of the ground in great numbers and moved about the premises in every direction, doubtless pondering on the ruins. I could not help but feel sorry for what I had done in destroying their home Finally the vast army of insects got down to business, and from that time did lively work rebuilding that which I had thoughtlessly destroyed to obtain a little information. During the hot weather of midsummer, when the vermin were rapidly multiplying, it was the custom of the boys at the station to take their underclothing and blankets in the morning, spread them out on the ant-hills, and get them late in the afternoon minus the last grayback. This was the way they did their washing. They found it an excellent substitute for making the music of a John Chinaman on the wash-board. For a time, at least, after the "washing days," they could enjoy some rest. But in a few weeks it would become necessary to repeat the operation of a general clean-out by placing their garments and blankets at the disposal of the ants. Nearly every stage-driver, stock tender, and bull-whacker along the South Platte infested with this kind of vermin, during the days of overland staging and freighting, well remembers the valuable services of these ants. Mammoth ant-hills upward of a third of a century ago, were common in the south Platte valley in sight of the Rockies. While the excitement was still running high, and when it was feared there would be an Indian raid at Latham any hour, Captain Morgan, of the Colorado "100-days-ers," came down with his company from Denver, on Sunday, September 18, bringing a battery of several guns with him. The company at once went into camp, and pitched their tents a few hundred rods west of the station. This move gave all who had assembled at the station an opportunity to breathe a little easier. Most of the ranchmen, with their families, who had come to the place for safety, returned to their homes and resumed work. Matters immediately began to look brighter. In six days after Captain Morgan's arrival--Saturday, September 24--the arrival at Latham of a stage from Denver at five P. M., destined for Atchison, announced that the blockade on the Platte had been raised. This welcome news appeared to be the signal for a general rejoicing by all in the vicinity. They now could, after a period of six weeks, have the glorious privilege of once more communicating with loved ones and friends in the East. There were shouts |
of joy by the seventy-five passengers, some of whom had been waiting anxiously for weeks. All present joined in the demonstration, and cheer after cheer went up from the multitude. During the embargo an enormous amount of mail had accumulated. I dispatched, on the first east-bound stage that evening, forty-one sacks of mail matter, nearly a ton in weight, filling the whole inside of the coach and both the front and hind boots. I continued sending daily from the balance of it by each stage that departed down the Platte until it was soon all dispatched, giving the accumulated mail matter precedence over passengers. There was some kicking by the passengers who had been waiting so long, but there was no alternative. The mail must go at all hazards. In a few days all the mail from the Pacific had gone on its way east, and every one was apparently happy. The first mail to arrive at Latham from the east since the 15th of August came up on the 28th day of September. The occasion was one of rejoicing by every one about the premises and by the ranchmen in the vicinity. We had been waiting over six weeks for this mail. I can never forget how well pleased the people felt on the arrival of that long-looked-for first stage from the east. To most of them it seemed almost like being brought from darkness to light. The mail, to be sure, was due six weeks before; letters and papers having been lying all this time at Fort Kearney, because stages were unable to go east or west of that point. During the latter part of August and most of September, owing to the scarcity of food throughout Colorado, the situation looked critical in the extreme. For six weeks there had been no communication by mail with the East. All travel by the overland stage had been out off by the savages. No coaches ran along the Platte between Latham and Fort Kearney, a distance of 340 miles. A portion of the time all traffic was suspended from Fort Kearney east down the Little Blue for nearly 100 miles. The Indians were masters of the situation and virtually held undisputed possession of the line for fully 350 miles. Nearly all the stations were burned, and the torch was applied to the stage company's supply of hay and grain. The red devils likewise burnt a number of coaches, ran off a portion of the stage stock, and, at old Julesburg alone, it is said property to the amount of over $100,000 belonging to the stage proprietor was destroyed by them. While that critical period lasted, nearly every ranch along the |
