Heading: (Overland Mail)
Author:
Title: Overland California Mail: Letter from the Postmaster General, in answer to a resolution of the House of the 5th instant, transmitting list of bidders' names, bids, and proffers to contract for carrying the overland California mail
Place Published: Washington, D.C.
Publisher:
Date Published: 1865
Description:

26 pp. House of Representatives Ex. Cod. No. 24, 38th Congress, 2d Session. 22.5x14 cm (8¾x5½"), modern leather-backed marbled boards. 

Significant and revealing document in the history and development of the stage and express routes across the American west at the end of the Civil War. The various routes are laid out in detail, the stages along way named, the schedule with departure and arrival times and number of hours allowed. The bidders for the different routes are named (Ben Holladay, Joseph H. Burbank, John A. Heistand and W.B. Dinsmore prominent among them), the amounts bid listed, and the winning bidders designated. The process, which extended from late 1863 to January of 1865, is succinctly recorded, down to a revealing series of letters at the end when the competing bidders vehemently objected to the perceived unfairness in the awarding of the different routes. OCLC locates only four copies, at the University of California Irvine; the Denver Public Library; Brigham Young University; and the Huntington Library.

A few small spots of adhesion damage to first page affecting a work or two; very good or better in attractive modern binding.