Great Salt Lake City

Mark Twain Learns the Cost of Traveling West

/ sandramervillehart

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Mark Twain and his brother stopped in Great Salt Lake City while on a stagecoach trip to Nevada in the early 1860s. While at the Salt Lake House, a fellow asked if Twain wanted his boots blacked. Twain agreed and paid him a silver five-cent piece when done.

rupee-1442402_960_720The man laid the coin in his hand and stared as if at a novelty. Stagecoach drivers, mountaineers, and other local folk gathered near to survey the nickel.

Returning the money, the fellow suggested that Twain store his coins in his pocket-book instead of his soul—that way it wouldn’t get so shriveled up!

It was a humiliating lesson that commodities costing far less in the eastern United States were not as cheap in the West. The amount Twain gave was a fair price where he grew up, but not in Great Salt Lake City.

A penny’s worth of goods was available in the East; it bought the smallest amount of purchasable products. The silver nickel was the smallest coin used west of Ohio.

background-21657_960_720Nothing cost less than a dime in Overland City and, as Twain learned the hard way, everything cost at least a quarter in Great Salt Lake City.

Cigars, peaches, candles, newspapers, and chalk pipes—items that normally cost Twain a nickel—went for twenty-five cents in that western city.

Twain and his brother brought along silver coins stored in a shot-bag; the level reduced at an alarming rate at those prices. Though it seemed as if they blew their money on riotous living, their expense records proved that not to be the case.

The brothers quickly learned the realities of residing in the pioneering West. High costs of freighting goods to the area escalated the prices. Pioneers grew accustomed to paying a minimum of twenty-cents for everything, even blushing to remember paying only a nickel for the same items.

The fellows had a good laugh at Twain’s expense that morning at the hotel, perhaps because the same thing happened to them when they were first confronted with the exorbitant prices in the West.

-Sandra Merville Hart

 

Sources

Twain, Mark. Roughing It, Penguin Books, 1981.

Mark Twain Writes of a “Soda Lake” on the Oregon Trail

/ sandramervillehart

 

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Mark Twain wrote of traveling by stagecoach on the Oregon Trail. One of the fascinating sights he talked about was a dry lake he called “Alkali” or “Soda Lake.” He saw these after passing Independence Rock, located in what is now Alcova, Wyoming.

img_2270The stagecoach driver informed him that Mormons traveled from Great Salt Lake City with wagons to shovel pure saleratus from the dry lake. The driver had seen them haul away two wagon loads a few days before Twain passed by. The Mormons sold the drug for twenty-five cents a pound, a nice profit for a product that cost only their labor.

Carried by the wind, the white powder blew into the travelers’ faces, irritating their eyes. Some early pioneers described the strong odor as smelling like lime or having an “acrid caustic smell.”

baking-soda-768950_960_720The shallow lakes were sometimes dry but might not be depending on the season. The water could be poisonous; animals that refused to stay away from it sometimes sickened and died from drinking it.

Saleratus, or bicarbonate of soda, is a white substance we know as baking soda. Bakers use it as a leavening agent for biscuits, pancakes, cakes, and cookies.

cake-596918_960_720When mixed with water, sodium bicarbonate may treat heartburn and acid indigestion but this comes with a caution: don’t use on a regular basis as an excess may cause Alkalosis.

Make a paste of baking soda and water to relieve pain of burns, insect bites, and stings. This paste also treats the itch caused by allergic reactions to poison oak, poison ivy, and poison sumac—or add a cup of baking soda to bath water.

Baking soda has been used in toothpaste for years and my mother used baking soda and water to brush her teeth when growing up.

mark-twain-391112_960_720What Twain called “Soda Lake” is now known as Playa Lake or Saleratus Lake and is easily seen from Independence Rock.

-Sandra Merville Hart

 

Sources

“Saleratus Lake,” The Wyoming State Historical Society, 2016/09/27 http://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/saleratus-lake.

“Sodium bicarbonate,” The Free Dictionary by Farlex, 2016/09/27 http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/saleratus.

“Sodium bicarbonate,” Wikipedia, 2016/09/27, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_bicarbonate.

Twain, Mark. Roughing it, Penguin Books, 1985.