Platte for hundreds of miles was vacated, owing to the horrible butcheries by the Indians. A dozen or more persons were killed and scalped at Plum Creek. Scores of families of ranchmen abandoned their homes and everything they possessed on the plains and, nearly frightened to death, joined those fleeing east for their lives. Everything they had, except what was hastily packed and taken along, was left to the mercy of the infuriated savages, who, after appropriating what they could easily get away with, applied the torch, and what remained was reduced to ashes. Of the stage property destroyed along the Platte at the various other stations, the amount was estimated at the time from $50,000 to $100,000. The Government was very slow in making a move. After it had finally decided to reopen the overland route and give protection to the stage company transporting the mails, soldiers were stationed along the Platte for more than 300 miles at intervals of a few miles. A mounted escort of six to ten cavalrymen accompanied each coach east and west. Beside Captain Morgan's company of Colorado cavalry with a battery temporarily stationed at Latham, there was one company at Camp Collins, twenty-five miles west of Latham; one on Bijou creek, some thirty-five or forty miles east; and one at Valley Station, on the South Platte, forty miles west of old Julesburg. A short distance above Julesburg a fort was built of sod, and christened "Fort Sedgwick." It was quite an important point in its day, being a depot of Government supplies for fully 150 miles along the South Platte. A mile or two east of Cottonwood Springs--midway between Fort Kearney and old Julesburg--was Fort Cottonwood; and on one of my last trips east by stage from Denver in charge of a half-ton of mail, we were escorted for some distance by different squads detailed from the Seventh Iowa Cavalry, several companies of which regiment were camped at convenient points along the route. During all the excitement occasioned by the Indian troubles on the plains, through that memorable season of 1864, it is a notable fact that the telegraph line was seldom molested by the savages. Somebody, it would appear, had taught them that the wire stretching from pole to pole across the plains ran direct to the White House, and belonged exclusively to the "Great Father" at Washington. By many of them it was regarded as something |
sacred. The wire, to be sure, was often down--sometimes for days at a time--but it was almost invariably thrown down by wind-storms, of which there was some very severe ones along the highway that traversed the Platte and crossed the western part of the continent over three rugged mountain ranges. While the overland line was in operation, there was a fellow known as "Rocky" Thomas, keeping a company station along the eastern slope of the Rockies. Thomas, during his younger days, was "one of the boys," and in later years, when he chanced to be on hand where a number of the "knights of the lash" were congregated, he never failed to entertain them. As a story-teller he was a success, and he could keep his listeners most of the time in a roar of laughter. A good joke finally leaked out on Rocky, while he stopped a few hours at Latham one day, that he did not tell himself. It was in the summer of 1864, at Latham, that I heard this one told at his expense. He had some time before been for a year or two connected with the regular army, previous to the civil war. At the time this happened he was garrisoned on the frontier. It was during a spell of some of the coldest weather ever experienced on the plains, even by the oldest inhabitants. The mercury went so low that a mule belonging to the Government actually froze to death one night. The dead animal was discovered by Rocky in the corral, and he reported the fact in the morning to a superior officer, as follows: "One of the mules in the corral died last night." "Well, drag it out," was the order given to Rocky, and forthwith he performed the task assigned him. Rocky was a shrewd fellow, holding the subordinate position of sergeant, and he thought he could see something ahead that promised to pay him handsomely, inasmuch as there was no early prospect of the weather getting any warmer for some time to come, Under the cover of darkness, at a late hour, Rocky dragged the dead, frozen mule back into the corral, at the same time running off a live mule, and the following morning appeared before his superior officer and reported: "Another mule died in the corral last night." "Drag it out," was the order again given, and Sergeant Thomas at once performed the duty. The following night Rocky appeared again in the corral, ran |
