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By Scott B. Eckberg The site was devastated; the rioting gang of railroad graders had spared nothing. The Washington handpress, so carefully carried from Nebraska, was smashed to pieces. Lead type was scattered upon the ground, and the galleys that once held them lay crushed in and about the spring. Of the office tent only blackened grass and charred scraps of canvas remained. Indeed, there was nothing to indicate the existence of a thriving frontier newspaper--nothing except a few scattered issues blown hither and yon by the Wyoming wind. On November 21, 1868 in the now-quite bug of Bear River City, the Frontier Index--self-proclaimed spokesman for all right-thinking Western Democrats--was dead and gone. Legh Freeman surveyed the scene of his newspaper's, and very nearly his own, demise. Were it not for the intervention of a beef contractor yesterday, the editor of this peripatetic journal would likely have been swaying from a telegraph pole on the Union Pacific line. Contemplating his escape from the mob, the young Virginia-born journalist began sifting through the debris for anything that could be salvaged. He could as yet only imagine what his brother Fred would have to say about this. After scarcely three years in the newspaper business, the Freeman brothers had finally been beaten, defeated by a readership as militant in actions as they had themselves been in the printed word. Though extreme, the termination of this newspaper was not untypical. The Frontier Index was but one of myriad western American journals that flared up only to flicker out in the post-Civil War years. Nor was the highly personal, fire-eating brand of journalism characteristic of the Freemans unusual in an environment where individualism was revered. What is unique was the transient nature of this newspaper, and that its mobility coincided with, and was influenced by, an enterprise of far-reaching import: the construction of the Union Pacific Railroad. Its linkage in 1869 with the Central Pacific at Promontory, Utah completed the nation's first transcontinental railroad. The driving of the golden spike portended the transformation of a frontier agrarian society into a preeminent economic power. Along the Union Pacific route through the desolate reaches of Nebraska and Wyoming, there spawned a variety of canvas and clapboard villages. Created by a burgeoning transportation industry, these boom towns of mud streets and transient populations served as a support bases for the railroad. The Freeman brothers plied their itinerant trade and participated in the life of several between Kearny, Nebraska and Bear River City, Wyoming. These communities are less so remembered than by their collective nickname of Hell on Wheels towns. Though indicative of the crime and social turbulence that was present, historians have tended to read more into the term than is justified. Some, endeared to exaggerated images of the West, indeed perpetuated the Hell on Wheels stereotype by such florid prose as this: "And so the rails stretched westward into the raw savage wilderness, and with them went an equally wild and savage conglomeration known as the "Hell on Wheels." Offloaded at each temporary end of track, the lurid collection of hell's offscourings flourished for a few weeks, then moved on with the ever lengthening road. Made up mostly of tent saloons, gambling joints, and dance-halls that never closed, this canvas city knew no law except that which each man chose to lay down for himself--and enforce if he could." 1 A more restrained though nonetheless strident interpretation was offered by Edwin L. Sabin, who published his impressions fifty years after the railroad's completion. He described the construction of the Great Highway in epic terms, declaring in an outburst of manicheism that "evil pioneered in rivalry with good while the Union Pacific swept on." "'Hell on Wheels' was the title accorded them; whether reported first by Journalist Samuel Bowles, their observer in 1868, is not stated, but at any rate the phrase has come down uncensored, as a current coinage of the day. They successively irrupted along the Union Pacific like malignant sores upon the surface of a hectic westward-hurrying civilization, only to disappear again or form into healthy flesh. They were a phenomenon." 2 A phenomenon indeed, like the vast western landscape so incomprehensible to the nineteenth-century American mind. From central Nebraska to western Wyoming the U.P. boom towns developed a model of settlement peculiar to this frontier. The pattern began with the advertisement of platted town lots by the railroad. It was followed by a rush of boomers intent on profiting from an economy inflated by the road's construction. Municipal organization then arose, but was short-lived. By the time the rails reached town the boom had busted, and most of the population had vanished to the next townsite where they vied again for the boomtime profits. So it repeated, and where there was money to be made, crime and vice were found. Violence was a way of life on the U.P. frontier. Which explains the enduring image of such towns as Julesburg, Laramie, Green River City, and Bear River City, among others, as rolling enclaves of evil. Yet in connection with these communities one rarely hears, for example, of the arrests of ne'er-do-wells by municipal police, of ordinances preserving public order, or of business assessments to finance civic improvements. The notion persists that "civilizations," never precisely defined, came after the Union Pacific roustabouts and their parasitic followers departed for the next "roaring town." Characteristically, the next town always appeared at end of track "like a thistle burst into full bloom" from the apparently sterile soil. 3 A fresh interpretation of these communities is needed, and with qualifications it is here that the Freeman brothers and their roving newspaper may be of use. For by scrutinizing the Frontier Index it is possible, within limits, to weigh the extent that the Hell on Wheels sobriquet was justified. It will be demonstrated that these communities did not always live up to their notoriety; that moreover the influences of municipal organization, trade, law enforcement, the military, and the ever-present railroad establishment were pervasive within the paradigm of this particular frontier. The Frontier Index is not the sole primary source cited here. However, it is the predominate one and as such poses limitations. The first is the number of existing issues. Although published semi-weekly basis, only forty-five editions of the Index are know to survive today. This is enough to provide a general insight into Union Pacific boom towns; the analysis of certain subjects over time is therefore impossible. The second and more salient consideration is the nature of the frontier newspaper itself. Nineteenth-century journalism did not conform to the ethics, libel laws, or responsibilities recognized by the press today. Rather, the individualistic values of the time assured that each journal was unique unto itself. The common characteristic of American newspapers consisted of unabashed boosterism, promoting the limited interests of its community, itself, and frequently, its editor. 4 This in an era where the magazine and newspaper were society's only mass media, and whether among the belt-driven operation of a urban newspaper or the primitive handpresses of the frontier, the editor wielded influence and power. Thus it comes as no surprise that, in addition to running a portable newspaper, the Freeman brothers were also job printers, land speculators, politicians, and proponents of an Arizona colony named, aptly, Freemansburg. Of the two Freemans, Legh Richmond was the more influential on the course of the Frontier Index. He was born in Culpeper, Virginia on December 4, 1842. His father was a farmer and employee of a local railroad, and although the family lived barely above the impoverishment, Legh received a better than average education. His intellect indeed compensated for a slight limp acquired in a childhood mishap; it did not, however, soften an irascible and abrasive personality. 5 With the coming of the Civil War, young Freeman enlisted in Company I, Third Regiment Kentucky Cavalry where he served as a telegrapher. Captured in 1864, he was shipped to the prisoner-of-war camp at Rock Island, Illinois. There he heard of a presidential amnesty to Confederates willing to serve in the frontier U.S. Army. 6 Since childhood Freeman had had an infatuation with the West, and his early reading of western novels and accounts inspired him to adopt a fictitious identity. "Horatio Vattel, Lightning Scout of the Mountains" smacked of hairbreadth frontier adventure, and provided the limping boy with an escape into the imagination. Such is normal in childhood. But as Freeman matured, this romantic fixation remained. Thus Horatio Vattel resurfaces as a byline in the pages of the Frontier Index, an alter ego to Legh Freeman the journalist. 7 As Freeman biographer Thomas Heuterman pointed out, the Vattel persona lent a peculiarly western coloration to the Frontier Index after the manner of Harte, Twain, and lesser western authors. Just as Horatio Vattel later influenced this "frontier medium for frontier men," so too did it now sway the Confederate telegrapher at Rock Island. It was with this ingrained desire to see the West, plus a strong streak of opportunism, that Freeman swore allegiance to the United States and became a "galvanized Yankee" in October, 1864. 8 He was then assigned to the Third Regiment, U.S. Volunteers composed almost entirely of ex-Confederates. The following march he rode with his regiment from Fort Leavenworth, Kansas enroute to Fort Kearny, Nebraska. 9 Freeman's arrival in Nebraska coincided with an armistice in the east and a diversion of national attention and resources to the west. At this time Indian depredations had constricted travel on the Oregon trail to a trickle for over a year. The skeleton frontier army, loosely composed of northern militia and southern expatriates, had been unable to enforce order between red and white with much success. And over in the hamlet of Omaha, the three-year-old Union Pacific Railroad was still a paper corporation with not a spiked rail to its name. But that now began to change, as the days following Appomattox saw increasing amounts of men and material transformed from tools of war to peacetime instruments of a resurgent industrialism. "During the summer and autumn of 1865 small mountains of materials piled up a Omaha. The company assigned five of its seven river steamboats to the exclusive task of hauling ties, wheels, rolling stock of all types, as well as an endless miscellany necessary to carry the work forward. Other vessels brought more workers.... By October a great cluster of stores, hauled in by river steamer, had grown around the freight depot where harried railroaders worked overtime. 