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"Reminiscenses of Alexander
Toponce [1839-1923]"
Autobiography at age 80, c.
1919.
"I saw the Golden Spike driven at Promontory, Utah, on May 10th, 1869."
Chapter 51. The Coming of the Union Pacific
About the fifteen of May, 1868, I got everything settled
up in Nevada and went back to Salt Lake City on the stage.
At the time I got there the Union Pacific was being graded
west of Green River, Wyoming. I heard that there was a
contract to be let in a short time to furnish beef to the grading and track
laying camps and decided to try for it.
I bought an outfit consisting of good large tents, provisions, wagons,
and teams and hired a good cook and his wife to wait on the table and went
over to Wyoming and
made camp at a place afterward called Beartown, about
thirteen miles east of Evanston.
I devoted myself to getting acquainted with the contractors and the foreman
of the gangs. Among the grading
contractors were Noonen & Orr, W. W. Riter & Chrisman
Bros., and Cheeseborough & Magee.
There was also my old Montana friends, Coe & Carter,
who were contracting to furnish ties. Harper was foreman
of the gang laying the ties. Carmicheal was another big
contractor.
I remember Bates, engineer in charge of construction.
The Pacific Lumber Company, of which Van Tassel of
Cheyenne was manager. Also, Oliver Durant, vice-president
of the Union Pacific, who was actively supervising the work
and also was supposed to be interested with Stuttering
Brown, a contractor, hauling supplies to the camp.
I set up the best meals and the best liquid refreshments
to be had west of Omaha, at my restaurant and whenever
any of the big fellows came along we put on extra dishes,
wine and Havana cigars and I kept announcing that I
wanted the beef contract. I soon had most of the foremen
on my side,
About this time Bill Jennings sent in a herd of beef cattle
to Spring Valley and announced that he was going to bid
on the contract. So I got my new friends together and talked
it over and it was agreed that I should have the contract at
fifteen cents a pound. The day that the contract was to be
given out, Bill Jennings came on the stage with some of his
Salt Lake friends and stopped at my place for dinner.
Right in the middle of dinner, Harper, foreman of the
tie camp, got up and said he wished to announce that "no
bids" for beef would be received as the contract had already
been let privately to Mr. Toponce.
My old friend, Bill Jennings, was pretty blue. He had
expected to bid as low as six cents to get the contract. After
dinner he came to me and wanted to sell me his cattle. We
went out and looked at them and I made him an offer.
He did not want to take it, but I reminded him that one
time when freighting to Montana, I had contracted with him
for flour at $24 a hundred and when the price had raised he
had repudiated the agreement and when I had sued him he
had beaten me before a Mormon Judge and now I told him
the shoe was on the other foot.
So I bought 1,005 head of cattle and fifteen horses for
$30,000. Paid $15,000 cash and $16,000 on sixty days'
time. Later he discounted the note six per cent for cash.
I had the contract to supply the camps from the east
head of the big tunnel at Carter's Station. It lasted ninety-seven days, however,
as when they finished the work at Wasatch, near the Utah line, my contract
was finished.
Brigham Young had the contract for grading west from
Wasatch to Uintah at the mouth of Weber Canyon, that
being the end of the track for sometime.
When my contract was finished on the beef I was in Salt
Lake for a few days stopping at the Salt Lake House. In
the room next to mine I heard Oliver Durant and Stuttering
Brown settling up their accounts.
Durant said, "How is this Brown? When we first started
in you had four mules and I had sixteen, now you claim all
the mules. How do you account for that?"
Brown replied, "Bib-bib-bib because I'm a sis-sis-sis-smarter man than you
bib-bib-bib-be. That's all."
Chapter 52. The Battle of Beartown
When I still had the beef contract I was camped on the
south side of the track at a sulphur spring across from Beartown. Down the track
east about 600 feet was a cold water spring and there the editor of the Beartown
paper had his
tent.
One of the contracting firms was Cheeseborough &
Magee. They had a grading contract and the toughest gang
on the road. Magee was hard boiled and when a bunch of
the men saw him coming they would say to each other,
"Lookout, here comes Cinny," and then they would make
the dirt fly.
Magee would size up the work done and if he was
dissatisfied he would knock a pick off the handle and use
the pick handle as a club, and knock two or three of them
down. They were nearly all Irish and they seemed to think
it was all right.
