one half days more than necessary were nominally-required in making the
journey. Yet the postal authorities believed that this would be more
than offset by the southerly course being to a great extent free from
winter snows.

On September 15, 1858, after elaborate preparations, the overland mails
started from San Francisco and St. Louis on the twenty-five day schedule
- which was three days less than that of the water route. The postage
rate was ten cents for each half ounce; the passenger fare was one
hundred dollars in gold. The first trip was made in twenty-four days,
and in each of the terminal cities big celebrations were held in honor
of the event. And yet today, four splendid lines of railway cover this
distance in about three days!

These stages - to use the west-bound route as an illustration - traveled
in an elliptical course through Springfield, Missouri, and Fayetteville,
Arkansas, to Van Buren, Arkansas, where the Memphis mail was received.
Continuing in a southwesterly course, they passed through Indian
Territory and the Choctaw Indian reserve - now Oklahoma - crossed the
Red River at Calvert's Ferry, then on through Sherman, Fort Chadbourne
and Fort Belknap, Texas, through Guadaloupe Pass to El Paso; thence up
the Rio Grande River through the Mesilla Valley, and into western New
Mexico - now Arizona to Tucson. Then the journey led up the Gila River
to Arizona City, across the Mojave desert in Southern California and
finally through the San Joaquin Valley to San Francisco.

Today a traveler could cover nearly the same route, leaving St. Louis
over the Frisco Railroad, transferring to the Texas Pacific at Fort
Worth, and taking the Southern Pacific at El Paso for the remainder of
the trip.