This Day…

1865 – Although it has been three years since passage of the Pacific Railway Act, the Union Pacific Company only now lays its first rail out of Omaha, Nebraska.  Progress is extremely slow at first, averaging only one mile per week.

1846 – Commodore John Sloat lands at Monterey and claims possession of California for the United States as he hoists the Stars and Stripes.

1899 – Black Jack Ketchum got into an argument over a card game with two miners in a saloon near Camp Verde, Arizona and killed them both.

1882 – Prominent Coloradoans, notably Horace Tabor and William Loveland,  builder of the Colorado Central Rail Road and owner of the Rocky Mountain News, organize the National Mining and Industrial Exposition in Denver.  Its purpose is to advertise and promote the state of Colorado, its resources, and its potential for future growth.

1845- Mexican War Approaches; Texas is formally guaranteed protection by US troops if the Republic consents to the terms of the treaty.

1873 – Horace French’s horse was killed in the Sutton-Taylor feud near Clinton, Texas.  John Meador was wounded in the leg, but the Taylors once again missed Bill Sutton.

In celebration of the nation’s centennial, a special Transcontinental Express arrives in San Francisco from New York in a record-breaking 83 hours and 39 minutes.  It will be 50 more years before such service is instituted on a daily basis.

The first two volumes of Theodore Roosevelt’s The Winning of the West are published.  Roosevelt’s action-packed drama traces the spread of the United States across the continent, from the day Daniel Boone first pierced the Cumberland Gap in 1765 to the day Davy Crockett died at the Alamo in 1836.  He will complete two additional volumes in 1896.

1874 – John Wesley Hardin celebrated his 21st birthday in Comanche, Texas.  He won heavily betting on horse races and finished the day by killing Deputy Sheriff Charles Webb.  Hardin escaped the pursing posse but his brother, Joe, and Bud and Tom Dixon were soon caught and lynched by townsmen.

President Buchanan, after hearing reports from Utah’s territorial judges in Washington, sends a U.S. Army contingent to the territory; he is convinced that the region is in a ‘state of rebellion.’  Many of the reports he has heard are exaggerated.