to the mines, but teams that had been part way and turned back on the reports of the stampeders. To Patterson this was the height of folly, “that men should go to the trouble and expense of fitting out a team, with a season’s provisions, and then turn back without any personal examination of the ‘diggings,’ after getting within a hundred miles of their original destination.”
Even more difficult to understand were those who turned back before getting fairly started. Edward Dunsha Steele of Lodi, Wisconsin, met fifty returning teams while yet not a third of the way through Iowa. Some had been to Council Bluffs, some only as far as Fort Des Moines. On reaching Marengo, a town on the Iowa River, Steele and his companions ran into yet another party of go-backs, some of whom reported that the recent rains had raised the river so high that it would be impossible to cross with loaded wagons. “The also told us that there was ‘no gold at Pike’s Peak’ therefore we had better turn back and not attempt to cross the River. They seemed to be very much discouraged and consequently in bad humor. And when some of our train told them ‘there was gold at Pike’s Peak’ and that we would try and cross the river, they seemed to consider it very uncourteous conduct, and amid oaths, jeers and laughter, the two crowds separated.”
Another emigrant through Iowa, James Berry Brown, felt nothing but compassion for the harried stampeders he met along the way. Not only did they appear distressed by their own failure and disappointments, but many were returning completely broke, without money of food of any kind. “I knew these poor fellows, who were returning with a little bundle on their backs instead of the fine teams and outfits they started with, I say I knew how badly they felt, and never asked them questions unless they volunteered to give their story.”
Brown’s sympathetic feelings did not stop him from trying to cash in on the stampeders’ misfortunes. On reaching Nebraska City he found companies breaking up all around. In nearly every camp men were busily engaged in overhauling their traps and dividing their supplies. “One will get the frying pan,” Brown wrote, “another the coffee pot while the third likely will have the oven. Sometimes one will sell out his share to the others and then start home afoot or on the Boat. Sometimes the whole outfit will sell off at auction and dividing the proceeds each man will take his own course.” Outfits were being auctioned off at less than half their original cost. Pots, pans, kettles, dishes, blankets, picks, shovels, tents, guns, pistols, watches, powder, lead, caps, wagons, oxen - everything was put on the block. Side bacon could be had for a mere five cents a pound, sugar and coffee for just a little more. Brown himself ended up paying only $1.50 for 260 pounds of flour and $5.25 for 102 pounds of crackers. His only regret was that he had not waited to reach Nebraska City before purchasing the bulk of his supplies.
Matters were no different at other points along the Platte River Road. On 8 May 1859, Charles D. Curtis wrote back from Fort Kearny that the go-backs were “selling their outfits for almost a song out here.” Twenty-year-old Slyvester Davis took advantage of the situation, continually adding to his outfit all the way from Omaha to the fort. He recorded the transactions in his diary:
“Omaha. Friday, May 13. “Saw a large number of teams coming back from the Pk & selling there outfits at any price at all. Traded boots with Mr. Lee Eaven.
“Omaha. Saturday, May 14. “Saw teams coming back all of the time. Bought 73 lbs. of Beans and hay for 75 cts. of a man Returning.
“Elkhorn. Tuesday, May 16. “Traded my Shot Gun for a Rifle to one of the returning Miners Eaven.
“Shinn’s Ferry. Saturday, May 21. “I bought a tent for $4.
“Past Elm Creek. Tuesday, May 24. “Met a large number of teams coming back as usual. Tried to trade our horses for oxen but there were so many owners that we did not trade but traded our tent for another one Eaven. I bought 6 lbs. of chemical soap for 55 cts.
“Approaching Fort Kearny. Saturday, May 28. “Mr. Hulbert (a companion) traded his horses for oxen, 2 yoke & 45 Dollars & one watch. Took part of It In Provisions....”
Bargains such as these meant little to the penniless walkers and handcartmen stampeding back to the States. Among those encountered by John H. Edwards were many who had nothing more with them than the rags on their backs. They were out of provisions and dependent on the charity of the emigrants. “Poor fellows,” Edwards wrote, “they did not need words to express their condition as it was legibly printed in their gaunt cheeks, hollow eyes, and haggard appearance.” One desparate wretch approached the E.H.N. Patterson Party near Plum Creek asking only for a few crackers to allay his hunger. Several nights later, two men came into camp begging for their supper. Patterson gave them some bread and meat; others of his party furnished them coffee. The famished men ate their fill and went on their way homeward, intending to beg their lodging and breakfast somewhere else.