'The benefits of a railroad to the interior, as well as to our city, began to show themselves plainly,' observed the Omaha Republican." 10 By October, 1865 only fifteen miles of track had been laid. But the company, long disorganized and financially pressed, now had the assistance of two indispensable sets of brothers. Oliver and Oakes Ames, New England manufacturing tycoons, and John and Daniel Casement, professional railroad contractors, brought the financial backing and construction expertise the Union Pacific needed. The railroad would now progress more smoothly. And as the crates stenciled with Union Pacific initials continued amassing in Omaha, a pundit spread what would be an oft-repeated community slogan: things are looking UP. The bustle of activity around Omaha could not have escaped Freeman's attention. By May of 1865 he was employed as a civilian telegrapher on Edward Creighton's Overland line. By December he moreover acquired a newspaper. At the ripe age of 23 Legh Freeman was editor and publisher of the Kearney Herald, a semi-weekly four-page tabloid. Its masthead motto, "Independence in All Things, Neutrality in Nothing," forebode the outspoken editorial tendencies that would be a source of grief later on. To assist in operating the fledgeling paper, Legh sent for his older brother, Frederick Kemper Freeman. Likewise an intelligent ex-Confederate telegrapher, Frederick brought a stabilizing influence to the business; in contrast to Legh, he was even-tempered and on generally good terms with those around him. 13 Indeed, arriving in the spring of 1866, he was elected to the Nebraska Territorial Council that summer even though he was a Democrat in a Republican county. 14 He did not serve long, however, if at all. Frederick ran the paper while Legh roved the frontier, sending back dispatches and living his life-long fantasy of Horatio Vattel. Moreover, business was getting brisk as the Union Pacific construction neared Kearny. The boom deflated as soon as the tracks reached town, but word spread that flush times were reviving ahead at a new townsite, a place called North Platte. The excitement and profits of Kearney's brief boom proved irresistible to the adventurous brothers. Like other private entrepreneurs around them, the Freemans decided to go to North Platte. Frederick obtained a Washington handpress and the services of some Mexican teamsters. At Plum Creek, Nebraska the string of three ox-drawn wagons was ambushed, "but the would-be robbers left in disgust upon finding that the freight was only a printing outfit." 15 It was on this trip that the Kearney Herald became the Frontier Index, establishing its reputation as the "Press on Wheels." Only later, when Legh's virulent reactionary attitudes became known was it referred to as "the filthy Rebel sheet." North Platte on November 1, 1866 was likened by Sabin to the suburbs of a prairie dog town. Three weeks later, however, it was a hamlet of 1,000, "big with twenty buildings, including a brick roundhouse calculated for forty engines and already accommodating ten." 16 He exaggerated a trifle: roundhouse capacity was only twenty locomotives. Nevertheless, the railroad had already planned the role North Platte would play. It would for a time become second in importance only to Omaha, serving as headquarters of the Lodge Pole Division reaching to Laramie, 282 miles away. 17 But now it was a gathering point for supplies, and after December 11 when construction halted at O'Fallons Bluffs, as winter quarters for the railroad. Upon his arrival, Fredrick Freeman discovered "advantages in such an untamed setting. The newspaper was rushed with advertising and job printing orders, getting from $10 to $20 for striking off 100 words in small circulars or posters. The price per line in local advertising columns was 25 cents on the inside of the paper. No one haggled the prices. Despite the transient nature of the community, business lots sold for $2,000 to $3,000 apiece.... 18 The die was cast. This boom would also bust, and as the cycle continued along the transcontinental route the Frontier Index swung ahead: to Julesburg, Fort Sanders, Laramie City, Benton, Green River City, terminating finally at Bear River City in a conflagration symbolic of its own fiery rhetoric. Along the way the Freemans observed, judged, and participated in the life of the Union Pacific communities. Their surviving record, dated from March to November 1868, illuminates the conception of Hell on Wheels towns. The term "Hell on Wheels" originally described not the railroad towns, as journalist Bowles alleged, but rather the railroad construction train. Led by Jack Casement, a former army division commander, the work force of several hundred men was organized into regiments of tie and track layers, spikers, teamsters, roustabouts, and support forces. Many were themselves Civil War veterans capable of falling in for defense when curious Indians approached. Hefting eight-pound sledgehammers, 80-pound ties, and 560-pound rails, they advanced the road one to three miles a day at an average pay of three dollars. Their ethnic composition was heavily Irish, but also included Germans, Slavs, Scandinavians, native Yankees, and Blacks. 19 Performing incredibly hard labor in a bleak environment, stimulated by a rivalry with another railroad that employed Chinese labor, the U.P. workmen were a tough lot. "Imagine the 19th U.S. Infantry at the Presidio struck by lightning," exclaimed one California observer, "and you have them!" In advance of the construction train were the equally hard-boiled men of the grading gangs. They were organized by such contracting firms as Reynolds & Dowling, Lewis Carmichael, Chesbrough & McGee, and Boyd & Casement. With military precision several hundred men and their animals prepared the roadbed fifty to one hundred miles ahead of the tracklaying force; they were supplied by a steady stream of covered freight wagons. The graders followed the route marked by the advanced surveying parties commanded by the Union Pacific's chief engineer, Grenville M. Dodge, who had originally located the townsites. It was sometime between the departure of the surveyors and the arrival of the grading gangs that the railroad land agents arrived, along with merchants, speculators, saloon keepers, criminals, and the assorted hangers-on that Bowles described as "the fungi indigenous to American railway stations." Wagons clattered into a townsite, and overnight there sprang into existence a community of canvas huts, false-fronted tents, and collapsible buildings signaling the start of a boom. The population of the succeeding U.P. communities tended to be selfperpetuating. In this world on wheels there existed common bonds of friendships and rivalries, partnerships and dissolved agreements. And the moment prospects appeared to dim, whole business blocks up and left the next site with the sagacity of blackbirds that suddenly fly from a telegraph wire. Make no mistake, the people who flocked to claim town lots did not do so for the purpose of civilizing a wilderness, or taming a frontier, or such prosaic thing. They came to exploit the railroad for their own gain. Like the Freeman brothers, they came to make money. "The tide of business at Green River has been heavier, higher, and more moneyed during the past few days than ever before. The streets are crowded with wagons loaded with every variety of merchandise. The Jenks House, Star, U.S. and Lyon's Restaurants are feeding about twelve hundred people each day, and besides these there are a dozen chop houses. 21 If one could resurrect the sounds of that day, they would constitute a potpourri of boots on board sidewalks, clattering billiard balls, bottles clinking on glasses, barking dogs, creaking wagons, curses of freighters and the impatient stamping of horses' hooves; laughter, shouts, calls to buy this or that item of merchandise, shuffling of cards, hammering of plank walls, and scraping of knives and forks. At night this medley was accompanied by sounds of merry making, fiddle music, and human murmurs around faro and roulette tables. The population of the U.P. towns was predominately male, and the entertainment made available to them was not usually of a refined nature. There were prize fights and set-tos between dogs and badgers. Quarrels and brawls interrupted the restless activity of the many sporting houses and gambling halls. Their reputation acquired such notoriety back east that casual travelers had to stop and experience the nightlife for themselves. Tantalizing advertisements aimed at the graders' camps appeared in the Frontier Index. Who could resist the charms of Diana "the living Goddess" at Laramie City? "She can be seen in all her glory at J.C. Crismans splendid galleries" where "amusements of every name and variety surround you." 22 The delights of the arcade piqued the curiosity even of visiting clergymen. Forty Methodist preachers fresh from a Chicago conference arrived in Laramie as guests of the railroad, and nothing would do but that they see the tenderloin district. "A number of the party walked around town after night and peeped into the dance halls, gambling halls, and other sporting institutions," reported the Frontier Index. "The result of the inspection was a desire to convert the wicked ones, and to night is fixed upon for services." 23 During the tour, one reverend gentleman asked a roulette manager how his game was played. "The roulette man went into a minute explanation showing the apt parson all the ifs and ands, and just as he finished the elucidation, he screams out, 'Now d--n it old sucker, give us a bet!" No bets were placed--the preacher had "shabbed." 24 Clearly, this aspect of the U.P. towns has been the best-remembered. But once the grading camps had passed the town economy began to sag, and the arrival of the railroad was almost anti-climactic. By then most of the population not directly associated with the railroad had freighted itself to the next town and a renewal of flush times. Those entrepreneurs who stayed behind, or arrived too late, experienced the listless boredom of busted hopes. With typical optimism, a Laramie edition of the Frontier Index reported a visitor's claim that North Platte, 280 miles back in Nebraska, was "quite a burg." Sixty outfitting houses, twenty dance halls, and two hundred saloons were reputed to be in full swing. Business sounded so upbeat, that "next week the Frontier Index will add a printing office to the place." 25 The wayfarer who provided that information to the editor was quite wrong, for two weeks later Frederick Feeman published a plaintive letter from a North Platte grocer. In it was painted a discouraging economic picture. "I landed here last Tuesday.... I have only seen two dollars change hands since I have been here; nothing doing in the grocery business. The place is over stocked with everything, and goods are selling cheaper than at Cheyenne. Today I saw a firm close out a stock of $3,000 worth of goods....Still they come with goods. When the reach here the first question is, "how is business" some one says "dull as h--l." Then they look for a place, set around for a few days, and then you see a notice up "goods for sale at cost." 26 The brisk trade characteristic of the U.P. boom towns was indeed brief. The condition described by this North Platte grocer was a more realistic indication of economic life once the tracks had passed by. It was from this more enduring state that true communities began to emerge. Needless to say, the Frontier Index did not contribute to the development of North Platte, for no printing office was established where there was no assurance of sustained profits. That opportunity, the Freemans again discovered, lay only in the new towns ahead of the advancing railroad. That the brothers had a profitable venture was reflected in the sums of money sent home to Culpeper: over $700 in three years, in increments of $15 to $70. 27 Subscriptions and advertising revenues, job printing, and dabbles in land speculation contributed to their income, but this income was neither steady nor assured. Tardy payment for printing service plagued the enterprise, and Legh in particular threatened to publish the names of customers who failed to pay their bills. In one instance, he not only exposed the owner of the Kalmazoo restaurant in Bryan, but moreover mailed three marked copies to his home town in Michigan. 28 "If you intend or want to go to kingdomcome decently, don't for God's sake try to bamboozle the editor of this paper into gratis puff," he later admonished. 29 It was a stratagem that usually worked. ROUTE OF THE "PRESS ON WHEELS" 1865-1866