off a fresh mule, and in its place dragged the dead mule, back into the corral, and in the morning reported as before: "Another mule died last night." The order was given as before, to "drag it out," and the faithful sergeant promptly performed the task, having in the mean time got away with another live mule. By this time Rocky had discovered that he was getting in shape for doing a big business, and he thought he could see a small fortune in the distance, provided the live mules held out and the cold weather continued long enough. He reasoned to himself, "This is the way I long have sought." He was highly elated over his new occupation, for every mule he could run off was big money to him. But the superior officer, by this time, was beginning to get his eyes open. He began to think there was "something rotten in Denmark." He couldn't understand Rocky's new game. The dead-mule dodge, he thought, was becoming somewhat monotonous, and he concluded to keep an eye open and learn something. During his whole life, he reasoned to himself, he had never before heard of a mule dying a natural death, and he was determined, in his advancing years, to learn something more of the "ways that are dark and tricks that are vain" regarding the innocent Government mule. Wrapping himself up to withstand the freezing weather, he secreted himself near by, and at a late hour the wide-awake sergeant quietly appeared on the premises. Having run off another fresh mule he soon returned, and began the somewhat monotonous task of again dragging into the corral the same dead mule he had in the morning dragged out. The officer kept quiet and watched the proceedings with decided interest; then he arose and said: "A motion to adjourn is always in order. I move, Sergeant Thomas, that you get a fresh mule and not wear out that poor, dead animal by dragging it back and forth so much." This unexpected visit almost paralyzed Rocky, and for a moment he stood speechless. He could not even "put the motion." He saw at once that he was caught, and realized that his new scheme of money-making in a way that his superior "did not understand" had suddenly come to an end. What to do he did n't know. He felt like shooting himself, but didn't. He expected to be severely punished, but nothing was ever said to him. The officer, however, thought it was one of the richest things he had ever heard of in army life, and, while he never mentioned |
the matter to Rocky, who was somewhat mortified, he afterward told a few of his old friends about the good joke that had been played on him, and that is the way the facts in the case were brought to light. The officer said he had to tell it--it was something "too good to keep." In the spring of 1864, I met at Latham station a queer genius and talked several hours with him. The name that this gentleman went by was "Commodore" Stephen Decatur. I did not talk long with him until I learned, from his remarks, that he was born in Sussex county, New Jersey. Being an Eastern man myself--New Yorker by birth--he was free to talk with me and seemed glad of the opportunity. I soon observed that he was a man of remarkable conversational powers and that he was possessed of a fund of valuable information. I also learned from his own lips that his elder brother was Lieutenant-governor Bross, of Illinois, whom many will remember as at one time the managing editor of the Chicago Tribune. The "commodore" lived for many years in his native state, where he taught school, but one day in the '40's he told his wife he had to go to New York, and he left his home, and was not heard from again. Subsequently he drifted out West but dropped the name of Bross. While on the frontier he enlisted in General Doniphan's regiment, and seemed proud of the fact that he was one of the men who made the famous march under Kearny to Santa Fe and Chihuahua. Later he settled on the banks of the mighty Missouri and for several years ran a ferry between Council Bluffs and Omaha. He was approached one day by his brother, who recognized him, but he denied his identity absolutely. In 1859, with the throng of sturdy pioneers who, because of the gold discoveries on the eastern slope of the Rockies, made their way from the Missouri river to the mountains, he went to Colorado, where he lived and where he finally died. From the time he went there his manner of life was well known to all the pioneer citizens of the Centennial state. During the civil war he early enlisted as a member of the Third Colorado Regiment, and participated, under the gallant Colonel Chivington, in the memorable fight at Sand Creek, in which engagement some 600 Indians were slain and the death of 174 whites between the Missouri river and the Rocky Mountains was avenged. As a soldier the "commodore" was as brave as he was gallant. |
 LATHAM STATION DURING THE INDIAN EXCITEMENT. Page 331. |