One day a gang of graders came to town and got drunk
and raised such a row that the city marshal arrested three
of them and put them in the lock-up, a little new cabin just
built of green logs.
Next day the paper come out with an article saying that
"Beartown had stood enough from the rowdy and criminal
element and it was time to call a halt." And more just like it.
The next morning I saw about fifty of the Cheeseborough
and Magee outfit coming along the track. They had read
the paper. The leaders had ropes in their hands and they
called out as they passed me that they were going to hang
the editor.
There was a mule standing ready saddled at the door of
my tent and I jumped on him and raced down to the editor's
tent. The crowd got to the front door as I got to the back
of the tent. I cut a long slit in the back of the tent with my
knife and got him out on the mule and he escaped.
They simply ruined that printing office and you can
depend on it, I did nothing to interfere further. Then they
went across the grade into town. The business men locked
their stores and about a dozen got together in Nuckles store
with rifles to defend themselves.
The leader of the mob was a man named Tom Smith. He
led them to the lock-up and they tried to liberate the prisoners. They tried
to bum the jail but the logs were too green.
The mob run the town from eight o'clock to four in the
afternoon, getting drunker and more dangerous all the time.
About four, Smith knocked on the door of Nuckles store
and when the proprietor opened the door a little and advised them to get out
of town Smith shot him in the leg.
Then the shooting became general. It was a regular battle.
The men with rifles barricaded in the store opened up and
swept the streets. Seventeen men were killed in the mob and
as many more were wounded, some of whom died.
Some people called it a massacre, but it had a good effect
and just as in the case of the "Vigilantes" in Montana there
was an end to the rough stuff on the Union Pacific.
The graves of those killed in the Beartown fight, are still
to be seen on the south side of the Union Pacific track just
east of Hilliard Station.
In regard to the Vigilantes, in the early days in Montana.
I don't think they made any mistake in hanging anybody.
The only mistake they made was that about fifty per cent
of those whom they merely banished should have been hung
instead, as quite a number of these men were finally hung
on the Union Pacific road, during its construction.
I got up one morning at my camp near Beartown, Wyoming, and noticed something
hanging from a tripod near the railroad track, and I walked down to see what
it was.
It was three of those fellows, who I knew had been banished
from Montana in 1864, with a little tag pinned on their coat,
which read, "Warning to the road agents."
I have heard of several others being hung along the line
of the Union Pacific railroad, both east and west, and it
always had a good effect.
I think that the only thing that had made Montana what
it is now, was the Vigilantes getting rid of that element who
wouldn't do anything, or let others do anything except rob
and plunder.
Montana, for ten years after 1864, was the quietest state
in the West. People could then travel and go anywhere without being molested.
All that they had to look out for was the Indians. The word went out all over
the country in regard
to the Vigilantes in Montana that it was no place for the
toughs to congregate.
Chapter 53. The Big Tie Contract
About this time I purchased from Wells, Fargo & Company seventy-nine wagons
and six yoke of oxen to the
wagon. As the railroad was pushed West the Wells-Fargo
staging business was closed out and they had no further use
for the wagons and cattle and I got them cheap. I bought all
they had.
In July, 1868, John W. Kerr, Governor Durkee and Bill
Kiskaden, uncle of Maude Adams, the actress, took a
contract to furnish 100,000 ties to the Union Pacific to be
delivered at Hilliard, Wyoming. They had the ties cut on
the headwaters of Bear River, I think they got 80 cents
apiece for them.
Kiskaden wanted to sell out so I bought his one-third
interest. We got part cash for the ties and the balance in
bonds of the Union Pacific due in fifty years. They were not
the bonds issued by the Government but the bonds the railroad were allowed to
issue later. I think their market value was about fifteen cents. They were
left in the hands of John
W. Kerr.
One of my best friends in Wyoming was a rancher named
Byme, who owned quite a fine place at Piedmont, before the
Union Pacific was built through there. I often stayed all
night with him and each visit was good for a big argument
on Mormonism.
He read a great deal and was well posted on the Bible. We
would sit up half the night arguing. One night we were discussing the laws of
Moses. He thought Moses was almost as
great a man as the prophet, Joseph Smith.