Many of these starving footmen sought help at the Hockaday mail stations, which were spaced at intervals along the Platte River Road. The agent at the Cottonwood Springs station sent a letter describing the situation back to Atchison. The letter was read and summarized by a correspondent to the Missouri Republican: “They come back as many of them went, without any means of conveyance, disappointed and utterly disheartened, with broken hopes and blasted fortunes, toil-worn, and heart-weary, these wretched adventurers come struggling across the plains in squads or dozens or scores, begging at the stations for goods to eat and a temporary shelter from the driving storms. The well-known generosity of the contractors on this line, will doubtless save many a poor fellow from famishing from famine, but what can they do to supply the wants of a starving multitude?”
Rumors were already being circulated of trouble at the river crossings. While still in Iowa, James Berry Brown heard that the returning Pike’s Peakers had burnt Nebraska City, taken possession of the ferry, and were putting themselves across the Missouri River. Although the story had no basis in fact, a similar incident did take place in Marysville at the crossing of the Big Blue. A report filed in the St. Louis Evening News stated that the incident involved a gunfight between a party of stampeders and the Big Blue ferryman. According to details later provided by Horace Greeley, the fight erupted when the stampeders insisted on crossing the river without payment, saying they had no money. When the ferryman refused, they attempted to seize his boat and put themselves across. Threats were made. Revolvers were drawn. Shots were fired. The ferryman was “riddled with balls and fell dead, but not until he had either killed or severely wounded five of his assailants.”
Greeley’s account of the Big Blue shootings was sent back to the New York Tribune on 24 May 1859. Three days earlier, that same newspaper had published a report from St. Louis detailing the growing concern of the Missouri River communities. Upwards of 20,000 stampeders were said to be on their return, most of them hungry, destitute, and perfectly reckless. “Desperate threats are made of burning Omaha, St. Joseph, Leavenworth, and other towns in consequence of the deception used to induce emigration. Two thousand men are reported fifty miles west of Omaha, in a starving condition. Some of the residents of Plattsmouth have closed up their business and fled, fearing violence at the hands of the enraged emigrants.”
Although no reports of actual burning or looting could be documented, the threats did induce the Kansas City Journal of Commerce to issue a call for police protection. “While this army is passing off down the river, it would be well for our city authorities to put a police force on duty, as there may be occasion to protect property from the depredations of any lawless characters that may be with the trains.” The paper also advised its readers to guard their homes against robberies in case “our resident thieves will take advantage of the rush of gold hunters to carry on their work on a large scale, thinking the blame will all be saddled on the Peakers.”
This concern at Kansas City grew out of reports that the stampede on the Platte had spread to the Arkansas. In early June of 1859, the mail conductor on the Santa Fe Trail had arrived in Independence with news that he had passed 2,500 wagons on their return from Pike’s Peak. The Kansas Press of the upstream community of Elwood immediately sent a reporter down to Council Grove to ascertain the truth of the matter. As he approached the town from the bluff side he had a clear view of the trail. It was completely lined with returning Pike’s Peakers, some of whom had been as far as Bent’s New Fort, some only to the Arkansas River, and many but a few miles up the trail. Cottonwood Grove itself was jammed full of angry stampeders. “Mutterings, loud and deep, were heard against those who had humbugged them, as they said, men were swearing like pirates, who, from their awkward manner, in using the profane, had evidently been pious in the states.”
As he made the rounds of the stampeder camps, the reporter was greeted with numerous stories of suffering and mass confusion on the southern plains. A great number of returning wheelbarrow, handcart and foot emigrants were said to be literally starving to death. Those who had given out were, in many instances, left to fend for themselves. In one day, more than 900 wagons had turned around at Bent’s New Fort. Another 200 wagons - after traveling nearly two weeks on the back track - had heard more favorable reports at Cottonwood Crossing, wheeled around, and were once again enroute to the mines.
Diarist Samuel Raymond ran into a similar situation further up the Santa Fe Trail. As he and his nine companions neared Bent’s New Fort, they met eighteen wagons heading back to the States. In camp that night, some of the returning Peakers commenced selling off their extra clothing and provisions. “The selling and preparation for returning made it quite a lively business place,” Raymond wrote. “Some of us thought of starting a village here and selling lots immediately to those on their return but we finally gave up the idea...Had in the other camps at night quite a spree with those that were going to return in the morning. Speeches & good wishes were the order of the proceedings, and they carried on their jolification to a late hour of the night. At a distance we could hear singing, violin music and the bones agoing with great glee.”
