Please Mr. Postman

Once the West was settled, it was also cut off from the populous East.  Railroads covered the East, but to link the East and West by rail was a huge undertaking.  Meantime, how to move the mail in a timely manner between the people of the East and the isolated West?

In California for example, which had grown so fast in the Gold Rush, organizing a simple and routine form of communication was beyond the ability of most local officials.  The delivery of a letter from San Francisco to the camps at Hangtown or Red Dog was a minor miracle.

As early as 1848, the United States began shipping mail to the West by the Isthmus of Panama, a lengthy and risky method that resulted in piles of mail in San Francisco until some minor came in to sort through it for letters to himself and his friends.  It was more like a dead letter pile.

Along comes Alexander Todd, who had come west only to find that his health couldn't stand the hours of digging in freezing rivers. He did find that prospectors would pay good sums of money to get their mail, so he began signing up folks in 1849.  For $2.50, Todd would carry a letter to San Francisco for posting and for an ounce of gold dust (about $16) he would hand deliver mail from San Francisco back to the miners. 


After a few months Todd had hundreds of customers, and spent his time in San Francisco going through piles of mail to find letters addressed to his clients.  He was also carrying gold from camps to places of safekeeping for 5% of its value.  Without raising a pick or shovel,  Alexander Todd had struck pay dirt with the old philosophy of "supply and demand"!  Not a bad way to make a fortune!

Next time...the stagecoach comes of age
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Today in Pioneer History:  "On August 14, 1784, on Kodiak Island, Grigory Shelikhov, a Russian fur trader, founds Three Saints Bay, the first permanent Russian settlement in Alaska