The Days of “Bull Teams”
Before the Virginia and Truckee Railroad was built all freight was transported by teams. Ore was hauled to the mills by teams, and teams brought to the mines all the wood, lumber, and timber required. Teams also hauled over the Sierras all the mining machinery and supplies required by the mines and mills, and all the goods and merchandise needed by various kinds of stores, shops, and business houses. When the Central Pacific was completed this hauling of merchandise was from Reno, via the Geiger grade wagon-road. Hundreds of teams of all kinds were required to handle the goods and merchandise, other hundreds the ore, wood, lumber, and timbers, and still others to do the miscellaneous hauling of the country. When the big reduction works of the Ophir Mining Company were in operation near Franktown, in Washoe Valley, lines of teams from one to three miles in length were to be seen moving along the Ophir grade. On all other roads it was much the same. Teams of from ten to sixteen horses or mules hauled trains of from two to four loaded wagons. At times so many teams thronged Virginia City that blockades occurred which could not be broken for hours. Stages, omnibuses, delivery wagons, drays, carts, buggies, carriages, and all kinds of vehicles were inextricably mingled in a jam that filled the principal streets for blocks. With all the cursing of “mule-punchers,” “swampers,” and “bull-teamsters,” it would often be two or three hours before the wheels of traffic again began to revolve. When these blockades occurred about noon, teamsters would often get out their dinner pails, spread their meal on their load of wood, brick, or lumber, bring out from the nearest saloon a measure of beer, and in a leisurely way partake of the midday repast. Then all passengers and all mail and express matter were carried by stages, and so great was the rush of travel and business that the coaches went out and returned in droves, five and six in a string. In 1859, 1860, and 1861, great quantities of goods were transported across the Sierras from California on the backs of mules. Some of the pack-trains were composed of fifty, eighty, and even as many as one hundred mules. They brought over all kinds of freight, even huge casks of liquor and large pieces of mill machinery. On the return trip they often carried passengers. In those days the “hurricane deck” of a mule was not to be despised.