Publishing site Approximate Dates of Publication Publisher Fort Kearny December 1865 - May 1866 L.R. Freeman Kearny May 1866 - Fall 1866 F.K. Freeman North Platte Fall 1866 - July 1867 F.K. Freeman Julesburg July 1867 - March 1868 F.K. Freeman Fort Sanders March 6, 1868 - March 24, 1868 F.K. Freeman Laramie City April 21, 1868 - July 7, 1868 F.K. Freeman Benton August 1868 - September 1868 ? Green River City August 11, 1868 - October 13, 1868 L.R. Freeman Bear River City October 30, 1868 - November 17, 1868 L.R. Freeman Nevertheless, what profits the brothers garnered were in turn depleted by the cost of constant moves. Although it supported the railroad and gladly accepted its advertising jobs, the Union Pacific did not give it a free ride west. Instead, freighting teams were hired to transport the office and equipment for an inflated frontier price. With this plus familial support back home, an additional drain on income stemmed from individual travels. One brother was always away, tending a small printing branch office, overseeing development at Freemansburg, dealing in real estate, attending Democratic functions, or simply exploring the country. Their restlessness was characteristic of the spirit of this frontier. For unlike the gold and silver discoveries that were triggering other migrations at this time, the Union Pacific frontier had literally no goal but the horizon. This too was the Central Pacific's aim, but the California company differed in that its construction was linked already existing communities in the Sierras. Mining communities, that provided immediate revenues for the railroad and attracted the indigent. By contrast the Union Pacific boom towns required time before maturing into true communities, and time was a commodity that neither Freeman spared. Leapfrogging from one platted townsite to the next, the brothers catered to a fluid readership of uprooted hopefuls who sought profitable crumbs under the U.P.'s table. The railroads reciprocated: in the absence of ready markets, townsites were platted, liberally advertised, and sold to the entrepreneurial boomers. The town might not last in spite of the railroad's most lavish predications, but at least the company realized some profit in the short run. Between the railroad and the boomers, business flowed both ways; and by running a newspaper in this environment, on had the best of both worlds. The Frontier Index was not the sole newspaper along the Union Pacific line. Others appeared in the towns, stayed after the boom passed, and contributed to community development. They competed for advertising revenues, and they quarreled as to whose community would thrive. Jealous eyes observed any benevolence the railroad might bestow on a particular town, for the construction of machine shops or the designation of a winter terminus often decided its fate. One promising site had three newspapers, and the mobile Frontier Index delighted in baiting them and their own proclaimed "Magic City" which the Freemans purposely misspelled "Shian." Significantly, the brothers chose not to tarry in Cheyenne, opting instead for the site of Laramie City. There they opened up a real estate office and unabashedly promoted the site as the "Jewel of the Plains." The Cheyenne newspaper immediately seized upon this, charging that a partnership existed between the Freemans and the railroad. Sarcastically, the Cheyenne Leader predicted the next stop of the Frontier Index would be an office in Laramie's new Union Pacific shops. Frederick's repartee was swift. "The Leader, Star and Argus will, in less than three months, be left out on the prairie, and will constitute the whole of what was once known as Shian!" he crowed. 30 Though he could be as sarcastic as anybody, Fredrick's jibes at competitors were generally light-hearted. Legh's writing was heavy-handed by comparison. Thin-skinned and easily offended, Legh's editorials slipped into the gutter at the slightest provocation. He referred to a Denver editor who took exception to one of his articles as "that pimp Hollister." 31 Legh's distaste for the allegedly pro-army Salt Lake Reporter oozes through a bogus ad that appeared in the Index. "Orders for 'night work,' if left at the office of the Salt Lake Military Tumbpaper Reporter, will receive prompt attention for S.S. Saul, who does the vomiting for that puked up sheet," he acidly wrote. "The long experience of Saul, in carrying basket of goose necks for Pat Connor, recommends him to the owners of privies." 32 The reference was to businessman and former brigadier general Patrick Connor, whose pro-Union sentiments were well known in the region. His distrust of the Mormons was such that after establishing Camp Douglas on the outskirts of Salt Lake City in 1862, he kept a howitzer trained on Brigham Young's house. Though Legh Freeman had served briefly with the U.S. Volunteers, memories of the late war and the realities of Reconstruction left the brothers with no love for the army. Yet to their dismay they were practically surrounded by blue-coats: the army and the Union Pacific cooperated closely during the railroad's construction. In 1864 and 1865 alone the Quartermaster Department spent over $28 million for the service against the Indians in the corridor through which the transcontinental was planned. 33 Surveyors and later construction gangs were escorted by federal troops garrisoned along the route. Between 1866 and 1868 those outposts stretched from Nebraska to Utah: Forts Kearny, McPherson, Sedgwick, Sidney, D.A. Russell, Sanders, Fred Steele, Bridger, and Douglas. The army had a strategic interest in the railroad, and this interest was compounded by the involvement of many of its former officers in engineering the project. Chief of the hundreds of Civil War veterans working on the U.P. was its directing engineer, General Grenville M. Dodge. The army's influence over the railroad was illustrated in an episode that occurred in July, 1868 at Fort Sanders. A feud had arisen between Dodge and U.P. Vice-president Thomas Durant over the routing of the railway. Durant wanted a meandering course in order to garner more federal subsidies, while Dodge planned a shorter, economical road more in keeping with government guidelines. Durant's repeated interference was supported by consulting engineer Silas Seymour, whose brother Horatio was, coincidentally, the 1868 Democratic presidential candidate. Durant's pressure ultimately led Dodge to seek the support of his brother officers, and a meeting was arranged. Dodge's arrival at Fort Sanders, near Laramie City, completed nothing less than gathering of eagles. On hand were three of the nation's most influential men: Generals William T. Sherman, Philip Sheridan, and U.S. Grant. They were backed by a panoply of distinguished Civil War officers: Generals August Kautz, William S. Harney, Frederick Dent, Adam Slemmer, Joseph Potter, Louis Hunt, and post commander John Gibbon. Not since war's end had such a constellation of general's stars gathered in one place, and certainly never before in the West. As a civilian and an interloper to this fraternity, Durant became uncomfortably aware of the army's esteem for his chief engineer. After explaining his position, Dodge threatened to "quit the road" unless he were given complete route-setting authority. Grant's reply was characteristically brief: the government expected the Union Pacific to live up to the obligations outlined in its charter. Furthermore, it expected General Dodge to remain as its chief engineer until the project was finished. Period. Anticipating Grant's election to the White House in November, Durant abandoned hope of replacing Dodge with a more manipulatable man. He graciously concurred, and there was no future interference by the military in corporate politics. 34 Mutually concerned with the orderly construction and maintenance of railroad facilities, the army worked hand-in-glove with the railroad establishment. Already in 1868 the advancing railroad had changed military strategy regarding the Indian. On May 19 the Frontier Index reported the agreement made at the recently-concluded peace commission at Fort Laramie: "The Powder River line of forts are to be abandoned ... and the troops sent towards Salt Lake for the protection of the lower frontier." In questioning the wisdom of this move, the editorialist and his readership shared a common western fear. Namely, that the "peace commissioners" had sold out to the tribes, and that this action was tantamount to a declaration of war by the Indians against Wyoming settlements. Abandonment that August of the Bozeman Trail posts--Forts Phil Kearney, Reno, and C.F. Smith--amounted not to a sell-out by the Indian Bureau but rather an acceptance of reality. That the Union Pacific made the wagon trail and its forts obsolete was admitted to by no less than Sherman himself. 35 The department commander, General Christopher C. Augur, distributed the troops to every station between Fort Kearny, Nebraska and Fort D.A. Russell near Cheyenne. The garrisons at Fort Sanders and Steele were reinforced, with the remainder assigned to Omaha where it was cheaper to winter them than build new outposts. "It was here that the economy of the road was demonstrated," observed one authority. "Should the occasion arise, detachments could be sent forth by rail at any time." Protection of the work gangs against guerrilla attack was further realized with the enlistment of Major Frank North's famed Pawnee scouts. But a more cogent reason existed for the presence of garrisons along the U.P. route: security of government interests relative to the congressional railroad acts of 1862 and 1864. For although Dodge's surveying crews platted townsites on the open range, he noted "that really the land belonged to the United States and railway was occupying it under government charter." 