In the morning, the camps broke up at an early hour. There were mutual good wishes and the shaking of hands all around. Then the whips cracked and off went the teams, some advancing, some retreating, but all “rejoicing on their way.”
Raymond and his nine companions managed to stay together all the way to the diggings. Other parties were not so fortunate. The William Salisbury Party lost its captain and a third of its wagons just past Pawnee Rock after suddenly encountering hundreds of wagons going back. Another of the party’s wagons turned around the next day because “wone man met his brother on his way back from the Peak with discouraging news.”
A.M. Gass and his party of Texas gold seekers split up shortly after reaching the Arkansas. These Texans had approached the river from the south. At the flooded Cimarron Crossing they got their first glimpse of the Pike’s Peak emigration. “Jerusalem, what a sight!” Gass wrote in his diary. “Wagons - wagons - Pike’s Peak wagons. Well! there were a few of them - I presume three hundred ox-wagons in sight. I pressed forward to cross the river and have a talk with them...They told me sad news; said there is no gold at the Peak. Some that are going on, say that they have met three hundred wagons coming back, so convinced are they that there is no gold.” Discouraged by the news and frustrated by the high water, four of the Texas wagons turned back for Fannin County. Two others proceeded downriver to find a safer crossing. Only Gass’ wagon continued up the south side of the Arkansas, intending to cross at either Bent’s Fort or the old Pueblo.
The Missouri train of Dr. George Willing managed to pull together through the darkest days of the stampede. But the good doctor worried that many of his travel companions had “barely enough to take them out, with no means left to return on, should the mines prove a failure. Men, old and young, women and children are in this category. God help them.”
California also figured in the plans of Ellen Hunt and her husband Alexander from Freeport, Illinois. The Hunt train experienced its first break-up at Cimarron Crossing, when a discouraged St. Louis couple decided to take the cut-off to Santa Fe. Two days later, a certain Mr. Walsh and son called for a division of company property so that they might return home. The pair received as their share one wagon, a yoke of cattle, the cows, sheep, pony and chickens as well as their own personal supplies. The remainder of the company kept on towards the mountains, bound by a mutual agreement to continue on to California if dissatisfied with the Peak. “I dread the long journey, oh I do,” Mrs. Hunt confided to her diary, “but when we stop again I want to stay, and never move again, and shall not go on, till we are satisfied.”
Although neither the Hunts nor Dr. Willing found it necessary to eventually push on to the west coast, thousands of other Fifty-Niners did. The temptation proved especially strong for those following the old Oregon-California Trail up the Platte River. By the early summer of 1859 it seemed that all the trains still westward bound were for California. Not one in a hundred claimed Pike’s Peak as their destination. “The largest crowd goes to California,” wrote diarist William McPherson, “which will probably amount to 50,000 persons.”
Eliphalet Crandall was headed up the Platte River for Pike’s Peak when he heard conflicting reports about the diggings. Advised by a man from Keokuk to switch his objective to California, Crandell joined the Burton train for Placerville. Charles Bell and his pregnant wife Jane became so distressed by negative report from the mines that they changed itineraries at Fort Kearny. Jane gave birth to her baby on the road to California. Seventy-year-old Hozial Baker was hoping to find enough gold at Pike’s Peak to pay off an old debt. By the time he reached the California Crossing, however, he had witnessed such a dismal parade of returning gold seekers that he decided to cross over to the North Platte and take the California Road to Carson valley. George T. Gibbs also switched direction at the trail crossing of the South Platte. When some of his companions decided to turn back there, Gibbs responded by making Sacramento his destination. There would be no go back for him.
Many of the Fifty-Niners waited to reach Fort Laramie before making their final decision. Included in this number were the Burnap family from northern Iowa. The Burnaps had decided early on that under no circumstances would they return to the States. Rather they would push on to Fort Laramie, and there decide whether to continue west to California or turn south for Pike’s Peak.
Greeley had hand delivered the report to Fort Laramie. While there, he had also given an address to a large emigrant camp on the opposite side of the North Platte River. A number of the emigrants immediately turned south for the new diggings. Morse Coffin and his two companions from Boone County, Illinois, arrived at the camp too late to hear the famous editor speak. The trio had originally outfitted for the west coast. “Our route was up the north side of the North Platte river to Fort Laramie,” Coffin later remembered, “where we arrived July 4th, two days after Horace Greeley had passed on the overland stage on his way to California after his visit to the Gregory diggings at Black Hawk and Central. Greeley had made a talk to the crowd of Pilgrims gathered there as this was a big camp for a time. What we heard of Greeley’s sayings - though the prospect was far from being bright - decided us to come south to this country.”
