Packwood Station, California

Last updated

Packwood Station was a settlement established in Tulare County in 1857, on the Stockton - Los Angeles Road. From 1858 to 1861, it was a stagecoach station on the Butterfield Overland Mail route, 12 miles southeast of Visalia and 14 miles north of Tule River Station. [1]

The exact site of the settlement is unknown. It lay on land owned by the prosperous cattleman Elisha Packwood. In the winter of 1861 - 1862, the station, Packwood's cattle and all his other property were swept away in the flood waters of the Great Flood of 1862. His once fertile land was buried in sand, making the vicinity worthless and the site unrecognizable. Losing all his net worth of $40,000 and nearly his life, Packwood moved to Oregon to attempt to rebuild his fortune. [2]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Historical regions of the United States</span>

The territory of the United States and its overseas possessions has evolved over time, from the colonial era to the present day. It includes formally organized territories, proposed and failed states, unrecognized breakaway states, international and interstate purchases, cessions, and land grants, and historical military departments and administrative districts. The last section lists informal regions from American vernacular geography known by popular nicknames and linked by geographical, cultural, or economic similarities, some of which are still in use today.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Butterfield Overland Mail</span> Stagecoach service in the US (1858–1861)

Butterfield Overland Mail was a stagecoach service in the United States operating from 1858 to 1861. It carried passengers and U.S. Mail from two eastern termini, Memphis, Tennessee, and St. Louis, Missouri, to San Francisco, California. The routes from each eastern terminus met at Fort Smith, Arkansas, and then continued through Indian Territory (Oklahoma), Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Mexico, and California ending in San Francisco. On March 3, 1857, Congress authorized the U.S. postmaster general, at that time Aaron V. Brown, to contract for delivery of the U.S. mail from St. Louis to San Francisco. Prior to this, U.S. Mail bound for the Far West had been delivered by the San Antonio and San Diego Mail Line since June 1857.

The Snake War (1864–1868) was an irregular war fought by the United States of America against the "Snake Indians," the settlers' term for Northern Paiute, Bannock and Western Shoshone bands who lived along the Snake River. Fighting took place in the states of Oregon, Nevada, and California, and in Idaho Territory. Total casualties from both sides of the conflict numbered 1,762 dead, wounded, or captured.

Camp Collins was a 19th-century outpost of the United States Army in the Colorado Territory. The fort was commissioned in the summer of 1862 to protect the Overland Trail from attacks by Native Americans in a conflict that later became known as the Colorado War. Located along the Cache la Poudre River in Larimer County, it was relocated from its initial location near Laporte after a devastating flood. Its second location downstream on the Poudre was used until 1866 and became the nucleus around which the City of Fort Collins was founded.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fort Abercrombie</span> United States historic place

Fort Abercrombie, in North Dakota, was an American fort established by authority of an act of Congress, March 3, 1857. The act allocated twenty-five square miles of land on the Red River of the North in Dakota Territory to be used for a military outpost, but the exact location was left to the discretion of Lieutenant Colonel John J. Abercrombie. The fort was constructed in the year 1858. It was the first permanent military settlement in what became North Dakota, and is thus known as "The Gateway to the Dakotas".

Shedd is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in Linn County, Oregon, United States, on Oregon Route 99E. As of the 2010 census it had a population of 204.

The Border Counties Railway was a railway line connecting Hexham in Northumberland, with Riccarton Junction on the Waverley Route in Roxburghshire.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lindsay Applegate</span> American pioneer

Lindsay Applegate was an American pioneer known for his participation in blazing the Applegate Trail, an alternative route of the Oregon Trail. The trail was blazed with his brothers Charles and Jesse in 1846, though Charles was not a member of the party that blazed the section of the Applegate Trail from the Willamette Valley to the Humboldt River. According to an original manuscript written by Lindsay Applegate in 1877, the members of the expedition were: Capt. Levi Scott, John Scott, Henry Boygus, Lindsay Applegate, Jesse Applegate, Benjamin Burch, John Owens, John Jones, Robert Smith, Samuel Goodhue, Moses "Black" Harris, David Goff, Benit Osburn, William Sportsman, and William Parker.

