At mid-century the land between the Missouri River and the Western coastal ranges was still generally thought to be a “great American desert,” acting as both a formidable obstacle to passage and a persistent reminder that California might slip away from the Union unless it was firmly and directly tied to the cities of the East. The Pacific Mail enterprise remained basically profitable for thirty years, but it was still too slow, and Americans wanted a direct and contiguous link between East and West.

One of the actors, standing against a curtained backdrop with his arms outstretched, uttered the line “What does this mean?” He was answered from the audience, “Side-wheeled steamer,” instantly bringing down the house. Just how great a part of San Francisco life this semaphore became was illustrated one night at a local theater during the performance of a tragedy. When one of these ships was expected, a continuous watch was placed on Telegraph Hill with a semaphore to signal the arrival, inevitably leading to a stampede on the post office. The eagerness with which the Pacific Mail steamers were awaited in San Francisco is hard to overstate. So it remained a low-volume cargo operation dedicated to the movement of the mail and gold dust.Ĭlipper ships were specialty vehicles for moving cargo such as mail as fast as possible. Yet only one in five of those emigrating to California between 18 passed this way, primarily because even with the railroad the Isthmian crossing exposed passengers to a variety of often fatal tropical diseases. The completion of the Panama Railroad in 1855 added considerably to the safety and speed of the route, bringing the total time of passage down to around thirty days.

As a means of encouraging it, Congress provided operating subsidies of approximately three hundred thousand dollars per year to both the United States Mail Steamship Company, which plied the Gulf of Mexico, and the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, its West Coast equivalent, while stabilizing postage rates at a nominal ten cents per letter. The obvious alternative was the trans-Isthmian route. That was not nearly enough a shorter path was clearly needed. In 1854 the storied Flying Cloud ran from New York to San Francisco in an unprecedented eighty-nine days and eight hours, and the same year Comet made the return voyage in seventy-six days. Worst of all, despite their speed relative to other vessels of the time, they were still too slow a means of getting mail and other information back and forth -thanks mainly to the distance around the Horn (the longest domestic trade route in the world). Not only were they expensive to operate, but their sailors tended to jump ship and join the gold rush upon arrival, stranding a number of clippers along with hundreds of other packets in San Francisco Bay. The romance surrounding the clipper ships disguised their inadequacies as reliable links between East and West. Their narrow hulls, sharp lines, and towering suits of sails made them specialty vehicles, frankly aimed at getting a select bill of lading to its destination as fast as possible. This was the way of the clippers, the massively oversailed seaborne racers that were the first in the line of American priority-cargo carriers. The most dramatic route was around Cape Horn and all the way up the Pacific coast of South and Central America to the United States. Some sailed into the Gulf of Mexico, struggled across the Isthmus of Panama, and reembarked by packet to California. While many literally walked the distance, by far the fastest means was by sea. It was a “gold rush” indeed, for the principal aim of these migrants was to get there as fast as possible.

The best part of the story begins in the 1840s, when the vast Southwestern and Western territories added by Manifest Destiny and the Mexican War transformed the Republic into a transcontinental nation, and the discovery of gold in California sent thousands scurrying toward the Pacific.

Post haste post office