Page 103 - Cooke's Peak - Pasaron Por Aqui

Chapter 4
United States Mail and Transportation Development, 1857-1860
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rapidly from one location to another. Emigrants
and other civilian sectors needed better roads with
more reliable water sources to promote western
expansion and reduce the risk to travelers. In addi-
tion, Californians were applying pressure on Con-
gress to establish new roads to this rapidly expanding
area and to improve the existing transportation
2 routes.
Congress was unable to agree on the major issue of how and where to establish a national east-west railroad, and even the issue of wagon roads was hotly debated. John S. Phelps of Missouri and Miguel A. Otero of New Mexico sponsored a bill during the third session of the Thirty-Fourth Congress that would include funds for improving the southern
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road from Franklin to Yuma.
tisan supporters, such as William Smith of Virginia, fought to increase appropriations; others, such as George W. Jones of Tennessee, strove to defeat the measure on constitutional grounds or at least strip it of the necessary funds.
The House of Representatives finally approved the legislation, allocating $300,000 for a central route to California, $50,000 for a road in New Mexico from Fort Defiance to the Colorado River, and $200,000 for the southern road to California. California’s Senator John B. Weller urged the upper house to accept the measure, and it was passed by the Thirty- Fifth Congress on February 14, 1857. Three days later, on his last day in office, President Franklin
4 Pierce signed the bill into law.
Following the passage of wagon road legislation, Secretary of the Interior Jacob Thompson estab- lished a new agency, the Pacific Wagon Roads Of- fice, to direct the efforts on these and other public
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Each road project had several positions to be filled, and this provided a ripe new area for political patronage. The naming of key personnel to each of the wagon road projects was carried out primarily by three members of President
Improvements to the roads and mail
services were the rapidly growing and soon-to-be state of California, as well as states- men who desired a more rapid development of the western and southwestern portions of the country recently won from Mexico. Agreement on a railway route still eluded Congress, but legislation was
passed for the construction and improvement many roads in the new territory.
Funds were also provided to establish a transcon- tinental mail service. The route initially stretched from Texas to California, with Cooke’s Spring nearly at the center. Within a year the contractor and route were changed and the primary eastern terminus was relocated in Missouri, home of some of the most powerful politicians of the era. Portions of both routes were subjected to frequent and severe Indian attacks.
Increased Indian depredations in turn brought a further escalation of military presence in the South- west that subsequently led to more deaths on both sides. The Indians and the military were not the only ones sniping at each other, however. Sectionalism, slavery and its hotly debated expansion, and other special interest groups, prevented agreement on railroad routes, a coherent Indian policy, road con- struction, and other vital issues. The political tur- moil that was threatening to engulf the rest of the nation found its way to the Southwest and fertile ground.
The Government Wagon Roads
There were several good reasons for developing or improving western transportation routes. The military needed to control the Indians, and to ac- complish this they had to be able to move troops
demanded by the citizens of
of
89
works projects.
Sectional and par-