Ezra's Journal: 1870--1890

In 1867 Ezra Collins was orphaned in Kansas City, MO. and separated from his brother and his big yellow dog Archie, By accident he saved Archie from ruffians in 1870 after they had both been living on the streets, scrounging for food and trying to stay out of the notice of the police. By chance Ezra witnessed a collision between a hansom cab and a freight wagon and saved the passenger, Miss Cornelia Morse from injury. One thing led to another and Ezra wound up working for James Morse, Cornelia's brother, who ran the Kansas City Western Union office, first as a messenger, then a telegrapher and eventually being groomed for management.
Sent out west to inspect the Western Union telegraph lines, Ezra and Archie traveled by wagon through Nebraska and Colorado, where he took over management of the Denver office for a year. Then on toward San Francisco by train, only to be halted at the site of a still smoking coaling stop and Western Union office shack. He stopped there to rebuild the station. The rest is the story of the growth of that burned out station from one lonely outpost to the city of Collins Station, NV, with Ezra and his big yellow dog Archie playing key roles.
All of this was recorded in this handwritten journal, recovered from a dusty box in the dusty back room of the Silver County library and preserved for us to read about how things happened in, not the "Old West," but the emerging "New West" with all the changes brought about by expansion, the railroads and the telegraph.