Edward Fitzgerald Beale
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Edward Fitzgerald "Ned" Beale (February 4, 1822 – April 22, 1893) was an American Navy Lieutenant. He was an explorer and frontiersman in California, fought in the Mexican-American War, brought news of the discovery of gold in California to Washington, D.C., was one of the surveyers of the Transcontinental Railroad, surveyed and built a wagon road that became part of Route 66, and founded Tejon Ranch in California. He received appointments from five U.S. Presidents: Jackson, Fillmore, Buchanan, Lincoln and Grant: President Andrew Jackson appointed him to Naval School, President Millard Fillmore appointed him Superintendent of Indian Affairs for California and Nevada, President James Buchanan appointed him to survey a wagon road from New Mexico to California, President Abraham Lincoln appointed him Surveyor General of California and Nevada, and President Ulysses S. Grant appointed him Ambassador to Austria-Hungary.
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[edit] Early Years in the Navy
Ned Beale was born in Washington, D.C. His father, George Beale, who was a paymaster in the U.S. Navy, had earned a Congressional Medal for Valor in the War of 1812. His mother, Emily, was the daughter of Commodore Thomas Truxtun of the U.S. Navy.[1] Ned was a student at Georgetown University when, at the solicitation of his widowed mother, President Jackson appointed him to the Naval School in Philadelphia. Beale graduated in 1842.
After a promotion to acting sailing master, he sailed for California in October 1845 in the frigate Congress under Commodore Robert F. Stockton. But 20 days later Stockton sent Beale back to Washington with important dispatches. After a long and roundabout voyage, he reached Washington in March 1846. Promoted to the grade of master, he sailed for Panama and then overtook the Congress at Callao, Peru, in May 1846. Hostilities with Mexico had already begun when the vessel reached Monterey, California on July 20. After reaching San Diego, California, Stockton dispatched Beale to serve with the land forces. He and a small body of men under Lt. Archibald Gillespie joined General Stephen W. Kearny's column just before the Battle of San Pasqual on December 6, 1846. After the Mexican Army surrounded the small American force and threatened to destroy it, Beale and two other men (his Delaware Indian servant and Kit Carson) crept through the Mexican lines and made their way to San Diego for reinforcements. Two months later, although Beale still suffered from the effects his adventure, Stockton again sent him east with dispatches. Beale reached Washington about June 1. In October he appeared as a defense witness for John C. Frémont at the "Pathfinder's" court martial.
Within the next two years, Beale made six more journeys across the country. On the second of these (July–September 1848), he crossed Mexico in disguise to bring the federal government proof of California's gold.
After the fourth journey he married Pennsylvania Representative Samuel Edwards' daughter, Mary, on June 27, 1849. They had three children: Mary (1852-1925), Emily (1854-?), and Truxtun (1856-1936).
Beale was promoted to Lieutenant on August 3, 1850. He resigned from the Navy in May 1851.
[edit] In California
Beale returned to California as a manager for W. H. Aspinwall and Commodore Stockton, who had acquired large properties in America's newest territory.
In 1853, President Fillmore appointed Beale Superintendent of Indian Affairs for California and Nevada. Congress appropriated $250,000 to improve native conditions in Beale's district. On his way to California, Beale left Washington on May 6 with a party of 13 and surveyed a route across Colorado and Utah to Los Angeles, California, for the First Transcontinental Railroad. He reached Los Angeles on August 22.
Beale served as Superintendent until 1856. California Governor John Bigler appointed Beale a Brigadier General in the California state militia to give Beale additional authority to negotiate peace treaties between the Native Americans and the U.S. Army.
In 1861, Beale was appointed by President Abraham Lincoln as Surveyor General of California and Nevada. He had an important passage named after him due to his widening of a cut used by the Butterfield Overland Mail, a stagecoach that operated mail between St. Louis, Missouri and San Francisco. In 1862, he dispatched a crew of Chinese workers to widen an 1858 cut, which also reduced the climb by 50 feet. Beale's Cut, as it was known, lasted as a transportation passage through the modern day Newhall Pass area until the construction of the Newhall Tunnel was completed in 1910. Still in existence today, it is no longer passable by automobiles. Beale's Cut is difficult to find today because it is fenced off and not close enough to the Sierra Highway to be easily seen.
