Jackass Mail Run

The Real “Jackass Mail”

By Dan L. Hogan

As we celebrate the annual running of the Jackass Mail Run, it has often been asked from where did this dubious name come from. Most people do not know that the name of the Jackass Mail has a real historical background in California. To explain this name, we must roll back to the time when California was a young state in the Union. Back before the Civil War, when communication with the East, and the outside world in general, was a real problem for residents of California.

Congress had recently authorized the U.S. Postal Service to award federally subsidized contracts to firms who would deliver mail and passengers to California in a safe and speedy manner. One of these firms, the famous California Stage Company, was headed by a staging pioneer named James Birch.

In 1856, James Birch, president of one of the most powerful express companies, The California Stage Company, left the firm and set out to recruit a federally subsidized over-land mail contract.

Also by this time, the United States Postmaster General, Aaron Venable Brown, had been given authority by Congress to establish over-lad mail and Passenger routes to California. Congress had been split over the issue of the exact route to California due to pro and anti-slavery factions not being able to agree. Therefore, Brown, a southerner from Tennessee, ordered work to begin on several southern travel routes such as the Santa Fe Trail and the Gila Trail. It was of course no coincidence that all these routes past through Texas, a slave state.

It was in this extreme southern region that Brown also established another route; a slow-moving, 1476 mile postal route extending to California. Selecting the village of San Antonio as the eastern terminus, Brown had the route overlap the San Francisco-El Paso route as far west as El Paso and proceed westward over the prairies and sagebrush to San Diego. This route was given the route number 8076.

It was June 1857 before the contract was let for the establishment of what was officially called the San Antonio-San Diego Mail Line. The contract was awarded to none other than James Birch. The San Antonio-San Diego Mail Line was to provide semi-monthly service on a thirty-day schedule. For this, Birch would receive $150,000 per year subsidy from the government.

In less than thirty days, Birch, the capable veteran stage man, dispatched the first mail west from San Antonio. Mules, rather than horses, were to pull the coaches and for this reason and the fact that pack mules actually carried the mail over the final 180 mile stretch from Ft. Yuma to San Diego, Birch’s new venture was more commonly known as the “Jackass Mail Line”. The departure dates were set for the 9^th and 24^th of each month.

Birch’s superintendent, one Isaiah Woods, personally traveled to New York and returned with eleven coaches, wagons, and sets of harness. In his journal, Woods noted that the line had more than 200 mules and seven coaches with three additional being built in San Diego by carpenter John Van Alst and blacksmith Robert D. Israel.

On July 9, 1857 Woods started the first mail sack off for San Diego with James E. Mason who traveled by horseback to El Paso. He also sent along a crew of guards and station keepers with a herd of mules for establishing and stocking relay stations along the way. From El Paso, Mason and a crew of guards took a coach as far as Cienega de Suarez near the San Pedro River. There they were overtaken by a second party headed by Isaiah Woods and Henry Skillman with another coach. Both traveled to the Pima Villages beyond Tucson. There, Mason and Woods took both mail sacks and pushed on to San Diego atop miles arriving on August 31. Meanwhile Burch, who was in New York putting he finishing touches on his contract, set out for San Francisco via Panama to wind up affairs there.

The city, still more than a Mexican pueblo, went wild with joy. The residents of the plaza, shouting and cheering, ringing bells and “a hundred anvils” were exploded. An old cannon roared out a welcome as long as the powder lasted. The San Diego Herald reported that “Today arrived the first mail from San Antonio, Tx. Making the journey in 34 traveling days.” and “Complete triumph of the southern route notwithstanding the croaking of the opponents of the administration.”

The most difficult part of the trip had been the last 180 miles from Ft. Yuma across what is now the rich Imperial Valley north to circle the Laguna Mountains by way of Cooke’s Wagon Road up rugged Vallecito Canyon to Warner’s Ranch, then southward over what is now U.S. Highway 385 to San Diego.

At this same time, August 20 to be exact, Birch, having placed all affairs in order, took another steamer from San Francisco for his return trip home to Swansea, Massachusetts via Panama. Three weeks into the trip, on September 12, the steamer, Central America went down in a hurricane off the coast of Florida. During this time, Woods left San Diego for the return trip to San Antonio establishing and stocking more relay stations along the way. In doing so, he obligated Birch for many thousands of dollars in expenses not knowing that Birch had been lost at sea.