37 Hence, when a flood of boomers to Cheyenne moved onto land reserved by the U.P. for its facilities, and steadfastly refused to vacate, Dodge wired to Fort D.A. Russell for assistance. The troops arrived, scattered the indignant squatters, and tore down their shanties. 38 Undermanned and overburdened with the task of Indian pacification, the army was forced to assume the role of a constabulary on the Union Pacific frontier. The Cheyenne incident reflected the confusion in Wyoming following its unsuccessful bid for territorial status. With the arrival of the railroad in its westernmost region, the Dakota territorial legislature found itself unable to effectively govern the newcomers. The legislature petitioned Congress to create a new entity, which it did by combining parts of Dakota, Idaho, and Utah territories. The boundaries of Wyoming Territory, identical to the later state, were officially recognized by President Andrew Johnson on July 25, 1868. He then nominated a board to administer the territory, but due to increasing hostility between the White House and the Radical Republican Congress over domestic policy, the officials were never confirmed. A new set of officers would be approved in May, 1869 during the Grant Administration, but in the interim Wyoming suffered a vacuum of authority. Provisional city governments, vigilance committees, the railroad, and Dakota Territory occasionally filled the void, but overall authority was essentially defacto martial law. The army assumed this extra-legal role by default, in response to the sheer numbers of boomers seeking to profit from the railroad--and each other. The population of Wyoming in summer of 1868, the height of railroad construction, was approximately 20,000; a mere year-and-a-half later the federal census indicated 9,118 residents, most of whom were involved in military transportation industry. "Grant's appointees found that before they could take charge [in 1869] the worst law-and-order problems had already moved into Utah with the construction camps." 39 Caught between the conflicting wishes of Congress and the War Department, the Indians and the Indian Bureau, and the railroad and the settlements, the tenuousness of the army's civil authority did not pass unnoticed. In the guise of mountain man Horatio Vattel, Legh Freeman condemned the military presence as a bayonet rule of the U.P. towns, imposed by a "Rump-hell Congress" bent on destroying individual liberty. "Civil law must be restored," he cried, "or a declaration of out and out military law must come from the proper source." 40 This sentiment was not unusual in the West, where settlers appreciated the army only as a market for produce, or as a defense when Indian relations deteriorated. But the U.P. frontier differed in that its hordes of workers, boomers, and transient hangers-on contributed to more severe lawlessness. Though hardly a bayonet rule, the presence of a disciplined armed force along the right-of-way doubtless contributed to the maintenance of public order. The Frontier Index reflected that martial presence, publishing frequent accounts of Indian skirmishes, troop movements, visits by ranking officers, and the transfer of the quartermaster depot to Laramie in May, 1868. As avowedly unreconstructed Southerners, however, the Freemans could not resist an occasional potshot. Legh's attack on the army was preceded by a salvo fired by his brother from, of all places, Fort Sanders. After weeks of publishing there, Frederick Freeman was summarily ordered off the post. "The rumored reason for shutting poor us out from the fort in hostile Indian country," he coyly wrote, "is that we have charged Gen. [John] Gibbon with being a North Carolina tar-heel--only a Grant man for policy." 41 Following their expulsion, the Frontier Index continued to nettle Gibbon. The brothers charged the post commander with graft and, more ludicrously, with opening a beer hall in their former office and pocketing the proceeds. 42 Unforgiving, they ever referred to him by the nickname they coined: General Brewery Gibbon. Yet for all his antipathy for the army, it is ironic that Legh Freeman's flight from the Bear River City mob was in the direction of the nearest military sanctuary, Fort Bridger. As sojourners on the frontier, the Freemans tried to affect a western manner. Legh's Horation Vattel fantasy, in particular, appeared to have been influenced by Jim Bridger, whom he met while at Fort Kearny. Despite the brief existence of the Frontier Index, Legh managed enact his mountain man dream by traveling widely. He explored from Fort Laramie to Montana, as far west as San Francisco, and southeast to Arizona. Back in Wyoming, he disseminated what were then accepted views on race: "We favor white men of all nationalities, and believe in keeping all inferior races in their respective spheres." 43 They were not unusually in their outlook, for the expulsion of Blacks and Chinese and the extermination of Indians were popular western sentiments. If the brothers parted from the prevailing attitude toward minorities, it was only in their treatment of the Mormons. The Frontier Index lavishly praised the Mormons for civilizing the mountain region, and for supporting the railroad with their labor and their food. Ahead of time, the Freemans advocated Utah statehood while others opposed it based on alleged Mormon disloyalty to the Union, and also because of the church practice of polygamy. The Freemans did not support this beleaguered sect out of mere altruism. Rather, advertising opportunities and desire to attract colonist to Feemansburg encouraged the brothers to curry favor with the prosperous Mormon community. This suspicion was borne out in the mid-1870s when Legh was editor and publisher of the Ogden Freeman. By then the church's business policy of dealing only within the fellowship lost him much advertising support, and overnight Legh Freeman became the Mormons' bitterest antagonist. 44 Thus it was that familiar streak of opportunism, plus a repugnance of other minority groups on the frontier, that led the Frontier Index to espouse the Mormon cause. Even without Mormon patronage the Frontier Index brimmed with advertising. "The forty-five extant issues show that of the 1,076 columns printed, 728.5 were taken up by advertising, a 67.7:32.2 advertising-editorial ratio." 45 Undoubtedly, the Freemans had themselves a most lucrative venture. "He who is too mean and illiberal to advertise in his local paper," they reminded their readers, "is too mean and illiberal to give you a bargain." Businessmen availed themselves of this opportunity to make their services known. The higher-class saloons and gambling houses advertised in the Index, such as Rounds and Morris' and the Alhambra Hall in Green River City. But the majority of ads that appeared involved the freighting and mining industries: ranches, livery stables and small-time stage lines, grocery and dry goods stores, outfitting emporia and auction houses. The Freund Brothers gun shop reappeared in successive U.P. towns, as did doctors Calder and Finfrock, who appeared to have done a thriving trade along the railroad. With the preponderance of timetables, railroadmen were encouraged to buy a good Elgin watch from Laramie dealer John Kupfer. Several advertisements, indicative of the heterogeneity of the U.P. towns, are not usually associated with Hell on Wheels businesses. They included such enterprises as laundries, jewelry stores, cutlery shops, restaurants, bakeries, druggist, tobacconists, haberdashers, doctors, billiard halls, saddlers, banks, hotels, breweries, lawyers, blacksmiths, ice cream parlors, clerks of the U.S. district court, and perhaps busiest of all, sign painters. Ads appeared from as far east as Chicago, where industrial products ranging from Washoe picks to stamp mills were manufactured, and as far west as a business college in San Francisco. The army advertised for wood, forage, and coal contracts to supply its posts, and the railroad published notices seeking tie and beef bids. The Union Pacific land and ticket sales offices were also steady advertisers in the Frontier Index. Looking for real estate? Look no further than the Freeman brothers, who regularly advised on the availability of land in California, Nevada, Wyoming, and Arizona. Slicing through the heart of the frontier, the Union Pacific expansion ignited an economic boom unmatched by the later transcontinental railroads. Money seemed to float everywhere, and land speculation was rife. A seventy-five dollar lot bought on speculation from the railroad frequently netted several times amount on resale. At Benton it was claimed that the U.P. made $17,000 from land sales in only a few weeks. 46 No one knows how often lots changed hands after the boomers arrived, at correspondingly inflated prices. Each succeeding real estate boom busted every 30 to 40 days, reported Bowles, as the population moved to the next townsite in advance of the railhead. 47 As one of the most frequent advertisers in the Frontier Index, the U.P. land office played upon the economic potential the railroad brought to each townsite. Investors were advised to buy the choicest town lots before they became unavailable. Occasionally, misinformation and over-enthusiasm on the part of the land agent created conflicts between the townspeople and the company. After purchasing property in a townsite touted as a winter terminus, for example, investors were sometimes surprised by news that it was the next town that would be so designated. This occurred in Green River City in summer, 1868. In a attempt to control an uncertain economic situation, upwards of one hundred property owners signed a petition and sent it to the railroad's headquarters in Omaha. The businessmen sought agreement to pay "the price or valuation fixed by said company" on lots claimed or held, or relinquish all claims upon "assurances that Green River City will be Railroad terminus for passenger and freight trains during the Winter." 48 This was an important matter, for the designation of a terminus often meant construction of machine shops and a roundhouse. And such facilities usually assured the town's permanence, established a base for development, and enhanced property values. Therefore Green River's businessmen were disappointed by the railroad's reply, telegraphed back the same day: "We cannot accept the proposition of the citizens, as we cannot state where the winter terminus will be." One week later, the people of Green River City opened their issues of the Frontier Index only to discover the following advertisement: The Winter Town, UPRR Bryan is located on Black's Fork on the
