Humboldt County
Historical Association
PO Box 162
Humboldt, Iowa
50548
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HOW WE TRAVELED
AND RECEIVED
NEWS IN 1862
by
A. D. Bicknell
A. D. Bicknell included this account as part of a series titled “Pioneer Days in Northwestern Iowa” which appeared in the Humboldt Republican from April 15 to June 24, 1897.
When I look straight over events and details to a hot July day in 1862 when I first walked into Dakota City, it does not seem such a long while ago. But as I recall the varied and later history of this part of the state in particular, and that of the United States as well and compare all things that now touch our local life, with the things that then environed us and were a part of our life, that thirty-five years more than doubles in seeming length.
In the few brief notes that I shall make of those old days, I shall not try to be either literary or systematic, but shall simply tell, in a rambling way, of the things that were so controlling in their power as to make all time, prior to the advent of our first railroad in August, 1879, seem like ancient history.
At this time, little Humboldt county has five railroads, and the last time I counted them up there were fourteen stations. In 1862 our nearest depot was at Cedar Falls, one hundred and twenty miles away. The [Civil] War was raging and that summer was the gloomiest period of its entire four years. Everybody was keen for news from the front, yet, with rare exception, nothing came to us younger than four days of age. It came about this way: The day it was printed in Dubuque it reached Cedar Falls; next night it slept with the stage at Iowa Falls; next night at Fort Dodge, and the following day it touched Dakota City on its way up to Algona and Blue Earth City. But we never waited for the mail bags to be opened to learn the outlines—the headlines as it were—of the latest news; for the stage driver, everywhere beyond the last telegraph office and railroad station, was the veritable town crier, and he either gladdened or saddened everyone on his line as he shouted out the bloody news of the day.
You see at that time we could not step into a telephone office and call a fellow up hundreds of miles away and talk to him face to face, for the telephone was then a two-year dream of a single brain, and it did not stand squarely on its pins till fourteen years thereafter. Even the telegraph was a minor child of only eighteen years, and the locomotive was a young fellow of about thirty years experience in America.
We traveled by stage or by lumber wagon, minus the spring seat, or by a method then very popular with a great many who wished to take their time and see the country at leisure, to-wit, on foot. The “tramp” had not been invented and the very bon ton of the prairie felt no moral loss after a trifling walk of a hundred or two hundred miles. In fact such a journey rather added to his standing in society without any damage to his financial rating, because there were but few people, even in our largest and only town of Dakota City, who had money enough to pay for a stage ride to the railroad. In cost $9.50, and as muskrat skins and taxes, directly or indirectly, brought in about all the spending money we could reach, a fellow would stretch out his legs over a long distance before he would squander so much. Besides, up here there was little demand for labor. With a market 120 miles away and produce at a nominal price even at the railroad—butter 7 cents, wheat 30 cents, etc.—wages on the farm were only $13 per month, or 50 cents per day, and one would squander in such a ride the fruits of nineteen hard days work, besides six or seven more for hotel fare. It really meant the loss of a full month’s work, and he could walk it in three days.
If I have not made it plain that I walked in from Cedar Falls and that I afterwards worked for a farmer for $13 per month, I believe I will not try further to explain. But at that time I arrived at Dakota City my cash capital was $19.50. $20 of which had been loaned to me by a woman. Still, financially, I held an even rank with most of my neighbors. For the first day out from Cedar Falls it seemed very queer that I should be giving out the very latest war news—the news I had read in Dubuque two days before. I made Iowa Falls that first day and put up at the same hotel that the stage did, The Wood House. The stage beat me into Fort Dodge by a night and half a day, but even when I got to Dakota City the next day, four days afoot, I still carried the very latest news. It seemed almost as though I had become a telegraph instead of a plodding footman.
I would give twice my fortune of that day, which you observe was minus fifty cents, if I could take that walk again with every circumstance repeated. Such a journey was a common thing then, but notice that we were not then old chaps of from fifty to seventy years of age, but boys of twenty to thirty. A man forty-five years of age was spoken of as “old man” so-and-so. And would you believe it, I found fellows the year after, when I was living in Fort Dodge, who didn’t look to be a minute over thirty-five, with carefully prepared proof made out by their mothers “who,” they said, “ought to know,” showing that the young fellows were “over forty-five.” Ah, that draft, that wicked and partial draft that let every fellow out who was properly branded “45 and upwards.” Excepting such prematurely old chaps we were all young, with not a thing to lose and everything to hope for and long for and dare, and very often you would strike a young fellow whose courage would visibly brighten after he had read a letter from some far off state. He was the chap who was accused of having “a best girl back east.” I know of several cases where the boys were guilty.