Neighbors Expedition
Early in the spring of 1849, Major General William J. Worth, of the United States Army, who was in command of the Eighth Military Department, which included the former Republic of Texas, determined to send an expedition to map a dependable road between San Antonio and El Paso. The General, headquartered in San Antonio, selected Neighbors to lead the expedition to establish the so-called "upper route" to El Paso. His reasoning was that Neighbors was perhaps the only man in Texas who could safely ride into the Comancheria.
Neighbors led a combined military-Ranger force that included his personal friend "Rip" Ford and did in fact map a route that not only became the route used by the Overland Stage Company, but is the same route taken by the highway today. Indeed, Neighbors reported 598 miles between Austin (as the state capital) and El Paso – exactly the same milege listed today between the two cities. In addition to Ford on the expedition, Neighbors was able to convince Buffalo Hump to lead it. Though the chief later left the party, it remained under his protection, and another Comanche Chief led the party the remainder of the distance from the Colorado River to El Paso. Neighbors ability to communicate with the Comanche, and his relationship with them, made the expedition possible.
Read more about this topic: Robert Neighbors
Famous quotes containing the words neighbors and/or expedition:
“I, who cannot stay in my chamber for a single day without acquiring some rust,... confess that I am astonished at the power of endurance, to say nothing of the moral insensibility, of my neighbors who confine themselves to shops and offices the whole day for weeks and months, aye, and years almost together. I know not what manner of stuff they are of,—sitting there now at three o’clock in the afternoon, as if it were three o’clock in the morning.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It is a sort of ranger service. Arnold’s expedition is a daily experience with these settlers. They can prove that they were out at almost any time; and I think that all the first generation of them deserve a pension more than any that went to the Mexican war.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)