He was a conversationalist whom it was a pleasure to meet. He was widely and favorably known as a citizen, a forcible speaker, and a man of education, with most of the refined instincts of a gentleman. For a time he was editor of the Georgetown Miner, and for a number of years he prospected about Georgetown, in Clear Creek county, and about Peru and Montezuma, in Summit county, and, in 1866-'68, represented that prosperous mining district in the Colorado territorial legislature. At the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition he ably represented his adopted state. During this time it is said he was recognized several times by his relatives, but always denied his identity. Delegations of citizens from his old home, it is alleged, called on him and established his identity by marks on his person, but he maintained his stolid denial. He subsequently drifted off to some of the mining camps, and, on the 3d of June, 1888, died at Rosita, a small camp in the Sangre de Cristo mountains, at upwards of eighty years of age, and almost penniless. No one was ever able to account for his eccentric conduct. While at Latham, in 1864, I made the acquaintance of Friday, an Indian chief belonging to a band of Arapahoes. At that time Friday appeared to be about forty-five or fifty years of age. His home was somewhere north of the South Platte, and his band was camping perhaps ten to fifteen miles from the stage station. Friday was a remarkably quiet and evidently an intelligent Indian. He could speak the English language so as to be quite easily understood. It appeared a great pleasure to him to spend an occasional day at the station, for the landlord always invited him to partake of a good dinner, and I never failed to pass the tobacco and cigars to him, and of these he appeared to be a great lover. He visited us at least half a dozen times during the year 1864, and appeared to be devotedly attached to us. We learned from him that years before, when a boy, he had gone to school at St. Louis, but his love for the plains and for his tribe made him return to his wild life. In stature Friday was a man a little below the medium. I talked hours at a time with him at the station. Mr. McIlvain, the station keeper, showed him some gold nuggets, and inquired of him if he knew what they were and where such stuff could be found. He said he did; that it was gold; and that if he wanted |
to go after it he would take a dozen of his warriors and pilot where it could be found in immense quantities. He said it would take about one moon--meaning a month--to go there, and that we would have to go through the country inhabited by the Utes before reaching the location of the precious yellow stuff. (The Utes and Arapahoes then were deadly enemies and crossing their lands meant a fight.) Friday described the location as placer diggings of the richest kind; said the gold was in the stream, and that pieces of it from a quarter inch to one or two inches in length were plainly visible in places. The Indians, he said, cared nothing themselves for gold; silver, in half-dollar pieces, was the money for them. He intimated to us that we were the only white men he had ever told of the existence of the gold deposits, but he freely volunteered his services, and said he would make up a party of a dozen or more of his picked men and take us safely beyond the Snowy Range, where we could get all the gold we could pack across the mountains on a pony. He also told us that in six weeks he could take us where we could see little stones that "shine" in the night (meaning diamonds). McIlvain became considerably excited and deeply interested over the stories of fabulous wealth told by the Indian, and even at that late time of the year (early in October) declared he would go on the long journey if I would make it with him. Much as I wanted to go on such an expedition, I had a previous engagement that I felt in duty bound to fulfil. I was engaged to be married at Atchison, Kan., the cards were already out, and less than three weeks would elapse ere the event was to take place. So our proposed expedition into a region hundreds of miles away, inhabited by a tribe of hostile Indians, was abandoned. In two weeks thereafter the route of the overland stage line was changed from Latham to the cut-off, some twenty-five or thirty miles south of the Platte. The change threw Mr. McIlvain out of a job with the stage company, and he moved to Denver. I never afterward saw or heard from Friday, whom I regarded as one of the best and most trustworthy Indians I ever became acquainted with. Land within a few miles--I might say almost within a stone's throw of where stands the beautiful city of Greeley--thirty-odd years ago was considered utterly worthless for agricultural pur- |
