Moving the masses West!
By Bob Ford Special to
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I’m always talking to folks about a good story but a couple of people have asked me to take a position or make a comment on “stuff.” You should know the topics I try to avoid: current politics, religion, relationships and health. So if you’re a Libertarian agnostic going through a divorce while battling toenail fungus, I’m not your guy … I like history!
Union Gen. Grenville Dodge was commanding a division in the Army of the Tennessee when he was summoned to Washington D.C. by President Lincoln in 1863. Dodge thought he was in trouble. After Grant’s army was caught flat footed at Shiloh — leading to the bloodbath that followed — eastern politicians held a series of inquiries looking for a scapegoat. Dodge figured it was his turn.
Once in the Capitol, Lincoln greeted Dodge surprisingly as an old acquaintance because, he was. They had met years earlier in Council Bluffs, Iowa, where Dodge lived before the war. Dodge was a civil engineer and had a long conversation with the future President on the porch of the Pacific House Hotel. They discussed the best route for a transcontinental railroad … Lincoln never forgot.
Even though the nation was in the midst of an incredibly all-consuming Civil War, the president was thinking of the future.
The Hannibal-St. Joseph Railroad had been completed in 1859 with a train arriving in St. Joseph. Symbolically, on board was a bottle of Mississippi River water to be poured into the Missouri.
During the war, bushwhackers sabotaged rails and fired stations as an act against Union authority. When the Platte River bridge caught fire — causing an engine and parts of the train to plunge into the river on Sept. 3, 1861, killing several — the shareholders of the railroad, mostly from Boston, had had enough.
To continue the railroad west from St. Joseph made practical sense, but with the risk and danger, even a regiment of Union soldiers stationed along the right-a-way spanning the state could not guarantee anyone’s safety.
The transcontinental route would have to move north, Lincoln and the shareholders knew it … losing money but out of harm’s way.
Before trains, steamboats and trails were the main means of moving settlers west. Once in St. Joseph or other cities along the Big Muddy, brave men and women could outfit and join a wagon train headed out.
The evolution of transportation, from walking to space travel, tells the story of innovative people who developed the United States.
It’s hard to imagine native Indians without horses but it’s true. Christopher Columbus introduced the first horse to America on his second voyage. Natives lived thousands of years traveling by foot following a food source. It took centuries for the horse to be fully assimilated throughout the country.
Each advancement in transportation was a new chapter in human movement, whether it be a mechanical invention or animal introduction.
Steamboat travel in the 1800s was treacherous.
“If airplanes fell out of the sky as often as steamboats sank, no one would fly,” quipped David Hawley, director of the Arabia Steamboat Museum in Kansas City.
In those days however, the steamboat business was quite lucrative. With one successful, staying afloat season, a boat could become profitable. People just kept on coming, determined to head west no matter the risk.
Lincoln took a steamboat to visit Dodge in Council Bluffs. His beautiful house/museum — which I have visited, still stands on the bluffs overlooking the city and the Missouri River basin.
If a boat was headed up river it was full of livestock, dry goods, shoes, liquor, lumber, firearms, hardware and people to settle the west. If the boat was coming down stream the cargo would be completely different.
The fur trade would become America’s first fashion-driven industry. The world used furs for style and warmth with the United States frontier, with a seemingly endless supply.
Beaver was the most plentiful and useful, but frontiersmen trapped everything from wolves to muskrats. Furs were exclusively used well into the 20th century when the invention of synthetic materials occurred, keeping us artificially warm.
Gary Chilcote told me all the elegant Victorian furniture for the Patee House Hotel came up river by steamship.
We will continue to look at the evolution of transportation in the future but after river and train travel, the next chapter involves roads and the internal combustion engine.
Early cars weren’t made for rough roads. Changes had to be made to make vehicles viable to become mainstream. The masses and industry were demanding it.
Automobiles and industrial advancements created some of the largest companies in the world, all focused on one product .. oil.
Enter Gen. John J. Pershing and his frustration with how World War I ended. He was convinced another war was looming … sooner than later.
As said, it was his 1922 military road map of the United States — meant to connect military installations — that would be the next chapter in transporting people. More on that next chapter and the Interstate Highway System developed from that map to come.
The evolution of movement allows mankind to take strides that seem to satisfy restless people for a time, but the next generation always wants better, faster and more convenient. They usually get it, I wonder what’s next?
