What a cool story! Thanks for posting it for us. I read it all the way through — what an amazing tale of a resourceful woman.
I’m enjoying watching all of the “Death Valley Days” TV series (I’m up to Season 16 now) and just started watching “Tales of Wells Fargo.” I love stories of the development of the west.
My daughter and her boyfriend gave me a 60 or 70 year old book titled “Bonanza Railroads” which is all about the early short-line railroads in the west from about 1850 onward. The chapter I’m reading now is about the first San Francisco - San Jose, CA railroad. That rail line is still in use by CalTrain today between the two cities and is just one mile from me.
You also might enjoy reading “Gunfighters, Highwaymen & Vigilantes -Violence on the Frontier” by Roger McGrath. The book examines violence on the Frontier of the late 1800s mainly in Bodie and Aurora in California and shows that much of the violence back then was in the big cities (like today) and not on the Frontier dispelling the common Wild West shootouts that so many site today as evidence of the root of American violence.