poses, except for raising wheat and oats and the most hardy vegetables, in the low bottoms. No one dreamed in I864 that corn would grow in that locality, or that anything could be raised in the shape of fruit. Back from the river bottom the face of the Country was covered with cacti, and the land--almost wholly coarse sand and gravel--was not considered to be worth five cents an acre, except for grazing purposes. Little or nothing was thought of irrigation in that vicinity in the early '60's. Except in the bottoms, the land was looked upon as a good-for-nothing region for the farmer. The few scattering ranchmen living around Latham at that time little thought that a few years of patient toil, and getting water on the land, would make it "blossom as the rose," and became, what it now is, one of the most productive agricultural regions of the state. There is no part of Colorado--indeed, there is no section of the great West over which the mail and express stages to California ran in the early '60's--that has made more rapid advancement than Weld county. Especially has it been so with that portion naturally tributary to Greeley, only a few miles distant from what was known in overland staging days as Latham station. From the location there of a mere handful of people comprising "Union Colony" in the spring of 1870, which was so favorably mentioned at the time by the New York Tribune philosopher, the town of Greeley, the surrounding country and the people on all sides have grown and prospered more than in any other part of the Centennial state. It is one of the richest and most productive portions of the great state. The section of country in the vicinity is frequently spoken of as the "garden spot of Colorado," and long since it gained the reputation of growing the finest potatoes produced in the Union. The first town established in northern Colorado was Colona. It was laid out in 1859, during the Pike's Peak gold-mining excitement, but later the name was changed to Laporte. The town became an important point in the early days, there being at one time in the place as many as fifty houses, and town lots commanded a higher price than those in Denver. When Denver and Auraria consolidated, in 1860, Laporte soon lost its prestige. Concerning the early history of Laporte in its palmy staging days the Rocky Mountain News has the following. |
"The Indians were not the only source of annoyance in the early days. The Overland Stage Company's employees were in many cases more carefully guarded against. They were a drunken, carousing set in the main, absolutely careless of the rights or feelings of the settlers. The great desperado, Slade, who was for a time superintendent of this division, and was later hung in Montana by a vigilance committee on general principle, exhausted his ingenuity in devising new breadths and depths of deviltry in his commonest transactions with others, Slade always kept his hand laid back in a light, easy fashion on the handle of his revolver. One of his most facetious tricks was to cock a revolver in a stranger's face and walk him into the nearest saloon to set up the drinks to a crowd. He did not treat the passengers over the line any better. "One pitch-dark night the stage was started from Laporte with Slade and a lot of employees aboard in the convulsions of a 'booze,' and one unfortunate passenger. Six wild mustangs were brought out and hitched to the stage, requiring a hostler to each until the driver gathered up his lines. When they were thrown loose the coach dashed off like a limited whirlwind, the wild, drunken Jehu, in mad delight, keeping up a constant crack, crack, with his 'snake' whip. The stage traveled for a time on the two off wheels, then lurched over and traveled on the other two by way of variety. The passenger had a dim suspicion that this was the wild West, but never having seen anything of the kind before, and, being in a sort of tremor, was unable to decide clearly. Slade and his gang whooped and yelled like demons. Fortunately the passenger had taken the precaution before starting to secure an outside seat. The only way in which he was enabled to prevent the complete wreck of stage, necks and everything valuable was finally by an earnest threat that he would report the whole affair to the company. Slade and some of his men went on a tear on another occasion, when they paid the Laporte grocer a visit, threw pickles, cheese, vinegar, sugar and coal-oil in a heap on the floor, rolled the grocer in the mess, and then hauled him up on the Laramie plains, and dumped him out, to find his way home to the beat of his ability. It was only a specimen of the horse-play in which they frequently indulged." It was known immediately after the consolidation that Denver would become the great metropolis of the new gold region, and naturally Laporte kept rapidly declining. In the fall of 1863 new life was infused into the town. The overland stage line changed its route from Lodge Pole creek, opposite old Julesburg, to near the site of the Cherokee City post-office--Latham--140 miles west of the old crossing. The new crossing on the south fork of the Platte was a short distance below the mouth of the Cache la Poudre, thirty-five miles east from Laporte. After the change to the new route the stages forded the South Platte at Latham station and followed up the Cherokee trail along the Cache la Poudre to Laporte, which was made a "home" |
