Snowed In: The California Mail Famine of 1872
For thirteen days, the telegraph was the only connection to the outside world, leaving businesses and citizens reeling from the silence of the snow-blocked passes.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
We are all blockaded and barred from the East; no mails or freights for the last thirteen days. While to the casual observer this might appear trivial as we have the telegraph, still on the business community it inflicts heavy losses. One house here informs me that $10,000 would not cover its losses from non-arrival of goods en route, via the Union Pacific and Central Pacific Railroads. The management of the latter road has been admirable, but the general impression is abroad that the U.P. has not half tried. There is no earthly reason why the letter portion of the mails should not have been forwarded daily over the snow-belt in sleds, or by other means requiring but little enterprise. The California passengers report great suffering and privation while they were blockaded. Over 100,000 letters and several hundred bags of mail were stranded during this time.
“The Corporations, it is said, have no souls and I suppose the Union Pacific seems to prove itself a big exception.”
In 1872, Seattle’s economic dependency on transcontinental rail connectivity made the city vulnerable to the whims of severe weather and corporate inaction. Today, while we no longer worry about snow-bound mail, the city’s reliance on complex, fragile global supply chains leaves us similarly exposed to disruptions, proving that Seattle’s status as a port city remains tethered to the efficiency of distant infrastructure.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.