Tag: el paso

Santa Fe Trail Mail Contractor Changes!

Throughout the month of September, 1855, the Santa Fe Weekly Gazette informed its readers that the U.S. mail contract had recently been transferred to Hockaday and Hall and was providing mail and passenger transport to and from Independence, Missouri for a mere $125 per passenger.

Packages and extra baggage could also be sent via the Hockaday and Hall coaches, at a cost of 25 cents per pound, although there was a minimum charge of $1.00 and the contractors could not be held responsible for anything worth more than $50.

These rates remained the same two years later, even when service increased to twice monthly. This may have been because, no matter how often the mail left Santa Fe, it took about the same length of time to travel  to or from its destination. Round trip to St. Louis was still about three months and delivery from the Atlantic seaboard to Santa Fe remained around six weeks. Letters and packages continuing from Santa Fe on to El Paso were transferred to George H. Gidding’s service south and could take an additional week to ten days.

Sept 22 illustration

Interestingly, the front page items about the new contractors and their service are not set off in a box or with any other markings to indicate that they’re advertisements. They’re treated like news items. Repeating news items—the same language shows up in every September 1855 issue of the Gazette.

While news of the mail was critical to the functioning of business and politics in New Mexico Territory, the decision to promote its service and fees in this way may have been the result of other factors. The Hockaday and Hall agent in Santa Fe just happened to be W. W. H. Davis, the newspaper’s editor.

Sources:  Santa Fe Weekly Gazette, September 1, 8, 15, 22, 29, 1855; Morris F. Taylor, First Mail West, stagecoach lines on the santa fe trail, Albuquerque: UNM Press, 1971.

Texas Stage Route Is Better In Winter Months

On April 8, 1853, the readers of the Santa Fe Weekly Gazette were reminded that winter wasn’t truly over in New Mexico—the mail and passengers to and from Texas were still being transported under the “winter arrangement.”

There really wasn’t any difference between the summer and winter time schedule. Each month, the stage left Santa Fe on the 15th and arrived in El Paso six to eight days later. The next leg of the trip was from El Paso to San Antonio, where it  arrived on the 14th or 15th of the following month. So it took about a week to get from Santa Fe to El Paso, a trip which takes about five hours today. Interestingly, the fare from Santa Fe to El Paso was $30, only about $10 more than the cost of gas for the same route today. In fact, if wear and tear on one’s vehicle is factored in, it might have been cheaper to travel between Santa Fe and El Paso in 1853 than it is now. That is, of course, if you have seven or eight days for the trip.

April 8 illustration

On the other hand, the cost to travel from Santa Fe to San Antonio was significantly higher in 1853 than it is today—$125 as opposed to $48 in fuel costs. The timeframe for the trip is also considerably less now—about 12 hours as opposed to 30 days.

One thing has remained the same. The advertisement in the Gazette points out that the trip to and from “the States” via the San Antonio route was considerably more pleasant during the winter months than was travel via the Santa Fe Trail to Independence, Missouri. The southern route was, and is still likely to be, “entirely free from the intense cold and heavy snows that so frequently obstruct” the northern Trail.

There was another advantage to taking the stage to San Antonio. Passengers were not required to stand guard.

Sources: Santa Fe Weekly Gazette, April 8, 1853, first page; MapQuest.com, accessed March 5, 2019.

 

Rail Reaches New Mexico!

On Saturday December 7, 1878 the first Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe (ATSF) railway engine crossed from Colorado into New Mexico Territory and the New Mexico and Southern Pacific, an ATSF subsidiary began  building south toward Santa Fe.

It had been a race right to the finish, the ATSF barely making reaching  the New Mexico Territory border from Kansas before the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad reached it from Denver.

The race began on October 30, 1868, when the ATSF railroad began laying track in Topeka, Kansas. The rail line headed west from there, following the already-established Santa Fe Trail to Raton Pass. Once into New Mexico, the track extended south to Las Vegas, then west through the Glorieta Pass. West of the pass, it moved away from the Trail and headed south to Albuquerque, which it reached in 1880. At Lamy, source of the limestone for Santa Fe’s Catholic cathedral, the New Mexico and Southern Pacific built a spur line north to Santa Fe, thus ensuring a connection to the Territorial capital.

With the railway came connections south and west, as well as east. The New Mexico and Southern Pacific line reached Albuquerque on April 5, 1880, then pushed south and west. It arrived in El Paso, TX in 1881, where it would connect  to the Southern Pacific, which moved steadily west toward Arizona, reaching that boundary in late July 1881. In 1882, this southern route line would extend link Texas and California, forming, with the New Mexico and Southern Pacific’s routes in the rest of New Mexico, a network of rail  throughout the Territory.

El Ortiz hotel and lunchroom.Lamy Harvey House.from www.harveyhouses.net
Harvey House at Lamy Junction. Courtesy of http://www.harveyhouses.net

Fred Harvey was already providing food and lodging for ATSF’s passengers by the time ATSF tracks reached New Mexico, but the Territory was critical to the full development of his Harvey House concept.  In 1883 the male waiters at Harvey’s Raton establishment became so unruly that he fired all of them and hired young women instead. The waitress experiment was so successful that Harvey got rid of the male waiters in all of his rail establishments and replaced them with young women, the iconic waitresses who would become known as the Harvey Girls. So, not only did rail come to New Mexico in early December 1878, but New Mexico would give rail the Harvey Girl, that image of feminine efficiency that has clung ever since to the legend of Fred Harvey and his railroad restaurant/hotels.

Sources: Francis L. and Roberta B. Fugate, Roadside History of New Mexico, Mountain Press, Missoula, 1989; Richard W. Etulain, Beyond the  Missouri, UNM Press, Albuquerque, 2006; Corina A. Santisteven and Julia Moore, Eds., Taos, A topical history, Museum of New Mexico Press, Santa Fe, 2013; Marta Weigle, editor, Telling New Mexico, a new history, Museum of New Mexico Press, Santa Fe, 2009; Victor Westphall,  The Public Domain in New Mexico, 1854-1881,UNM Press, Albuquerque, 1965.