station on the stage line. Its location was rather picturesque when I first saw it, in the summer of 1864, nestled, as it was, at the foot of the eastern slope of the Rockies. Laporte was quite a prominent little town in 1864, but in all there were not to exceed half a dozen houses in the pioneer northern Colorado town, as I well remember it, when the civil war was in progress and when the hostile savages had possession of nearly 300 miles of the stage road east along the Platte and Little Blue rivers. At one time there were no less than half a dozen places where liquor was dispensed at all hours of the day and night. The blacksmith located there said he used to get eight dollars for shoeing a horse or setting a tire. There appeared to be an abundance of deer and antelope in the foot-hills, and the Cache la Poudre was alive with trout, little more than a stone's throw from the town. In the summer of 1864, I saw in one large, deep hole in the Poudre, near Laporte, thousands of trout lying at the bottom of the stream. A great many of them would have measured fully eighteen inches in length, and I estimated them equivalent to two full wagon-loads. It was during the grasshopper raid in that region, and fishermen could not catch them. While I had my fishing tackle with me and spent some time angling for the speckled beauties, I was not so much as rewarded by a nibble. There was a hotel in Laporte in the early days known as the Ferry House. The old stage station used by Ben. Holladay in the '60's was a prominent building. It is yet standing, but has been somewhat remodeled since the lively days of overland staging through the place, from 1863 to 1870. Prices were firm in 1864. Eggs readily brought $1.25 to $1.50 a dozen; butter, $1 a pound; sugar, 50 cents a pound; potatoes, 16 cents a pound. Whisky was cheap, and cost only "two bits" a glass. It was hinted that the weather during the winter season in those early days must have been unusually cold, for it was told one day that a prominent citizen, who had entered the back room of one of the liquor houses to get his bottle filled, said the only way he could get it was by thawing out the whisky--the application being a red-hot poker inserted in the bung-hole of the barrel. Few would have dreamed that early season that the Poudre valley was fit for anything except for stock-raising. For growing cereals, many kinds of fruit, and most of the tender vegetables, |
no one believed such things possible. It was often remarked in 1863 that corn could never be grown in Colorado. In a quarter of a century following, after hundreds of miles of ditches had been constructed, the Poudre valley had been transformed into a veritable wheat- and corn-field and a well-cultivated garden. Fine, highly improved farms, choice fruit orchards, and "cattle on a thousand hills" are sights that now daily meet one's eye. The valley has become one of the choicest dairy regions in the West. In it are thousands of cows and a vast number of hives of bees; the region is virtually a land "flowing with milk and honey." It is a pleasure to look back on Colorado as it was a third of a century ago, and note some of the wonderful changes that have taken place during that time. Although some of the days spent on the South Platte at Latham station in 1863 and 1864 were extremely lonesome-days of great anxiety--still many of them I shall always remember, and cherish among the pleasantest days of my recollection. I have no desire, however, again to pass through the stirring period embracing some of the scenes and exciting events that were witnessed along the Platte in the '60's. That was during the days of overland staging and freighting, before the advent of the iron horse on the "Great American Desert." Those early days, at times terribly trying and exciting--particularly while the Indians were making their raids--have long since gone by. Soon they will have passed from the memory of us all. Of what transpired in that vicinity before and since the memorable summer of 1864 I have nothing to say. That story will be told, if it has not already been told, by those who resided there before and since my time. It is something of a coincidence that, in just six years after I left Latham, when that stage station was abandoned on account of the stage route being changed to the cut-off some miles south of there, I spent a day in Greeley, the county-seat of Weld county, when the town was only six months old, and set a stick ful of type on the first issue of the Greeley Tribune, founded by the late Hon. N. C. Meeker, formerly an employee of the great philosopher after whom the new town and paper were named. |
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