Page:Don Coronado through Kansas.djvu/286

269 Tns: TBAH. ov thb mormons. 209, Also for many years tbe ^ravea showed w'aere the dead w^tie bwed on; the sloping grouild/. It is aoa- eeded that the '49ers came this vray to relach Ccidif or- nia, and in April, 1S50, Major Ogden, qaartermaster at Fort Leavenworth, with an escort of some Kickapoo guides', laid out a road northwesterly to' a point be- hind Seneca to intersect the road from St; Joseph, Missouri, at the cros«ing of Big Blue river, now Marysville. From 1849 until the buUiUng oi the Union Pacific and other railroads, the overland route to the west was via Nemaha county, and for fifteen years this road was traveled to such im extent that it is no, trouble to follow same through the cultivated farms because of the deep ruts left, and at some places the road is visi- ble for several hundreds of feet in width. Thiii was the mail route used by the Government. Along this road it was that Mark Twain rode with Monks and Bob Ridley (Bob Sewell)i,the renowned drivers, and a few boys, who are now old men, rode Pony Express through the towns of Hiawatha in Brown county, and Granada and Seneca in Nemaha county, thence oh west to Marysville. When the trains of wagons were proceeding over this road there would be miles and miles of wagons and oxen, taking hours in going through the place where the city of Seneca now stands. Occasionally there would be a mule team, but nearly all the' wagons were drawn by oxen. ' There was a road which came from Leavenworth, but it struck the government highway at the Seven Mile house; i. e., seven miles from Atchison, and the road from St. Joseph switched onto the main route at