This Day…

1869-James Oliver patents a chilled-iron plow equipped with a smooth-surfaced moldboard that can slip through the hardened prairie soil without clogging. Other inventors will improve on his basic implement by covering the blade with an edge of tempered steel that can be removed for sharpening. By 1877 completely modern plows will be used.

1824-Jedediah Strong Smith, a guide for the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, leads a group of explorers through the South Pass of the Rocky Mountains to Wyoming.

1823 – Mexican Emperor Augustin de Iturbide confirms that the Texas land grant that had been made by Mexico to Moses Austin is tranferable to his son, Stephen.

2013-An internet user from Ottawa, Ontario continues to view every entry on my site. Would he or she please make themselves known.

1922-In San Francisco, Samuel Dashiell Hammett resigns from Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency. Hammet has worked since 1915 as a professional detective, and his experiences will become the basis for his trendsetting detective novels, several of which are set in Western locales. Butte, Montana, is the Poisonville of Red Harvest, and The Dain Curse, The Maltese Falcon, and The Thin Man take place in San Francisco.

After 52 days of work, the Colorado River is diverted to its old channel to empty into the Gulf of Mexico. The river was flooded many times-interfering with plans to exploit California’s Imperial Valley.

1805 – Meriweather Lewis acts as the midwife at the birth of a child to Sacajawea, a Shoshone squaw who will act as a guide for the expedition.

1802 – Albert Gallatin, Secretary of the Treasury, proposes that an allotment be made from the sales of public lands for the construction of roads from the Atlantic Ocean to the Ohio River.

1858 – President Buchanan recommends to Congress admission of the territory of Kansas as a state under the unpopular Lecompton Constitution.

1903 – A gang of masked men kill sheepman William Minnick and slaughter 200 of his sheep between Thermopolis and Meeteetse, Wyoming.