line of the As Bryan was only fourteen miles away, the citizens of Green River were first perplexed, then angry. Union Pacific land agent J.A. Williamson quickly found himself between a rock and a hard place. Demands for an explanation of the railroad's apparently self-serving real estate publicity brought a defensive response. "I am [in Bryan] offering lots for sale under orders from the Chief Engineer of the U.P.R.R.," Williams replied. "I did not come here at my own instance [sic] ... and I have no power to change any order made by my employees." Moreover, as the company had already disposed of $10,000 in Bryan lots, "a move from here, at this time, would be an act of bad faith on the part of the railroad company." He advised disgruntled Green River citizens to write General Dodge, then at Humboldt Wells, or agent J. E. House in Omaha regarding the railroad's plans for their community. Apologizing for his failure to settle matters satisfactorily between the railroad and Green Riverites, Williamson tried to allay their fears with candor. "I will say frankly to you that I think the sale of lots at Bryan has progressed so far ... as to preclude ... building another town by aid of the Railroad company in this vicinity." 50 This unlikely provided much solace. By September 11, reported the Frontier Index, twenty adobe yards were operating in Bryan, lumber was flowing in from Fort Bridger and the Sweetwater, and buildings were being erected. The editor noted, with two communities in such close proximity and a number of contractor's winter quarters in between, "we would be glad if the streets of the two towns will connect directly, and have the whole under one vast corporation." 51 As it would turn out, Green River was on the ascent, and Bryan would be the community to disappear. In both cases the railroad came out ahead. The conflict between railroad and townspeople presaged similar misunderstandings that contributed to the rise of Populism later in the century. As citizens of Green River discovered, the U.P. wielded immense influence over the lives and fortunes of individual entrepreneurs along the transcontinental route. This confrontation with the faceless, faraway corporate power was still rare, however. The majority of businessmen dealt satisfactorily with railroad representatives residing in the towns or overseeing progress on the grades. The successful ones built up a personal relationship with these officials, thus ensuring advantages in obtaining beef, tie, and freighting contracts. One particularly savvy operator on the U.P. frontier was Alexander Toponce. As a child he migrated from France to New York state, where a budding business acumen was honed by smuggling horses across the Canadian border. As a young man he operated a sawmill in Missouri until the eve of the Civil War, when one of his employees threw a locally-prominent secessionist out a tavern window, speculating in flour, sugar, and other commodities on the side. He saw opportunities others missed, and in taking advantage of them he never seemed to incur the rancor of competitors. His personable style was reflected in May, 1868 when he returned to Salt Lake City from doing business in Nevada. At this time the Union Pacific was grading west of Green River City, and Toponce sniffed profit in the air. "I heard that there was a contract to be let in a short time to furnish beef to the grading and track laying camps," he recalled, "and [I] decided to try for it." Toponce went to work in an ingeniously roundabout way. He bought large tents, provisions, wagons and teams, and hired a good cook and his wife to wait on tables. He then set up a restaurant in Bear River City and devoted himself to getting acquainted with the contractors and foremen of the gangs. "I set up the best meals and the best liquid refreshments to be had west of Omaha ... and whenever any of the big fellows came along we put on extra dishes, wine and Havana cigars." All the while Toponce made it clear he wanted the contract, and soon most of the foremen were behind him. "About this time Bill Jennings sent a herd of beef cattle to Spring Valley and announced that he was going to bid on the contract. So I got my new friends together and talked it over and it was agreed that I should have the contract at fifteen cents a pound. The day that the contract was to be given out, Bill Jennings came on the stage with some of his Salt Lake friends and stopped at my place for dinner. Right in the middle of dinner, Harper, foreman of the tie camp, got up and said he wished to announce that "no bids" for beef would be received as the contract had already been privately to Mr. Toponce. My old friend Bill Jennings was pretty blue. He had expected to bid as low as six cents to get the contract. After dinner he came to me and wanted to sell me his cattle. We went out and looked at them and I made him an offer. He did not want to take it, but I reminded him that one time when freighting to Montana, I had contracted with him for flour at $24 a hundred and when the price had raised he had repudiated the agreement and when I had sued him he had beaten me before a Mormon Judge and now I told him the shoe was on the other foot." 52 Toponce bought over a thousand head of cattle and fifteen horses from Jennings for $30,000. He successfully fulfilled his beef contract that winter. After this, tie contractor Jim Nounnan sub-contracted with Toponce got the ties to the stream on time, but in this instance his luck did not hold: the river froze earlier than expected, locking the ties in ice and nullifying their contract. Nevertheless, Toponce had suffered earlier setbacks in his career and he turned this one to his advantage. Stacking the ties he built a house on his adjacent homestead. 53 Wresting a living from railroad construction was a gamble that called for wits, patience, timing, and luck. All four qualities combined in Alexander Toponce, making him one of the shrewdest profiteers on the U.P. frontier. In this unfettered entrepreneurial environment where larger sums of money often changed hands, it was natural for the business community to band together for mutual protection. This protection was realized through municipal organization, yet another aspect not usually associated with Hell on Wheels towns. Town organization and statutes were customarily modeled after those governing other communities in Dakota Territory. Cheyenne's government was copied after that of Denver, ex-Coloradans having settled that U.P. town. In all cases there was a duly-elected mayor who presided over a city council or board of trustees. The board met periodically to transact city business and enact laws that differed little from those of more settled communities in the east. The city code dealt with such matters of public concern as taxation, prostitution, garbage disposal, the carrying of concealed weapons, public intoxication, indecent exposure, and disturbance of the peace. The council also set fine rates, which along with the ordinances and other business were reported in the Frontier Index. Enforcement was accomplished through an elected sheriff and an organized municipal police force. In some towns, such as Green River, the sheriff collected assessments against property owners. These monies combined with fines collected by the police magistrate (a designated member of the city council) to support the police department and maintain a jail. Although Americans are wont to believe that the frontier experience was conductive to the development of democracy, and that frontier society was class-less, the U.P. towns were administered solely by the economic elite. Candidates for office were chosen from among those who had a pecuniary interest in law and order: merchants, speculators, and property owners. Yes, and newspaper editors, for even with staunch Democratic principles the Frontier Index never proposed that candidates for office be picked from the ranks of "the common man." Frederick Freeman, who declined the mayoral nomination of Laramie to serve as a delegate to the 1868 Democratic National Convention, voiced his reasoning in an editorial entitled "Don't Be Too Fast." Published in the May 5, 1868 issue, he cautioned his fellow citizens to hold back on the organization of Laramie City. For unlike the earlier town of Julesburg, he wrote, Laramie was to be a permanent point "which must start out with a permanent and respectable foundation." And the basis of that foundation was none other than business: "Remember that the principle [sic] business men who have purchase lots here ... have not reached Laramie in person; as the property owners have all at stake, their interests entitle them to the choice of our city officers." Freeman warned newcomers and non-property owners to get involved in the town's organization, "a matter which alone concerns the property owners and business men of the town." Just as there political opportunities for successful entrepreneurs. And political worth, implied Freeman, rested on the self-interest derived from running a business or investing in a town lot. When it came time to vote nobody was disfranchised. But this restriction on nominations based on one's economic standing in the community was one method of social control exercised by the merchant class. When municipal elections were finally held, the winning candidates were predominately Democrats. Green River City ran two Democratic slates against none Republican: "In the contest ... for city officers, the most regular democratic ticket carried the day by a large majority over the irregular one." reported the Index. Nine officials were chosen, consisting of a five-man council led by mayor Joseph Binns; a city marshal, clerk, treasurer, assessor. "If the parties named had not been good men," the editor reminded his readers, "our community would not have been apt to have elected them." On this occasion he repeated his preference for civilian government with a pointed inference to the military authorities along the railroad, particularly his nemesis, General Gibbon. "We prefer, by far, to see some good civilians make an honest support out of fines for misdemeanors of the unruly ones, rather than to have a pompous shoulder strapper declare our community under martial law, and impose unjust fines and shove the proceeds into his pockets." 54 The Green River council did not delay in establishing ordinances and a fine schedule, which were then published in the Frontier Index. Topping the list of laws were ordinances forbidding the carrying of concealed weapons, shooting of firearms within city limits, public intoxication, and disturbance of the peace "as to fight or threaten to fight." The ordinances went into immediate effect, including the council's call for the financing of a police department. 55 Three months after the election, Green River's chief law enforcement officer resurfaced in an unexpected role as a law-breaker at Bear River City. The Freemans little suspected that Marshal Thomas J. Smith--one of Green River's regular, Democratic officials--would lead the mob that destroyed the Frontier Index and sent its founding editor packing for Fort Bridger. In spite of good intentions attempts at democratic self-government in the U.P. towns never fully succeeded, and Grenville Dodge's judgment that "there is no law in the country, and no courts" must stand. 