Nellie had arrived in San Francisco from Yokohama early in the morning on Jan. 21, 1890, to the distressing news of a huge blizzard blocking all railway travel east. Pulitzer and the people at the World went to work, cabling the Southern Pacific Railroad to “spare no expense” in chartering a special train from Oakland to Chicago via a southern route that would bypass the snow. The trip to Chicago – to Mojave, then to Albuquerque, then north to eastern Colorado, then to Kansas City, and then to Chicago – would require transfers to different railroads and switching to different locomotives, but the Southern Pacific pulled off the arrangements, at a cost greater than the entire rest of Nellie’s around-the-world trip.
A tugboat took her at 8 a.m. from the Oceanic across the Bay to the port of Oakland, and at 9:02 a.m. on the morning of Jan. 21, Nellie and her monkey set off on the Queen, the pride of the Southern Pacific railroad. After traveling across much of Asia and Africa in trying conditions, the trip on the Queen must have seemed luxurious: a buffet, a drawing room, an observation car, mahogany wood finishes and purple velvet. Aboard the fast-moving train was a stenographer and telegraph operator, and Nellie dictated a message that appeared in the World the next day: “The saddest sounds that came to me were the farewells called from the Hoboken pier when I started our trip. The sweetest sounds were the words of welcome and applause which greeted my arrival in San Francisco.”
More sweet sounds awaited her. The train headed south to Merced, and then Fresno, and then Mojave, and at each stop large crowds dressed in their finest outfits greeted her with cheers and serenaded her with “My Nellie’s Blue Eyes,” a popular song at the time.
Nellie Bly was more famous than she realized. She was the most famous woman in the country.
Stephen Carter says
May 12, 2015 at 2:37 pmThis is a great item of American history worth preserving!