The Gold Rush brought settlers and adventurers from many lands. But nobody could have imagined how much California was about to change – and how quickly.
New ways to communicate and travel linked California to the rest of the country and the world. John Butterfield’s Overland Mail Company delivered mail by stagecoach. It traveled from the East to San Francisco. The Pony Express, a horseback relay system, cut the time it took to deliver mail. A new invention, the telegraph, sent messages in minutes. But it was the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869 that made travel to California much easier.