56 Granted, city ordinances provided a measure of public order, and the Frontier Index is replete with praises of policemen who enforced city laws. But the officials elected to office were businessmen first, and their individual interests eclipsed those of the community at large. Uncertain of the railroad's plans, they realized that the towns they tried to administer were likely destined to be short-lived. The transient nature of the U.P. frontier and desire to profit from a boom economy delayed the establishment of permanent municipal machinery. That came about only with territorial status and the completion of the railroad in May, 1869, when those permanent communities were consolidated. In the meantime, the city governments limped along as best they could. On occasion the mayor resigned his office upon realizing that he, or his council, was too inexperienced to perform civil service. Laramie mayor M.C. Brown tendered his resignation in a letter to the people published in the Frontier Index. "In consideration ... of the incompetency of many of the officers elected on the 2d of May A.D. 1868," he wrote, "I find it impossible for me to administer the city government...." 57 By contrast, Cheyenne mayor H.M. Hook performed so admirably that upon moving to Green River City he was elected to office there. 58 Turnover in city office was high. The success or failure of elected officials in the U.P. towns rested squarely on one predominate theme: the protection of life and property and the maintenance of public order. The achievement of that order was not attained solely by electing officers and establishing city codes, or even enforcement by municipal police forces. Frustrated by the rampant lawlessness hovering on the fringes of the community, the business class frequently turned to extra-legal measures of settling law and order. Accompanied by the tacit support of the railroad, these measures have since become recognized, like the symbol of the cowboy, as something uniquely American. "The gang of garroters from the railroad towns east, who are congregating here, are ordered to vacate this city or hang within sixty hours from this noon. By order of "In almost all periods of their history, Americans have displayed a taste for violence that belies their belief in law and the fact of their political stability," commented social historian Carl N. Degler. "Considering the sparseness of settlements in the trans-Missouri West, the law was probably broken there more frequently than in any other region" 60 The instability of the U.P. frontier contributed to rampant crime in the railroad towns, and the absence of effective central authority to expunge crime stimulated vigilantism. It was here that the American frontier experience radically departed from that of Australia and Canada. While those countries were settling the interior at roughly the same time as the United States, they did not share this phenomenon. The reason for this lay in the role of the central government in establishing executive authority in advance of settlement. The violence that occurred in the Australian and Canadian backcountry was swiftly dealt with by representatives of the federal government, who had more than ample power to deal with unruly frontiersmen. Moreover, as agents of the government this authority was able to rise above local whims and pressures that would otherwise have deteriorated into lynch law. Finally, in Canada the Royal Mounted Police (established in 1874) were empowered to treat with the Indians--and then back the treaties against the encroachments of settlers. As a result Canada did not suffer the Indian wars that plagued her southern neighbor. While the several thousand soldiers of the U.S. Army struggled to preserve peace on the American frontier, no more than 300 Northwest Mounties were sufficient to do the same in Canada's West, even after the settlers came. 61 Hence, the fluid nature of the U.P. frontier, post-Civil War factionalism, the ethnic heterogeneity, and an unstable economy combined to create a volatile atmosphere. The absence of a sanctioned, disinterested executive authority in the railroad towns fostered the acceptance of vigilantism. "They hang a man here daily," noted one army officer in disgust. 62 Alexander Toponce viewed it differently: "I have heard of several ... being hung along the line of the Union Pacific railroad, both east and west, and it always had a good effect." 63 For all of its boosterism, the Frontier Index spoke frankly of the criminal activity infesting the railroad towns. If the crime that afflicted these communities was as varied as the inhabitants, it differed little in severity form what was then occurring in San Francisco's Barbary Coast, Baltimore's waterfront district, or Chicago's tenderloin. There was only more of it along the railroad. In Laramie the Index reported a confidence man who had falsely represented himself as a railroad agent looking for carpenters. After accepting five dollars in good faith money from several jobless individuals, and supplying them with bogus railroad tickets, the 'agent' disappeared. 64 Brawls were commonplace in the saloons; knifings were also not unusual. Shootings within city limits were rarer. Of more violent assaults garroting was preferred because it was quick and usually quiet: one man would throw a rope around the neck of an unsuspecting person and begin strangling while an accomplice rifled the victim's pockets. When shooting did occur, the newspaper duly reported it. Especially if the bullet narrowly missed the editor: "WHIR-R-R---A bullet came within a few feet of our writing table last night, so close that we dodged. It came from the revolver of Jack O'Neal in the neighborhood of the Star Restaurant, on Green Street [in Green River City], thus passing entirely through two rows of occupied buildings.... Five other shots were fired in the same random manner.... O'Neal was arrested and fined, though not half enough for such an offence." 65 Sometimes the shooting was not random, but neither was the intended victim hit. At Brownsville, near North Platte, "a man name John Wood accidentally shot himself on a Sunday morning while drawing his revolver to shoot a man in a gambling hall." With a straight face, one may assume, the editor reported: "He is now in the hospital and is doing well." 66 Shooting affrays occurred more frequently outside the towns. Meanwhile, individuals who left town without paying their bills were advertised in the Index, alongside warnings against drawing on drafts that were fraudulently obtained. Lastly, a bankrupt dance hall manager at North Platte "eloped" with a dancer's Saratoga trunk. "She gave the alarm, and the U.S. Marshall, with a squad of soldiers, pursued and captured him six miles from town." 67 The amount of fines realized by a city government changed from week to week, but in the week ending June 6, 1868 Laramie City had acquired $468.00 in penalties. "A summary of the whole shows 32 arrests upon the various charges of drunkenness, disorderly conduct, firing pistols, and females on the street in male's costume." Unfortunately, the city treasurer had absconded without the funds and, to the intense displeasure of the Frontier Index, with the unpaid printer's bill. 68 In hand with the criminal activity went another element that contributed to the instability of the U.P. frontier: labor unrest. Though the Frontier Index made but oblique reference to this, worker dissatisfaction frequently interrupted the construction of the railroad. Much of the problem stemmed from the unwillingness--or inability--of the railroad to pay its workers on time. The most famous incident in this regard was the kidnapping of Vice-president Durant in May, 1869. Enroute to the completion ceremony at Promontory, workmen halted his train at Piedmont, uncoupled his private car, and chained it to the track. Threatening harm in the event soldiers were summoned, the laborers demanded several thousands of dollars in back pay. Durant complied by wiring to Omaha for the funds, and a paymaster car shortly arrived on the scene. This was not the first sign of worker disaffection. On June 30, 1868 the Frontier Index published a correspondent's account of a graders' strike between North Platte and end of track: "They demand an increase in wages from two to three dollars a day plus board." The contractors were ordered to discharge and pay off their dissenting workmen. One contractor, either John or Lewis Carmichael, arrived with his men in the midst of the strike. They joined the protest, and in discharging them Carmichael was forced to provide back pay so they could continue west. Before long violence broke out. It was reported the following week that a striker from the Reynolds & Dowling outfit was shot by a ranchman selling liquor to the workmen. The strikers had passed an order around that anyone selling liquor to drunken men or otherwise interfering with the strike would be "cleaned out." "After giving them warning, they still sold liquor to the men, when the graders turned out and demolished some fourteen saloons." reported the correspondent. "During the row, Mike Meehan was shot and instantly killed." 69 The ranchman turned himself in to the military authorities at Fort Fred Steele. Usually the striking crews settled their differences and went back to work, or if discharged, bummed around and joined up with another outfit. Some even tried to make their way to Nevada to join the predominatly-Chinese gangs of the Central Pacific, and were reviled in the Frontier Index as "outrageous, wooden-headed fools." "We have been there and saw Chinamen living on less rice and fewer sage rats than any white man can," spat Legh Freeman. 70 Others never returned to the railroad, joining instead the ranks of highwaymen and thieves infesting the right-of-way. In any case, the contractors in charge of the men were as tough as any in their employ. McGee of the Chesbrough & McGee firm was respected by his men, who whispered, "Look out, here come Cinny" and made the dirt fly when they saw him approach. "Magee [sic] would size up the work done and if he was dissatisfied he would knock two or three of them down," recalled Alexander Toponce. "They were nearly all Irish and they seemed to think it was all right." 71 In one instance workmen were even used to settle lawlessness. When the hamlet of Julesburg, Colorado was taken over by criminals, and the resulting anarchy began disrupting railroad operations, Dodge wired ex-general Jack Casement to set matters right. "General," he later reported to Dodge, "they died in their boots but brought peace." 