BIOGRAPHIES - LORIN FARR PART 17

COMMUNICATION AND TRANSPORTATION

Stagecoach lines carried the early mail into and from Ogden. In 1851 a post office was established in Ogden City with Issac Clark as postmaster. At first mail came once a week into Ogden City from Salt Lake which later increased to twice a week. Ogden became the mail distribution center for the entire Weber Valley. One stagecoach driver, Dad Streeter, described his life as a stagecoach driver. He said he would have four to eight horses hitched to a Concord Coach. The size of the coach and number of horses depended on the number of passengers being carried. Some of the rigs could carry up to 20 passengers with their luggage. Average speed was 10 miles per hour over good and bad roads. A driver would drive the coach twenty miles and then there would be a change of horses by men or boys waiting at each station. The orders to the drivers were to allow no one except an officer of the company or a lawman to ride upon the boot with you. Eighty miles was a day's driving and if you didn't make your stations on time you got fired. If a horse dropped dead, cut him out of the team and leave him for someone to come back and retrieve the harness. One day Dad Streeter had a fat passenger who became violently ill inside from the swaying of the coach. Dad let him up on the boot which almost proved disastrous. Coming out of Sidney, Nebraska they came up to a steep grade known as Break Neck Hill. It had a long steep grade going down into Fort Robinson. There was snow on the ground so Dad new his brakes would not work. He reached for the rough-lock to pull it on but learned to his horror that it was not there, someone had removed it. So he was forced to drive on whipping the horses ever faster so they would not get tangled in the lines and cause a massive spill and perhaps death to all. Lashing the leaders with all his might, the fat man made a grab for his lines to stop him. He held him off as they came to the bottom of the hill safely only to find themselves with their wheels caught in a small stream throwing him and his large passenger through the air fifty feet. Fortunately there were no major injuries but the passenger was furious and told the manager, a Mr. Crabtree about the reckless abandon his youthful driver and that he should immediately fire him. The manager looked at the fat man and said, 'You goggle eyed____! You can ride or walk, but that kid is the best driver I've got!' He had driven almost a year without being late or having a wreck that the horses couldn't drag in.

The Pony Express began delivering the mail in 1860. They were the most daring and romantic mail carriers in United States History. A number of them were Utah boys. The youngest known mail carrier was Charles Orson Wheat, who at age thirteen, was a daring lad of great endurance. He signed up to ride from Salt Lake City to Nevada through a trackless waste. Many times he faced storms, hostile Indians and braved all dangers without complaining. On one occasion he rode into a station where everyone had been killed by Indians. He leapt on another steed and rode to the next station to report the tragedy. Many are the stories of these brave mail carriers who rode through all conditions to deliver the mail.

Edward Creighton of Omaha, Nebraska was the man who connected the East and the West by telegraph. He first connected Omaha with the East Coast. Then he began the project of connecting Omaha with the west coast. The erection of poles and wire began in 1861. One group of workmen began to work in Omaha going west and another group in San Francisco going east. In the latter part of 1861 their lines meet in Salt Lake City. Ogden at first got their messages in Salt Lake, but then a group of Utah men organized to take the telegraph to other Utah Settlements. In 1866 Brigham Young instructed the bishops to have the settlers unite with their funds and labor to complete telegraph communications from St. George up to Logan. The citizens were called without pay, as it were a mission, to labor on the telegraph. By January 1867 the task was complete and now Ogden had a telegraph office. With the completion of the railroad in 1869 Ogden would become the most important telegraph station in Utah.

The Deseret State Telegraph was opened in 1866 and the following dispatch and reply was sent along the line on Dec. 1, 1866.

To President Lorin Farr and Bishop Chauncey West and to the Saints of the norther country, who gave up freely when called upon.

Greeting: 'In my heart I dedicate the Line which is now completed, and being completed, to the Lord God of Israel, whom we serve, and for the building up of His kingdom; praying that this and all other improvements may contribute to our benefit and the glory of our God, until we can waft ourselves by the power of the Almighty from world to world to our fullest satisfaction.'

BrighamYoung

And the reply from Ogden

President Brigham Young

'From our hearts we say 'Amen' to the dedication which you have just uttered, and we congratulate you, as the great mover of this enterprise, on its successful accomplishments thus far, considering it is one of the great helps in the building up of the kingdom of our God. We trust that not only will the Saints who have contributed to this great work continue their efforts, but that others will also assist in developing other improvements for the benefit of God's work. May you long live to comfort the Saints, and by their integrity be comforted.'

Lorin Farr

Chauncey W. West

Deseret State Telegraph Line was organized early in 1867 as a corporation. Brigham Young was elected president, D.H. Wells as vice president, William Clayton as secretary, George Q. Cannon, as treasurer, Edward Hunter, George A. Smith, A.O. Smoot, , Erastus Snow, Joseph A. Young and Ezra T. Benson as directors. The Deseret News of January 23, 1867 reported the completion of the telegraph line from Logan to St. George. The article said that this accomplishment was another evidence of the wisdom, care and thought of President Young for everything that effects the welfare of the Saints.

