The San Antonioâ€"San Diego Mail Line, also known as the Jackass Mail,
was the earliest overland stagecoach and mail operation from the
Eastern United States to California in operation between 1857 and
1861. It was created, organized and financed by James E. Birch the
head of the California Stage Company. Birch was awarded the first
contract for overland service on the "Southern Route", designated
Route 8076. This contract required a semi-monthly service in
four-horse coaches, scheduled to leave San Antonio and San Diego on
the ninth and the 24th of each month, with 30 days allowed for each
trip.Birch envisioned that at New Orleans, one could take a
five-times-a-week mail steamer to 540 mi (870 km) to Indianola, Texas.
There one transferred to a daily line of four-horse mail coaches
traveling 140 mi (230 km) to San Antonio, Texas. Then one would take
the San Antonio and San Diego Line 1,476 mi (2,375 km) from San
Antonio via the San Antonio-El Paso Road and then continue north to
Mesilla and take the Southern Emigrant Trail from there to San Diego.
Once on the Pacific Coast the passenger could board a California Steam
Navigation Company vessel to San Francisco.To accomplish this Birch
entered a partnership with George H. Giddings, of the San Antonio-El
Paso Mail that already ran over half of the route to La Mesilla. 87
watering places and stage stations were organized by Superintendent
Isaiah C. Woods, formerly of Adams & Company of California in San
Francisco. On the first mail run, they were setting up the line as the
mule trains and coaches journeyed west from San Antonio.
Superintendent Woods prepared a self-contained outfit for this journey
across the unsettled country of Texas, New Mexico Territory and
Southern California with almost no existing infrastructure. The
vehicles used were celerity wagons or mud wagons, also called
ambulances (which was the military use for the same type of vehicle at
that time), rather than the better known Concord stagecoach.Water
holes were set up at 30 mi (48 km) intervals but many were unmanned
and actual stations sometimes were separated by as much as 100 mi (160
km). These first stations were at most a brush corral and a jacal to
house the keeper, while most were merely camping places at springs or
stream crossings; camps would be made where the coaches stopped for
the night. Only the three at San Antonio, El Paso and San Diego had
substantial buildings. The largest and most important station between
El Paso and San Diego was at Maricopa Wells, Arizona, the dividing
point on the route, where the eastbound and westbound mails met and
turned back. Here was erected an adobe house and corral. During the
company's existence it employed 65 men in all capacities, and owned 50
coaches and 400 mules. San Antonio–San Diego Mail Line Biography, NetWorth, Height, Age, Weight, Family, Married, Son, Daughter