72 The autumn of 1868 saw a last push by the railroad toward the Utah border before the snows settled in. With the arrival of the tracks in Green River City, reported in the October 6 issue of the Frontier Index, businessmen again played the game of guessing where the winter terminus would be. After talking with U.P. personnel the Index announced that "Bear River Valley is the place which all of the railroad officials say is to be the ... great winter metropolis--the Shian No. 2." Restlessness charged the air, and the town's entrepreneurs did not tarry. "Messrs. Coburn & Smith, J.H. Voorheis, Frank L. Tilton, Rounds & Morris, Oliver Durant, S.F. Nuckolls & Co., and indeed all of the prominent business men of Green River City, have already bought lumber and are prepared to build at once.... 73 That same day, October 13, and old friend and advertiser dropped into Legh Feeman's office: Dr. J.N. Cunningham, late of Laramie City. "He purposes [sic] practicing in this city for a short time and then move on to Bear River with the rest of the world on wheels." Dr. Cunningham nearly had some business on his hands that afternoon, when words passed between J.M. Thurmond and Thomas J. Smith. Smith was candidate for county sheriff, and the argument centered on the elections being held that day. The two men resorted to knives and revolvers, but fortunately "Deputy Sheriff Ed. Gillman knocked Smith's pistol up and it was discharged into the air." 74 Two days after this incident Legh Freeman climbed into a wagon owned by a man named Kellogg. On October 15, 1868 the wagon departed the Jenks House in Green River City for Bear River Valley. The self-proclaimed "Star of Empire" led by the Lightning Scout of the Mountains wended westward to its eighth site of publication, pulled by a span of three-hundred-and-fifty-dollar bay horse. 75 By now Legh Freeman was a recognized figure along the U.P., well-known for his democratic views, his tales published under the pen name of Horatio Vattel, and his practical insistence on obtaining government postal service. Vattel, and his practical insistence on obtaining a government postal service. He applied in advance for a post office for Bear River City, got it, and was placed in charge. In gratitude his name was entered for mayor of the new community, albeit "very much against [my] will." Instead, in the election held October 23 a Colonel Johns was elected mayor, along with aldermen Young, Henry, Coburn, Bowers, and Humphrey. The usual city ordinances were passed, and railroad land agent Oliver Durant donated a town lot for a jail and city offices. By October 26 the jail committee had already collected $260.00 from business subscriptions. The need for a jail was pressing, and Charlie Barnum had his hands full. "We hope Marshall Barnum will not flinch in any instance from the duty imposed upon him in keeping his eyes on the villains now prowling around our city," editorialized the Index. That Barnum would be supported was implicit in a warning published in the newspaper directed at the :gang of garroters" from the railroad towns further east: they should go slow, else "they will find the place too hot to practice their vocation." Meanwhile, at the county level, H.K. Tompkins was elected sheriff of Carter county over Thomas J. Smith. 76 Out of a job, Smith joined the migration to Bear River Valley. The haste with which municipal elections were held reflected the tide of boomers that had built up along the railroad, and which was now sweeping toward Bear River. This town presented the final opportunity to profit from the railroad boom, being only eighty-five miles away from that seat of Mormondom, Salt Lake City. By the end of October, 1868 the tracklaying force was yet sixty miles east of Bear River City. Its arrival would signal the end of flush times, with profit thereafter accruing in the pockets of Utah's settled business community. In the meantime Legh Freeman's post office arrived, and all who were remotely connected with the railroad boom congregated at the new townsite as by magic. "The whole of Green River City, all of Benton, half of Rawling Spring [sic], half of Bilkville [Bryan] and three thousand laborers in the timber, coal mines, & railroad cuts are already here and hereabouts." Five thousand people in all, or so estimated the Frontier Index, whose editor had commenced operations south of the town, down-track near a cold water spring. As ever, Legh Freeman was optimistic. "This place is already outfitting the whole country westward to Humboldt Wells. Five thousand persons already obtain their mails at this post office. The town is the greatest success of any founded on the line of the Great National Highway. The stampede is the most complete. Houses and streets are built up by magic. Every branch of business is represented, wholesale and retail. Roughs stand no show...." 77 But of violence there was plenty, and the young town seemed to suffer more garrotings, shootings, and disturbances than any site previous--even Julesburg. With the end of the railroad in sight, there was a frenzied effort on the part of all to wring the last nickel from the economic boom it brought. The atmosphere was charged with activity; crime continued unabated, and tempers were short. On November 3, the day of the 1868 presidential election, a notice appeared in the Frontier Index encouraging all garroters to leave town or hang, cryptically signed by order of 'all good citizens.' Garrotings diminished but the crime wave continued. On the evening of November 10, in a desperate reply to the criminal element, three ne'er-do-wells aged 21 to 23 were lynched; their bodies were found hanging the next morning from the beam of an unfinished building across from the jail. They were Jimmy Powers, Jimmy Reed, and Little Jack O'Neal, whose careless gunplay in Green River had nearly ended Legh Freeman's career even as he sat at his desk. 78 This lynching, the election of the hated Grant to the presidency, and the burden of running a post office was too much for Legh Freeman to bear at one time. Had he have been superstitious, he would have chosen less controversial topics to editorialize upon in his Friday, November 13th issue. Instead he launched relentlessly abusive tirades against three separate foes, in language caustic enough to be remembered. His first target was the president-elect. Having supported Democratic presidential nominee Horatio Seymour, brother of the U.P.'s consulting engineer, and vice-presidential candidate Frank Blair, a government railroad commissioner, Freeman was unprepared for a Republican victory. His attack on "Grant the whisky bloated, squaw ravishing adulterer, monkey ridden, nigger worshiping mogul" was nothing less than incendiary. This was followed by a seething assault on Well, Fargo & Company for allegedly robbing mail from its own stages. Freeman promised that marked copies of the Index would be sent to the Postmaster-General "provided Wells Fargo & Co. do not steal them out of the sacks." By now he had lost his temper, and in his third--and most harmful--tirade Freeman openly supported a lynch law. For individual safety and overall effectiveness, membership in a vigilante organization required anonymity and circumspection. But a rumor started that Freeman was in charge of the Bear River vigilantes, and the rumor began when his policy of advertising errant accounts backfired. Though Freeman denied the allegation, his belligerent tone appeared to indicate otherwise. "It has been whispered that we are 'Chief of the Vigilantes,'" Freeman wrote in a column so titled. "The report was first instigated by one Charlie Stebbins, whom we advertised for failure to pay us a bill for job work delivered to him.... It is well known that wherever we have sojourned in the Territories, we have opposed violence in any form, and given the common law priority, but when very fiends assume to run our place of publication there are plenty of men who rather delight in doing dirty work of hanging without us, as was evidenced [November 10th] and as will be witnessed again if the ring leaders are found in town by midnight of this, Friday November the 13th." By this time several hundred graders had passed through Bear River City, including Lewis Carmichael's 300 men and the outfits of Reynolds & Dowling, Boyd & Caement, John Carmichael, and Chesbrough & McGee. 79 Nicknamed "Beartown" by the workers, the place was in full swing. Business was brisk everywhere, from the Arcade run by Rocky Rounds (formerly of the Rounds & Morris establishment in Green River City) to the famous mammoth Empire Tent, open at all hours. Woods & Kenyon's wholesale house was booming, so too that of S.F. Nuckolls, an old hand at turning profit in the U.P. towns. Ever quickening, the arrival of the boisterous workers, the jumbled noise of the gambling halls, the twin pace of business and crime was building a crescendo. Meanwhile, like sparks floating about powder kegs, issue of the Frontier Index reached the outlying grading camps. Alexander Toponce, the intrepid restaurateur and beef contractor, witnessed the explosion on November 20, 1868. "One day a gang of graders came to town and got drunk and raised such a row that the city marshal arrested three of them and put them in the lock-up, a little new cabin just built of green logs. Next day the paper come out with an article saying that "Beartown had stood enough from the rowdy and criminal element and it was time to call a halt." And more just like it. The next morning I saw about fifty of the [Chesbrough & McGee] outfit coming along the track. They had read the paper. The leaders had ropes in their hands and they called out as they passed me that they were going to hang the editor. There was a mule standing ready saddled at the door of my tent and I jumped on him and raced down to the editor's tent. The crowd got to the front door as I got to the back of the tent. I cut a long slit in the back of the tent with my knife and got him out on the mule and he escaped. They simply ruined that printing office and you can depend on it, I did nothing to interfere further." After finishing with what was left of the Frontier Index, the graders went across the grade into town. Business men closed their doors and locked them; about a dozen, armed with rifles, gathered in S.F. Nuckolls's store for defense. "The leader of the mob was a man named Tom Smith. He led them to the lock-up and they tried to liberate the prisoners. They tried to burn down the jail but the logs were too green. The mob run the town from eight o'clock to four in the afternoon, getting drunker and more dangerous all the time. About four, Smith knocked on the door of Nukles [sic] store and when the proprietor opened the door a little and advised them to get out of town Smith shot him in the leg. Then the shooting became general. It was a regular battle. The men with rifles barricaded in the store opened up and swept the streets. Seventeen men were killed in the mob and as many more were wounded, some of whom died." 80 Given his ancestry, Toponce may have been the owner of Frenchy's Restaurant which was advertised in the October 30 issue of the Frontier Index. In any event following Freeman's escape to Fort Bridger the town of Bear River City was clamped under martial law. One source mitigated Smith's role in the melee. Following his defeat for the position of county sheriff, the former New York policeman ended up working for the Chesbrough & McGee firm in Bear River City. According to Stuart Henry, one of Smith's friends had been jailed for being drunk and disorderly. Smith's camp companions arrived, destroyed the Frontier Index, liberated the prisoners in the jail, and were beginning to torch the structure when Smith happened along. "The vigilance committee had, in the meantime, armed and gathered in a log storeroom, about fifty yards away. Smith, roused to fury, ran to the front of the store, and emptied both of his revolvers into the barricaded vigilantes, but fortunately killed no one, although he received several shots from the vigilantes. Despite several fearful wounds, he coolly marched off to a friend's house, a block of so away, where for a time his life hung in the balance...." 