There were 87 stations listed on the itinerary, but only three, San Antonio, El Paso, San Diego, could really be called stations. Many so called stations were merely a brush corral and an adobe hut and others were just camping places. The line employed 65 men, 50 coaches (some were ambulances), and 400 mules. Only 50 trips were made before it was downsized in December 1858.

When word of Birch’s death finally did reach the southwest, creditors began clamoring for payment, but the Birch estate was tied up in probate court and no funds were available. Postmaster Brown then transferred the contract over to George H. Giddings and R. E. Doyle, operator of the mail between San Antonio and Santa Fe. Giddings and Doyle formed the firm Giddings & Doyle to operate the “Jackass Line” and retained Isaiah Woods as the superintendent.

In advertising the line, Giddings & Doyle called attention to its new coaches, each drawn by six mules. Through 1857, however, there remained a 180-mile stretch on the western end over which it was said, “We cross on mule pack”. The fare was $200 and at best, there was little luxury and passengers suffered great hardships. Some traveler’s tales of these hardships included descriptions of the route as being “from no place through nothing to nowhere”. This helped to warn off customers. The local San Diego paper listed the clothing and gear on needed to endure the Jackass Line”. One Sharps rifle and 100 rounds, a Colt and tow pounds of lead, a knife, a pair of thick wool pants, a half dozen pairs of thick socks, six undershirts, three overshirts, a wide-awake hat, a cheap sack coat, an overcoat, one pair of blankets in summer and two in winter, gauntlets, needles, pins, a sponge, hair brush, comb, soap, two pairs of thick drawers, and three or four towels.

One passenger who wrote of his experience was Charles F. Hunning, who made a trip eastward from San Diego. At that time, the Apaches in Arizona as well as the Comanche in Texas were in a particularly hostile mood. Hunning wrote that east of Tucson: “…we had a very good coach, plenty of mules, and seven men well armed with Colts and Sharps rifles, not to mention two quarts of whiskey taken along by the guards”.

Another traveler, Phocion R. Way, rode on the route from San Antonio to Tucson between May and June, 1858. He wrote that “The mail company do not run their stages farther than here, and those who paid their passage through must ride over a sandy waste on mule back and furnish the mule themselves, or stay here and get the fever and argue. This is a most rascally imposition and the company will very likely have to pay for it. There is no place to board and not much to eat… they could procure nothing and were compelled to live on the remains of their provisions they had on the road…” In spite of all these hardships, Giddings & Doyle proudly advertised:

OVERLAND TO TEXAS

WHICH HAS BEEN IN SUCCESSFUL OPERATIONS SINCE JULY 1857 ARE TICKETING PASSENGERS THROUGH TO SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS AND ALSO TO ALL INTERMEDIATE STATIONS. PASSENGERS AND EXPRESS MATTER FORWARDED IN NEW COACHES DRAWN BY SIX MULES OVER THE ENTIRE LENGTH OF OUR LINE, EXCEPTING FROM SAN DIEGO TO FT. YUMA. A DISTANCE OF 180 MILES, WHICH WE CROSS ON MULE PACK. PASSENGERS GUARANTEED IN THEIR TICKETS TO RIDE IN COACHES, EXCEPTING THE 180 MILES ABOVE STATED. PASSENGERS ARE TICKETED FROM SAN DIEGO TO:

FORT YUMA,

MARICOPA WELLS,

TUCSON,

LA MESILLA,

FORT FILLMORE,

EL PASO,

FORT BLISS,

FORT DAVIS,

FORT LOUISON,

FORT LANCASTER,

FORT HUDSON,

FORT CLARK, AND

SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS

By September 1858, much of the usefulness of the “Jackass Line” had come to an end when operations of the Butterfield & Overland Mail began. Thereafter, Butterfield handled the business over 600 mile section of the “Jackass Line” between El Paso and a point near San Diego, thus cutting it in two. Even so, and contrary to all expectations, the San Antonio-San Diego Mail Line, so often the butt of western jokes, heal on until August 1861 providing service first between San Antonio to El Paso, and Yuma to San Diego. Then in 1860 this latter route was cancelled thus leaving the Texas end of the line until it too was terminated.

Bibliography

Diary of Phocian R. Way, William A. Duffen ed.
Overland via Jackass Mail in 1858, Part II. Arizona and the West Vol. 2, No. 2. 1960.
Pourade, Richard F., The Silver Dons, San Diego, 1963.
Wagoner, Jay J., Early Arizona, University of Arizona, 1975.