DATE: October 9, 2015
HISTORICAL
SITE: Patee House
LOCATION: 1202 Penn St., St Joseph, Buchanan Co.,
Missouri 64503
DEDICATED: October 15, 1966
Patee House Hotel 1858
Pony
Express Headquarters in 1860
National
Pony Express Centennial Association Trail Marker
National Historic Landmark
In Search
of The Pony Express * Station Marker
Patee
House
Company
and Division Headquarters
Apr. 3,
1860 – Sep. 13, 1861
Original
Station
Apr. 3, 1860 – Nov. 20, 1861
MARKER
PLACED BY: U. S. Dept. of the
Interior National Park Service
PERSONAL
REFLECTIONS:
Dirk and I were looking for the Pony Express Museum. Being
from Sacramento, which is the end of the pony express route, I really wanted to
see the beginning.
We walked into the building listed as the sight and there was
an indoor merry go round. We told them we weren’t interested and walked around
the block. On another street we saw an entrance to a museum and went in….to the
other side of the same building.
But this time there was so much to take in that we decided to
stay and look around. This was indeed the Pony Express Museum, but it was sooo
much more than that.
This place is crammed full of stuff and for a lot of it, there
is no rhyme or reason to the displays. It’s not like they are by age or subject
or whatever. There’s just a lot! Even before we were finished looking around, I
realized that I really wasn’t sure how I was going to write this blog…There’s
just stuff and it’s everywhere! Officially it says that the museum is a
“transportation and communications” museum, and while that’s true, it’s also an
“everything and the kitchen sink” museum.
Built at a cost of $180,000.00, the Patee House was a 140 room
luxury hotel in the 19th century. It’s 4 stories tall and boasted of
gas lights, running water and flush toilets. Although the museum only takes up the
1st and 2nd floors, it’s an entire city block…again, lots
of room, for lots of stuff.
This building has been many things in its 160 year history..hotel,
headquarters for the Pony Express, the Union Army’s Provost Marshal, court for
war trials, female college, shirt factory, and museum.
1858 to 1865: Patee Hotel opens. Pretty much destined to be a
financial failure from the start; John Patee was assured the railroad terminal
would be located very near but instead was built several blocks away. That didn’t
mean the horse rails weren’t loaded up but it was more locals than anything
else and it just couldn’t get off the ground.
The hotel was a haven for east-west travel. For those
traveling east, it was the first hotel with the “luxuries” the states had that
the frontier did not and for those traveling west, it was the last hotel with
those luxuries before the hardships of the frontier.
1860: Russell, Majors & Waddell established the St. Joseph
office of the Central Overland & Pikes Peak Express Companies…aka, the Pony
Express.
On April 3, 1860, at the sound of a cannon being shot in front
of the hotel, one of the pony express riders left the stables a couple of
blocks away and gallop through town at full speed and out in the direction of
Kansas.
Riders would pick up the mail from a door by the northwest
corner of the building and ride the approximately 2,000 miles to Sacramento
carrying the nation’s mail. Riders had to be small and horses were rode hard
for about 10 miles before the rider would jump onto another horse to continue
the journey. In this way, mail would make it to California in about 10 days; crucial
now that so many people had gone west in search of gold. This was the fastest
mail was being delivered anywhere in the world and although the service really
only lasted about a year, it captured the imagination of Americans and has
loomed large in our historical psyche since.
1861: Civil war breaks out and Missouri is divided. President
Lincoln asks for recruits and a pro-southern group cuts down the American flag
from the Post Office. The importance of the railroad was recognized early and
the Union army occupied St. Joseph within weeks of the wars outbreak.
The 4th
floor held the Union Army Provost and recruiting offices and war trials were
held in the ballroom on the 2nd floor.
Just because the town was occupied, did not mean things
quieted down. Finally, martial law was declared over local law and was kept
that way until the end of the war.
In October of 1861, confederate “bushwhackers” weakened the
lower part of the Platte River Railroad Bridge to the point that when a
westbound train began to cross, it collapsed and the train with its freight
cars, baggage car, mail car and passenger cars plunged into the river. At least
17 died and over 100 were injured. St. Joseph didn’t have a hospital so the
injured were brought to the hotel.
Once the union took over the hotel, Patee, being a southern
sympathizer and backing the confederacy, decided to sell the hotel in a
lottery. Each ticket was $2 and when over 100 tickets went unsold, he bought
them himself and basically won back his own hotel.
1865 to 1868: Patee Female College (Methodist).
1869 to 1872: Patee Hotel again.
1875 to 1880: St. Joseph Female College (Baptist).
1882: Outlaw Jesse James was killed at his house two blocks
away and his family was brought to the hotel while the investigation went on.
The house, with bullet hole intact, has been moved to the museum lot in order
to preserve it. (We didn’t get to tour the home as we only had 20 minutes
before it closed and they were charging a separate admission)
1881 to 1883: World’s Hotel and Epileptic Sanatorium.
1885 to 1933: RL McDonald Factory (shirt factory)
1957 to 1963: Vacant with vandals ruining the inside.
1963: The Pony Express Historical Association. Credited with
saving the building.
1965 to present (major restoration in 1975): Patee House
Museum