[edit] The Beale Wagon Road
In 1857, President James Buchanan appointed Beale to survey and build a 1,000 mile wagon road from Fort Defiance, New Mexico to the Colorado River, on the border between Arizona and California. The survey also incorporated an experiment using camels, first proposed by Secretary of War Jefferson Davis four years earlier. Beale took his Camel Corps, comprising 25 camels imported from Tunis, as pack animals during this expedition and on another in 1858 through 1859 to extend the road from Fort Smith, Arkansas to the Coloraodo River. His camel driver was Hadji Ali. The camels were capable of traveling for days without water, carried much heavier loads than mules, and could thrive on forage that mules wouldn’t touch. But the camels scared horses and mules, and the Army declined to continue the experiment with camels. Nevertheless, the wagon road Beale built became a popular immigrant trail during the 1860s and 1870s, and it was this survey which marked out for the first time a practicable highway along the 35th parallel that has been used from that day to this. The general route of the Beale Wagon Road was followed by U.S. Route 66, the Sante Fe Railway, and Interstate 40.
Of this road, Beale wrote: "... It is the shortest (route) from our western frontier by 300 miles, being nearly directly west. It is the most level, our wagons only double-teaming once in the entire distance, and that at a short hill, and over a surface heretofore unbroken by wheels or trail on any kind. It is well-watered! Our greatest distance without water at any time being twenty miles ... It crosses the great desert (which must be crossed by any road to California) at its narrowest point."
"In opening this highway," wrote Gerald Thompson, "Beale joined the small group of explorers who left an enduring mark on the American West during the nineteenth century."[2]
Portions of the original wagon road are still visible.
[edit] In Mexico
President Lincoln asked Beale to assist Mexico in its revolt against the Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian. Beale was decorated for his efforts by Mexican President Diaz.
[edit] Tejon Ranch
[edit] Decatur House
In 1872, Beale purchased Decatur House, opposite the White House, in Washington, D.C. His daughter-in-law, Marie, bequeathed Decatur House to the National Trust in 1956.
[edit] Retirement
In his retirement, Beale lived at Decatur House and at Tejon Ranch, apart from four years from 1876-1880 when President Ulysses S. Grant appointed Beale as Ambassador to Austria-Hungary.
In 1893, Beale died at his residence in Washington, D.C.
[edit] Legacy
- Tejon Ranch, Bakersfield, California.
- Beale Air Force Base, a United States Air Force base in California.
- Beale Street, San Francisco, California.[3].
- U.S. Route 66
- Beale Street and monument in Kingman, Arizona, and Beale's Springs nearby.
- Beale Memorial Library, Bakersfield, California.
- Beale Mountains in California.
- USS Beale (DD-471), a Fletcher-class destroyer ship of the U.S. Navy.
[edit] See also
Ridge Route - 1937 photograph of Beale's Cut
Beale, Edward Fitzgerald, Wagon Route From Fort Defiance to the Colorado River, House Executive Document 124, Serial 959, 35th Congress, 1st Session, 1857-58.
Beale, Edward Fitzgerald, Wagon Road – Fort Smith to the Colorado River, House Executive Document 42, Serial 1048, 36th Congress, 1st Session, 1859-60.
Thompson, Gerald, Edward F. Beale and the American West, University of New Mexico Press, 1983.
Bowman, Eldon G. with Smith, Jack Beale, Beale’s Road Through Arizona, Flagstaff Corral of Westerners International, 1979.
Lesley, Lewis B., Uncle Sam’s Camels; the journal of May Humphreys Stacy supplemented by the report of Edward Fitzgerald Beale (1857-1858), Harvard University Press, 1929.
[edit] References
- ^ Ned had six siblings: Truxtun (1820-1870), Mary (1823-1824), Cornelia (1825-1827), Mary (1828-1903), George (1829-?), and Emily (1832-1880).
- ^ Gerald Thompson, Edward F. Beale and the American West, University of New Mexico Press, 1983.
- ^ http://www.emporis.com/en/wm/st/?id=182677