81 The Salt Lake Telegraph reported initially 25 dead and 60 wounded, but later revised those figures downward to 14 dead and 35 wounded. 82 Life was more subdued after the shock of the riot passed, but the town did not last long beyond it. With the coming of the railroad the company chose to amass its facilities at Evanston, eleven miles away, and Bear River City was no more. With demise of Bear River City the Union Pacific boom towns petered out. As the railroad entered Utah, the itinerant profiteers met with increasing competition from the thrifty business community established by Brigham Young. In addition, many of the grading contracts had been let to Mormon firms, and the criminal element found slim pickings among them. Most importantly, Utah had had a two-decade head start at settlement, and the conditions that permitted the rise and fall of uninhabited boom towns in Nebraska and Wyoming no longer existed here. The last gasp of the Hell on Wheels town development was Washatch, inside the Utah border. A brief resurrection was predicted at Corinne, located six miles west of Brigham City astride a popular freighting route to Montana. This town lived up to the reputation of its forebears, and even persisted after the railroad's completion as notorious Gentile aberration within a staid Mormon territory. Nevertheless, Corinne differed in that there was no concerted rush for profits, no leapfrogging from a previously abandoned town site as was the case in Nebraska and Wyoming. For by now the railroad was all but finished, and as one work gang dispersed after another, so melted away the entrepreneurial boomers and gambling hall parasites. On May 10, 1869 the railroad was completed at Promontory Summit. On hand were fourteen tent structures, most of them hastily-assembled grog shops from the Deadfall and Blue Creek camps on the east slope of the Promontory Mountains. This was not a platted townsite, nor had a town in any way developed there prior to the coming of the tracklayers. Though a small community sprouted afterward, and included restaurants, gambling halls, and saloons, Promontory did not fit Hell on Wheels mold. It was rather another of the myriad stations along the right-of-way, a brief terminus where passengers changed trains, a place notable only for being the meeting point of two railraods. It never held a candle to North Platte, Green River, or Bear River City, which was the true conclusion of the 'world on wheels.' As a postscript, the Bear River City riot affected the careers of four men. Following the disorder Legh Freeman returned from Fort Bridger to find his printing outfit totally destroyed. Vowing to re-equip and follow the railroad to its conclusion, he instead returned home to Culpeper, Virginia. There, clad in buckskins, Horatio Vattel gave a public lecture on his adventures as the Lightning Scout of the Mountains. 83 He eventually returned to the West, mounting new publishing ventures only to watch them collapse in Utah, Idaho, Montana, and the Pacific Northwest. Becoming increasingly wistful and unhappy, he nostalgically would recall his youthful days spent roving the frontier while the Union Pacific was under construction. His son attained the success that evaded the founder of the Press on Wheels, culminating in the rise of the Miller Freeman Publishing Company. Legh Freeman died February 1, 1915 in North Yakima, Washington. Had Legh's more self-restrained brother been running the newspaper at the time, the Bear River City riot might not have taken place. Following the affair Frederick Freeman left the publishing field altogether. In later years he blamed the Union Pacific for inciting the riot against him and his brother, claiming that the railroad coveted some coal deposits that the Freemans had staked in the vicinity. His colony of Freemansburg, designed to be a partnership with the Mormons, never succeeded. It presently lies under the waters of Lake Mead. 84 Alexander Toponce continued to profit from the transportation industry in the intermountain West, becoming finally a Utah rancher and mayor of Corinne. His prosperity was cut short when a trusted co-investor allegedly bilked him out of much of his fortune. Toponce ultimately settled in Ogden, where he wrote his autobiography in 1919 chronicling a lively 63 years spent in the West. Thomas James Smith acquired notoriety and a reputation for courage and coolness for his role in the riot. He became sheriff of Kit Carson, Colorado in 1869, and the following year marshal of Abilene, Kansas. He relied on words and fists to enforce the law, rather than firearms, and he quickly won the respect of rough-and-tumble Texas cowhands. On November 2, 1870 Smith rode off to arrest a farmer sought for murder. In the ensuing scuffle, the marshal was nearly decapitated with an ax. "So died a man whose motto and style was 'Anybody can bring in a dead man.'" 85 Bear River City had the features of all the U.P. towns rolled into one. It was platted and populated in advance of the railroad construction. Its settlement was attended by uncertainty as to its permanence. Assured of its importance by the railroad establishment, the rush began: boomers, speculators, and criminals streamed to the site, seeking nothing beyond individual profit. To protect its interests, the business class sought social control aimed at the protection of life and property. Law and order was maintained through the election of picked businessmen to public office, and through the covert, extra-legal practice of vigilantism. But the shifting, heterogeneous population of laborers, businessmen, and criminals was a dangerous mix that ultimately required military intervention. The itinerant Frontier Index boosted the interests of the business class while neglecting those of the workmen; in pushing social constraints too carelessly Legh Freeman fomented a riot that nearly took his life. The Bear River City riot pointed up the instability of the boom towns along the Union Pacific frontier--those brief, fragile communities remembered simply as Hell on Wheels. ENDNOTES 1. Nellie Snyder Yost, "The Union Pacific," in Trails of the Iron Horse, ed. by Don Russell (New York: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1975), p.23. 2. Edwin L. Sabin, Building the Pacific Railway (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1919), pp. 254-5. 3. Ibid. 4. Thomas H. Heuterman, Movable Type: A Biography of Legh R. Freeman (Ames: The Iowa State University Press, 1979), pp. 144-5. 5. Ibid., pp. 12-13. 6. Ibid., p. 3 7. Ibid., p. 31. 8. Ibid., p.17. 9. Ibid., p. 18 10. Robert G. Athearn, Union Pacific Country (Chicago: Rand McNally and Company, 1971), p. 39. 11. John Charles Currier, "First Train West," in Sacramento County Historical Society Golden Notes, ed. by Joseph A. McGowan (April, 1969), p. 9. 12. Heuterman, Movable Type, p. 256. 13. Ibid., p.24. 14. Ibid. 15. Ibid., p. 30. 16. Sabin, Pacific Railway, p. 256. 17. Gerald M. Best, Iron Horse to Promontory (San Marino, Cal.: Golden West Books, 1969), p. 133. 18. Heuterman, Movable Type, p. 30. 19. Sabin, Pacific Railway, p. 173. 20. Best, Iron Horse, p. 130. 21. Frontier Index (Green River City, Dakota Territory), September 22, 1868. 22.Ibid. (Laramie City, Dakota Territory), June 5, 1868. 23. Ibid. 24. Ibid. 25. Ibid. 26. Ibid., July 23, 1868. 27. Heuterman, Movable Type, p. 29. 28. Frontier Index (Green River City, Dakota Territory), August 25, 1868. 29. Ibid., October 6, 1868. 30. Ibid. (Laramie City, Dakota Territory), May 5, 1868. 31. Ibid. (Green River City, Dakota Territory), October 2, 1868. 32. Ibid., September 15, 1868. 33. Robert G. Athearn, "The Firewagon Road," Montana, the Magazine of Western History (April, 1970), p. 4. 34. Grenville M. Dodge, How We Built the Union Pacific Railway (Denver: Sage Books, 1965) p. 31. 35. Athern, "Firewagon Road," p. 9. 36. Ibid. 37. Dodge, How We Built, p. 117. 38. Athearn, Union Pacific Country, p. 66. 39. Howard R. Lamar, ed., The Readers Encyclopedia of the American West (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1977), p. 1291. 40. Frontier Index (Green River City, Dakota Territory), August 18, 1868. 41. Ibid. 42. Ibid., September 1, 1868. 43. Ibid., September 18, 1868. 44. Heuterman, Movable Type, p. 63. 45. Ibid., p. 30 46. Athearn, Union Pacific Country, 67. 47. Ibid. 48. Frontier Index (Green River City, Dakota Territory), August 21, 1868. 49. Ibid., August 25, 1868. 50. Ibid., August 28, 1868. 51. Ibid., September 11, 1868. 52. Alexander Toponce, Reminiscences of Alexander Toponce (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press 1971), p. 140. 53. Ibid., pp. 146-7. 54. Frontier Index (Green River City, Dakota Territory), August 11, 1868. 55. Ibid. 56. Dodge, How We Built, p. 118. 57. Frontier Index (Laramie City, Dakota Territory), June 16, 1868. 58. Ibid., July 13, 1868. 59. Ibid. (Bear River City, Dakota Territory), November 3, 1868. 60. Carl N. Degler, The Age of the Economic Revolution 1876-1900 (Glenview, Ill.: Scott, Foresman and Company, 1967), p. 67. 61. Ibid. p. 68. 62. Currier Diary, p. 16. 63. Toponce, Reminiscences, p. 144. 64. Frontier Index (Laramie City, Dakota Territory), June 16, 1868. 65. Ibid. (Green River City, Dakota Territory), September 29, 1868. 66. Ibid. (Laramie City, Dakota Territory), July 3, 1868. 67. Ibid., June 30, 1868. 68. Ibid., June 6, 1868. 69. Ibid., July 3, 1868. 70. Ibid. (Green River City, Dakota Territory), September 29, 1868. 71. Toponce, Reminiscences, p. 142. 72. Dodge, How We Built, p. 119. 73. Frontier Index (Green River City, Dakota Territory), October 13, 1868. 74. Ibid. 75. Ibid. (Bear River City, Dakota Territory), October 30, 1868. 76. Ibid. 77. Ibid. 78. Ibid., November 13, 1868. 79. Ibid., November 10, 1868. 80. Toponce, Reminiscences, pp. 142-3. 81. Emmett D. Chisum, "Boom Towns on the Union Pacific," Annals of Wyoming (Spring, 1981), p. 12. 82. Heuterman, Movable Type, p. 52. 83. Ibid., p. 55 84. Ibid., p. 53. 85. Lamar, Readers Encyclopedia, pp. 1124-5.
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