USCS <i>Active</i>

Active was a survey ship that served in the United States Coast Survey, a predecessor of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, from 1852 to 1861. Active served on the U.S. West Coast. She conducted the Coast Survey's first reconnaissance from San Francisco, California, to San Diego, California, in 1852. Active sometimes stepped outside her normal Coast Survey duties to support U.S. military operations, serving as a troop transport and dispatch boat during various wars with Native Americans and during the San Juan Islands "Pig War" with the United Kingdom in 1859. She also rushed Union troops to Los Angeles, California, in 1861 during the early stages of the American Civil War.

Kern River Slough is a former settlement in Kern County, California.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">District of Oregon (military)</span>

The District of Oregon was a Union Army command department formed during the American Civil War.

During the American Civil War in the early 1860s, the District of Utah was a subordinate district of the U.S. Army's Department of the Pacific. The district was composed of territorial areas that later became parts of the modern U.S. states of Idaho, Nevada, and Utah.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lancaster, Oregon</span> Unincorporated community in the state of Oregon, United States

Lancaster is an unincorporated community in Lane County, Oregon, United States. It is located about two miles south of Harrisburg and two miles north of Junction City, on Oregon Route 99E near the Willamette River.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rancho Temescal (Serrano)</span>

Rancho Temescal was a farming outpost of Mission San Luis Rey de Francia, one of the 21 Franciscan missions established in California by Spain during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The Mission was located on the coast where Oceanside, California is today. The Rancho was settled in 1819 by Leandro Serrano, and became the first non-native settlement within the boundaries of what would become Riverside County, California.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Great Flood of 1862</span> Flood in California, Oregon, and Nevada

The Great Flood of 1862 was the largest flood in the recorded history of California, Oregon, and Nevada, inundating the western United States and portions of British Columbia and Mexico. It was preceded by weeks of continuous rains and snows that began in Oregon in November 1861 and continued into January 1862. This was followed by a record amount of rain from January 9–12, and contributed to a flood that extended from the Columbia River southward in western Oregon, and through California to San Diego, and extended as far inland as Idaho in the Washington Territory, Nevada and Utah in the Utah Territory, and Arizona in the western New Mexico Territory. The event dumped an equivalent of 10 feet (3.0 m) of water in California, in the form of rain and snow, over a period of 43 days. Immense snowfalls in the mountains of far western North America caused more flooding in Idaho, Arizona, New Mexico, as well as in Baja California and Sonora, Mexico the following spring and summer, as the snow melted.

Fort Thorn or Fort Thorne, originally Cantonment Garland, was a settlement and military outpost located on the west bank of the Rio Grande, northwest of present-day Hatch, and west of Salem in Doña Ana County, New Mexico, United States. It was named for 1st Lt. Herman Thorn of the 2nd U.S. Infantry drowned in the Colorado River in 1849. He had previously been an aide to General John Garland, the new commander of the Ninth Military District, that encompassed New Mexico Territory in 1853.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Butterfield Overland Mail in California</span> Historic route by state

The Butterfield Overland Mail in California was created by the United States Congress on March 3, 1857, and operated until June 30, 1861. Subsequently, other stage lines operated along the Butterfield Overland Mail in route in Alta California until the Southern Pacific Railroad arrived in Yuma, Arizona in 1877.

Fountain Spring is a spring in Tulare County used in the 19th century for domestic and garden water supply. Fountain Springs was a settlement established in Tulare before 1855, at the junction of the Stockton - Los Angeles Road and the road to the Kern River gold mines. From 1858 to 1861, Fountain Springs was a station on the Butterfield Overland Mail route, 14 miles southeast of Tule River Station and 12 miles north of Mountain House. The site of the settlement was 1+12 miles northwest of the California Historical Landmark NO. 648 on the southwest corner of County Roads J22 and M 109, in Tulare County, California.

King's Station, also known as Moore's and Hollandsville, was a stagecoach station of the Butterfield Overland Mail 1st Division between 1858 and 1861 in southern California.

Birchville, or Smith Ranch, now a ghost town, in what is now Hudspeth County, Texas. Birchville was a settlement on the San Antonio-El Paso Road in what was El Paso County. Birchville lay 35 miles northwest of the First Camp on Rio Grande and 24.8 miles southeast of San Elizario, according to the table of distances for the San Antonio-San Diego Mail Line in the Texas Almanac of 1857. Later used as a station on the Butterfield Overland Mail, the distances to the station for that line were given as 2412 miles from San Elizario, 33 miles from Fort Quitman.

References