A little Twain side-story on the Stagecoach Road. Scott Holmes video mentions the stage bearing Sam and Orion passing over South Pass in Wyoming, That road was opened by Col. Frederick W. Lander during the 1850s. Further west the stage turned south off the Lander Overland Emigrant Wagon Road, which ran from eastern Wyoming to Honey Lake Valley, Calif. Lander's chief operating engineer on the ground was William H. Wagner, an engineer highly praised by Col. Lander. In early 1861 Wagner was in Washington, D.C. reporting to Congress on the successful road project when Nevada Territorial Governor James W. Nye recruited him to come help establish Nevada Territory. While waiting for the first legislature to create posts within the new administration, at Gov. Nye's request in August 1861, Wagner staked and mapped a proposed toll road from Carson City up Kings Canyon to Glenbrook, Lake Tahoe, and then south around the lake to California. Wagner was among the 13 roomers living with Sam Clemens at Mrs. Murphy's. In Roughing It, Wagner is mentioned in the Tarantula attack. When Wagner died suddenly in October 1861; Sam Clemens praised him in a letter to H.G. Phillips, saying in part: He is one of the few at whom the shafts of Slander were never aimed, and in whose presence against whom the hand of Malice was never lifted. The road Will Wagner laid out was built in 1863, by Butler Ives.
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On Sunday, November 5, 2017 11:42 PM, Scott Holmes <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
I have recently published the final video for the section of my Twain's
Geography web site entitled Mark Twain Goes West, centered on the first
section of Roughing It. This last video covers the final leg of the
journey from the West Gate to Carson City. This is the stretch Robert
Stewart was referring to in a recent post. The Clemens brothers took
the northern route which led them to Ragtown, often referred to as the
Dogleg, and Richard F. Burton, the year previous, took the direct route
south of Carson Sink, to Fort Churchill and into Carson City.
Twain's Geography, http://twainsgeography.com/ has been designed as a
set of on-line courses, based on Twain's travel books. Mark Twain Goes
West is one of the sections. http://twainsgeography.com/content/mark-t
wain-goes-west-roughing-it-lesson-1
I have recorded approximately 6 1/2 hours of narrative in 19 videos.
The videos are all hosted on YouTube and links to the videos are found
on the first page of Mark Twain Goes West. Most of the narrative is
actually derived from Burton's book "The City of the Saints". Twain
was not particularly interested in discussing the geography of the
journey and in fact admitted that he remembered very little of the
journey and relied on Orion's notes. Burton, on the other hand, went
into great detail about the journey. This is not to say that I
neglected Twain's observations. Certainly not.
There are nine sections that make up Mark Twain Goes West.
1. Richard Burton describes the possible routes west:
2. Burton provides a description of the territory, much of which
actually came from Army expeditions:
3. Both men took the steamer up the Missouri River, from St. Louis to
St. Joseph:
4. Burton describes the Concord Coach, the type of stagecoach used for
this journey:
5. Twain provides a colorful description of the hierarchy operating the
Overland Stage:
6. Stagecoach across the Great Plains, there is a 47 minute video using
Google Earth tours of the approximate route and maps of the approximate
locations for the stations along the route:
7. Stagecoach Over the Rockies, there are 6 videos:
8. In a Pioneer Land, Twain provides an important portrait of what it
is to find oneself in a foreign land, where one's values have been up-
ended:
9. Stagecoach Through Arid Lands, 11 videos of the journey from Salt
Lake City to Carson City, the most difficult part of the journey.
There is nothing new here about Mark Twain but perhaps there are points
of possible discovery regarding the environment through which he
traveled, on his way from piloting a steamship on the Mississippi to
becoming Mark Twain.
--
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of
in your philosophy.
http://bscottholmes.com
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