Following the discovery of gold in California in January 1848, that
region sprang into immediate prominence. From all parts of the country
and the remote corners of the earth came the famous Forty-niners. Amid
the chaos of a great mining camp the Anglo-Saxon love of law and order
soon asserted itself. Civil and religious institutions quickly arose,
and, in the summer of 1850, a little more than a year after the big rush
had started, California entered the Union as a free state.

The boom went on and the census of 1860 revealed a population of 380,000
in the new commonwealth. And when to these figures were added those of
Oregon and Washington Territory, an aggregate of 444,000 citizens of the
United States were found to be living on the Pacific Slope. Crossing the
Sierras eastward and into the Great Basin, 47,000 more were located in
the Territories of Nevada and Utah, - thus making a grand total of
nearly a half million people beyond the Rocky Mountains in 1860. And
these figures did not include Indians nor Chinese.

Without reference to any military phase of the problem, this detached
population obviously demanded and deserved adequate mail and
transportation facilities. How to secure the quickest and most
dependable communication with the populous sections of the East had long
been a serious proposition. Private corporations and Congress had not
been wholly insensible to the needs of the West. Subsidized stage routes
had for some years been in operation, and by the close of 1858 several
lines were well-equipped and doing much business over the so-called
Southern and Central routes. Perhaps the most common route for sending
mail from the East to the Pacific Coast was by steamship from New York
to Panama where it was unloaded, hurried across the Isthmus, and again
shipped by water to San Francisco. All these lines of traffic were slow
and tedious, a letter in any case requiring from three to four weeks to