"Now Bymes," I says to him, just to keep the argument
going, "It looks to me as if Moses was a grafter."
He blew up right away. "How do you make that out?" he
says.
"Well, here," I says, "listen. Moses went up into the
mountain to get the ten commandments, and when he was
gone Aaron had the Children of Israel turn in all their gold
to him and he melted it down and made a golden calf to
worship. That right?"
"Sure," he says.
"And then Moses came back and when he saw the golden
calf he took an ax and hacked it all to pieces. That right?"
"Exactly," he says.
"Now then," I says, "what became of those pieces? Those
gold chips?"
He scratched his head, "I suppose," he said, "That the
proper thing to do would be to turn the gold back to the
people that contributed it in the first place."
"The Bible doesn't say what was done with the gold,"
I said.
"Oh yes, it does," he replied.
"Well, you find it," I told him.
He looked and looked but could not find it. "It's here,
some place," he said, and kept on looking.
"What'll you do," I said, "If you never do find it?"
He jumped up and began waving his arms. "What will I
do?" he yelled. "I'll tell you what I'll do. If I don't find a full
explanation of what became of that gold, I'll leave the Mormon Church. You hear
me?"
Years afterward I met him in Ogden. He had moved to
Utah. "Did you find out about that gold?" I asked him.
"No," he replied. "And I've left the Mormon Church."
Chapter 54. Taking U. P. Bonds for Ties
I finished the beef contract with the Union Pacific in the
early part of October, 1868. About this time Jim Noonen
came to me and wanted me to take a contract to haul out of
the timber 100,000 ties which he had cut and hewed on the
Bear River between Soda Springs and Montpelier, so I took
the contract to haul them out and run them down the Bear
River to Corinne, Utah. His contract was with the Central
Pacific Company and was to the effect that he must deliver
them at Corinne before the iron of either road crossed Bear
River. I started an ox team outfit of over fifty teams down
Bear River and got the ties hauled down to the stream all
right, but the river froze up earlier than usual and froze the
ties in ice all along from Montpelier to Bear River Canyon
and I could not get them to Corinne, on time.
The Union Pacific iron crossed the Bear River in April,
1869, and I didn't get the ties out of the river until May 15th.
The C. P. refused to take the ties. We piled them up on the
river bank at Corinne.
Later on when the Utah Northern, a narrow gauge road,
was being built north to Cache Valley on the way to Montana, Moses W. Thatcher
bought the ties paying for them in more Union Pacific bonds. We took $100,000
of them that
time as part pay and the balance in cash.
Of this tie contract I owned one-half and Kerr & Durkee,
the other half. All of these bonds were on the Union Pacific
Railroad and taken in payment for ties, both at Hilliard,
Wyoming, and those that were taken for ties at Corinne,
Utah, were all turned over to Charles Durkee, the Governor
of the Territory, and the bonds have not been paid yet so far
as I know.
Kerr & Durkee owned two-thirds of the bonds that we got
for the ties delivered at Hilliard, and I owned the other
third. Of the ties that were delivered at Corinne, Kerr and
Durkee owned one-half interest and I owned the other half.
When my teams left Bear River after putting in the ties,
between Soda Springs and Montpelier, I loaded them up
with square timbers that I had hewn up there, and hauled
them to a place near Corinne to build a house on a homestead that I located
on Section 34, Township 13 North, Range 3 west, now owned by Jack Rich. This
was one of
the first patents that was ever issued on land in Utah from
Salt Lake Land Office. The land is located about three miles
north of Garland.
Chapter 55. Dead Fall and the Golden Spike
In April and May of 1869, Corinne and Blue Creek were
pretty lively places. At the latter place was a big construction
camp generally known as "Dead Fall" and spoken of by
some as "Hell's Half Acre."
It seemed for a while as if all the toughs in the west had
gathered there. Every form of vice was in evidence. Drunkenness and gambling
were the mildest things they did. It was not uncommon for two or three men
to be shot or knifed in
a night.
Back at Corinne, the "Burg on the Bear," it was every bit
as bad. I saw there a tent 150 feet long and 50 feet wide,
crowded with gambling tables around which hundreds of
men swarmed day and night betting their money on every
imaginable kind of game, including Mexican Monte and
Chinese Fan Tan.
