Join
us on Tuesday, June 10 at 6:30 p.m. at Moscow’s 1912 Center, 412 E. Third
Street, as we launch Idaho State Historian Keith Petersen’s new book, John Mullan:
The Tumultuous Life of a Western Road Builder.
Between
1858-1862, Mullan constructed the first engineered highway in the Pacific
Northwest, a road that helped cities like Walla Walla, Missoula, and Helena boom,
and set the route for Interstate 90.
Today, that accomplishment is recognized with dozens of massive
monuments, interpretive signs, exhibits, and highway markers. But Mullan completed his road as a
32-year-old. He lived nearly another
half century. Until now, his fascinating
life after the road has been a mystery.
Come
learn about the real John Mullan. We’ll
have light refreshments and locally crafted beer from the Moscow Brewing
Company, and Keith will be autographing books after his presentation.
Below
is an excerpt from the Prologue of John
Mullan.
 |
| John Mullan as he appeared as a young Army officer
while constructing his road. Photo courtesy of Keith Petersen |
 |
| This monument to John Mullan is in the town of Mullan,
Idaho. It is one of more than two dozen monuments that mark the road’s
route in three states. The Mullan Road is one of the most monumentalized
events in American western history. Photo courtesy of Keith Petersen |
"Twenty-five-year-old
Rebecca Mullan found herself in Manhattan on May 7, 1863, Cyrus Field at her
elbow. Yes, that Cyrus Field: The “world-renowned parent” of the first
transatlantic telegraph cable. Field
guided Rebecca through the grand Clinton Hall at Astor Place, selecting two
seats from which to observe the evening’s lectures at the American Geographical
and Statistical Society. Rebecca
intently awaited the night’s first oration, by Captain John Mullan, her husband
of ten days, there to discuss the Pacific Northwest, a region he knew as well
as any man; a place Rebecca would soon call home.
"Rebecca sat anxiously as Henry
Grinnell, the Society’s president and founder, advanced to the podium to
introduce her husband. Grinnell, retired
from the family transatlantic shipping business, now focused on financing polar
expeditions. Grinnell Land, a peninsula
deep in the Canadian arctic, bore his name, testimony to exploration
philanthropy. A heady atmosphere filled
the Hall, but the thirty-two-year-old Mullan, well educated, self-assured, and
the focus of considerable press attention himself as “The Northwest Road
Builder,” confidently commenced his address.
"Mullan described his time with Isaac
Stevens’ Pacific Railroad Survey when he explored five possible rail routes
through the Rocky Mountains. He detailed
his multi-year effort to construct a military road connecting the Missouri and
Columbia Rivers, finally fulfilling Thomas
Jefferson’s
vision when he had sent Lewis and Clark west fifty years earlier. He narrated tales of the region’s Indians.
"Mullan spoke on—and on: thirty minutes, sixty, ninety. Always meticulously well prepared for any
task, Mullan’s zeal served him poorly on this evening. Henry Grinnell must have
grown restless, for the main attraction remained to come, a report on Arctic
explorations, now deterred well into the night.
Mullan’s discourse underwhelmed The
New York Times, which charitably termed his presentation “a lengthy but
still interesting paper,” before devoting the bulk of its story to the ongoing
Arctic excitement.
"As Mullan accompanied Rebecca out of
Clinton Hall late that evening, it would not have occurred to either to ponder
whether Mullan’s career might have peaked a few hours earlier as he prepared to
give his invited presentation to the nation’s most prestigious geographical
organization. Until then, Mullan’s life
had been an ascending arc: Presidential
appointee to West Point, explorer extraordinaire, Western road builder,
aspirant to become Idaho’s first territorial governor, recently-appointed commissioner
of a western railroad. Rebecca and John,
still relishing this honeymoon evening spent with luminaries, would have had no
way of knowing that their future held considerably less predictability."