Three or four other wagons chose to accompany Morse Coffin down the old Taos-Fort Laramie Trail to the Boulder Creek diggings. Martin Pattterson followed later, as did a large group of “reconverts” met by Edward Matthews west of Fort Laramie. Matthews reported that the reconverts had spurned Pike’s Peak to go to California. On being overtaken by the westbound coach of Horace Greeley, however, they had been persuaded to turn back to their original destination.
Horace Greeley had that effect on people. As the editor of the New York Tribune, he appealed to a large audience and commanded national respect. If there was anyone yet capable of saving the great Pike’s Peak Gold Rush it was this man, this acknowledged prophet of westward expansion, who had once so eloquently advised the nation’s youth to seek their fortunes in the west.
2. John McTurk Gibson, Journal of Western Travel.
3. New York Tribune, 31 May 1859.
4. Kansas City Journal of Commerce, 19 April 1859, 11 August 1859.
5. Council Bluffs Bugle,18 May 1859.
6. Bennington Banner, 1 June 1859.
7. Missouri Republican, 11 May 1859, 29 May 1859, 9 June 1859, 16 July 1859, 11 August 1859.
8. Cincinnati Daily Commercial, 3 June 1859.
9. Nebraska City News, 16 July 1859.
10. William Salisbury, "The Journal of an 1859 Pike's Peak Gold Seeker," edited by David Lindsy (Topeka: The Kansas Historical Quarterly, 1956), Vol.XXII.
11. John H. Edwards, "Notes of a Returned Pike's Peaker," published in the Nebraska City News, 4 June 1859.
12. James Berry Brown, Journal of a Journey Across the Plains in 1859.
13. St. Joseph Journal, 14 May 1859.
14. "Diary of Sylverster Davis," New Mexico Historical Review, Vol. VI, No. 4 (October, 1931).
15. New York Tribune, 21 May 1859.
16. Kansas Press, 13 June 1859.
17. "Samuel D. Raymond Journal," edited by Lloyd W. Gundy, Wagon Tracks, Vol. 10, No. 1 (November, 1995).
18. A.M. Gass, "From Texas to Pike's Peak," Overland Routes to the Gold Fields, 1859, ed. by LeRoy R. Hafen (Glendale, Calif: The Arthur H. Clark Co., 1942).
19. "Diary of Mrs. H.C. Hunt, 1859," edited by LeRoy R. Hafen, The Colorado Magazine, Vol. XXI, No. 5, (September, 1944).
20. Journal of an Overland Travel, edited by Clara McPherson.
21. Morse H. Coffin, "Early Days in Boulder County," The Trail, Vol. III, No. 11 (April, 1911).
The truth of the matter was that provisions at the diggings were expensive and in short supply. In the spring of 1859, bacon was selling for seventy-five cents a pound, coffee and sugar for fifty cents, flour for eighteen cents, and onions - when they could be had - for twenty-five cents apiece. Most shipments came out of New Mexico, but the service was sporadic at best. Even after the late April arrival of two pack trains from Taos with 200 sacks of flour and beans, Hickory Rogers worried that “unless we have some trains from Missouri I am afraid we will suffer. Mexico is not able to support our increasing wants in this way.” Rogers’ worries were allayed two weeks later when the first supply train from Leavenworth pulled into Denver City. The train consisted of twenty-five wagons loaded principally with groceries. Retail prices dropped immediately: sugar by twenty-five cents a pound, coffee by fifteen cents, and flour by two cents.
When the contents of this letter were published in the Missouri Republican, the correspondent from Atchison voiced a concern already shared by many front line observers: “As of yet no acts of violence have been committed, so far as I can learn, but as the numbers of this crowd of starving wanderers increase, what assurances will there be against scenes of rapine and plunder amongst the trains and stations along the route to Pike’s Peak?”
At the fort the Burnaps opted for Pike’s Peak after reading a special edition of the Rocky Mountain News containing the Greeley Report. The report was printed on plain brown paper. It described in detail a visit to the new gold diggings at Gregory Gulch by newspapermen Horace Greeley of the New York Tribune, A. D. Richardson of the Boston Journal, and Henry Villard of the Cincinnati Commercial. “We have this day personally visited all the mines or claims already opened in this valley,” the report read, “and in nearly every pan of the rotten quartz washed in our presence have seen gold.”
1. Rev. William H. Goode, Outposts of Zion Cincinnati, 1869).
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