This tent had followed the construction gangs on the
Union Pacific nearly all the way from Omaha. I had seen it,
or one like it, at Beartown, near Evanston, Wyoming.
When the Golden Spike was driven and the construction
work stopped, the camp on Blue Creek disappeared and
there was no trace of it in a few weeks. But Corinne survived. The boomers picked
on it as the coming town and it had a fairly stable population of 1,500 to
2,000 for a year
or two.
I saw the Golden Spike driven at Promontory, Utah,
on
May 10th, 1869. I had a beef contract to furnish meat to the
construction camps of Benson and West. This West was my
good friend. Bishop Chauncey W. West
of Ogden. They
had a grading contract with the Central Pacific and their
camp was near Blue Creek. I also furnished beef for some
of the Union Pacific contractors.
The Golden Spike could have been driven a couple of
weeks earlier than it was. But the two companies had settled
on Promontory as the meeting place some days prior to the
actual meeting.
The Central Pacific had been planning to make the
junction at Ogden as to be in touch with Salt Lake City and
the settlements in Utah. But the Union Pacific planned to
lay their iron as far west as Humboldt Wells, in Nevada, and
had most of their grade completed that far west.
If the Union Pacific had crowded their work as hard as
the Central Pacific did in the last two weeks the Golden
Spike would have been driven a good many miles to the west.
The Union Pacific employed white labor, largely Irish, and
the Central Pacific had Chinese labor. The Irish and Chinese
met on Promontory Hill.
The Union Pacific sold to the Central Pacific fifty-six
miles of road, which brought the real junction back to a
point five miles north of the Ogden depot, and then leased
that five miles to the Central Pacific, making Ogden the
junction.
On the last day only about 100 feet were laid and everybody tried to have
a hand in the work. I took a shovel from an Irishman and threw a shovel full
of dirt on the ties just
to tell about it afterward.
A special train from the west brought Governor Leland
Stanford of California and C. P. Huntington, Crocker,
Hopkins and lots of California wine.
Another special train from the east brought Sidney Dillon,
General Dodge, T. C. Durant, John R. Duff, S. A. Seymour,
a lot of newspaper men, and plenty of the best brands of
champagne.
Another train made up at Ogden carried the band from
Fort Douglas, the leading men of Utah Territory, and a
small, but efficient supply, of Valley Tan.
It was a very hilarious occasion, everybody had all they
wanted to drink all the time. Some of the participants got
"sloppy" and these were not all Irish and Chinese, by any
means.
California furnished the Golden Spike. Governor Tuttle
of Nevada furnished one of silver. General Stanford presented one of gold, silver
and iron from Arizona. The last
tie was of California laurel.
When they came to drive the last spike. Governor Stanford, president of the
Central Pacific, took the sledge and the first time he struck he missed the
spike and hit the rail.
What a howl went up! Irish, Chinese, Mexicans, and
everybody yelled with delight. Everybody slapped everybody else on the back
and yelled "He missed it. Yee." The
engineers blew the whistles and rang their bells. Then Stanford tried it again
and tapped the spike and the telegraph operators had fixed their instruments
so that the tap was
reported in all the offices, east and west, and set bells to
tapping in hundreds of towns and cities. W. N. Shilling was
one of the telegraph operators.
Then Vice President T. C. Durant of the Union Pacific
took up the sledge and he missed the spike the first time.
Then everybody slapped everybody else again and yelled,
"He missed it, [too], yow!"
It was a great occasion, everyone carried off souvenirs
and there are enough splinters of the last tie in museums
to make a good bonfire. When the connection was finally
made the U. P. and the C. P. engineers ran their engines
up until their pilots touched. Then the engineers shook
hands and had their pictures taken and each broke a bottle
of champagne on the pilot of the other's engine and had
their pictures taken again.
The U. P.[sic] engine, the "Jupiter," was driven by my good
friend, George Lashus, who still lives in Ogden.
Both before and after the spike driving ceremony there
were speeches, which were cheered heartily. I do not remember what any of the
speakers said now, but I do remember that there was a great abundance of champagne.
The 1919 Golden Spike Jubilee celebration, in Ogden, Utah.
Alexander Toponce is in the middle of the front seat.
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