In 1876 Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. By 1879 Ogden had the first telephone system in the state of Utah. By the close of the nineteenth century, the citizens of Ogden and Weber County had the best telephone system found in the United States at that time.

The first transportation in Ogden were horses, buggies and wagons. The early pioneers traveled the old Indian and trapper trails. As the communities developed all able bodied men were employed in constructing more usable roadways. Brigham Young granted Captain James Brown the right to construct bridges over the Weber and Ogden rivers for travelers. $1,000 was granted out of the public treasury to begin the construction. All travelers, their wagons and animals were charged anywhere from 5 cents to two dollars to cross the bridges. These bridges were to be turned over to the road commission in five years to become the property of the territory. Public highways were to be built and maintained by appointed commissioners financed by a poll tax upon the citizens. Before the bridges some people lost their lives trying to ford the rivers especially during spring run off.

The Ogden Street Railway Company was incorporated on May 29, 1883. Lorin Farr was one of the directors. The agreement was that the company would would have the railway extending from the 28 th Street to Ogden River bridge on Washington and from Washington to the railway depot on 24 th and 25 th streets completed and in operation before June 1, 1884. Teams of mules pulled the cars and one of the early drivers was Lorin's son, John.

Before railroads and streetcars freighting by wagon was the means of obtaining needed supplies. Clothing, glass, nails, sugar, iron, farm implements, printing presses, equipment for gristmills, sawmills, blacksmith shops and dozens of other enterprises were needed. In the early days these items were hauled across the plains from the Missouri River in heavy wagons drawn by ox teams or mules. Many of these articles were shipped overland from the mid west to Utah. There was also a freight line from San Francisco to Utah. Goods would be shipped to the Pacific Coast by boat and then freighted in. Often the wagons coming from the east were loaded with necessary farm products for the miners in California and sent west. Then the wagons would be again loaded and sent back to Utah. The cost was $140 per ton from California to Utah. It would often be a two to three month trip due to road conditions. These freight wagons were the largest and strongest on record. After studying the requirements for freighting many were built in Sacramento. The wheels measured six feet across. Two to three of these huge wagons were hitched together and drawn by as many as sixteen oxen and later sixteen to twenty four mules. The lead wagons hauled 7,000 pounds and the trailers as much as 5,000 pounds each. These large wagons were known as 'prairie schooners.'

Lewis W. Shurtliff was one of the early Weber County freighters. His father, a wheelwright and joiner, constructed many of the wagons and other vehicles used in crossing the plains. When Lewis was sixteen he drove four yoke of oxen from the Missouri River to Salt Lake City. He made many trips hauling nails, clothing, shoes, books and other badly needed articles. In 1867 he went on a mission to Great Britain driving twenty mules as far as Julesburg, Nebraska. It took great skill to handle ten teams of mules as he sat on the wheel saddle mule and guided the animals with a jerk line. One of Shurtliff's trading parties would consist of 50 wagons in a train. Shurtliff was the captain with an assistant wagon master. Besides the drivers of each wagon there were night herders and drivers of beef cattle. The freighters averaged 15 to 18 miles a day. The sun could be blistering often over 100 degrees. At night the wagons were brought into a circle with the cattle in the center. This also formed a defense against marauding Indians. Dinner was cooked and most of the men were in bed by 9:00 P.M. Then they were off again at 7:00 A.M. in the morning.

John Franklin Gay was an early freighter. He came from a poor family and learned hard work early. He drove a four horse coach carrying both mail and passenger from Salt Lake to Laramie, Wyoming beginning at age 15. In 1868 he moved to Ogden and ended up marrying into Lorin Farr's family. He was employed by Farr, Benson and West who had a freighting contract for the Central Pacific Railroad Company. On one of his trips he he carried the payroll of $100,000 in gold. For safekeeping he hid the gold in a bag of oats. As the large wagon jolted over the rough dusty road, he was stopped by three armed men on horseback. They asked, 'Is this Bishop Chauncy West's outfit?' ' No, it is mine,' he calmly replied. The three horsemen galloped off leaving the treasure they sought buried in the oats. Bishop West had asked John to take the payroll that day as he felt nervous about doing it. Mr. Gay delivered it safely but was too frightened by the incident to ever do it again.

Apparently Lorin Farr was somewhat involved in freighting as Louisa A. McClellan reported in her history that Lorin Farr was captain of a freighting train consisting of seven wagons traveling from Salt Lake City to San Francisco. Louisa sat with her child a top a load of crates of eggs piled high. By journey's end some of the eggs were spoiled giving off a foul odor.

Later in Ogden the railroad would provide needed transportation as

the transcontinental road would be completed west of Ogden at Promontory Point. More is written of this in the chapter on the railroads in this book.