By Gordon Yowell
MERCHANTS’ TOKENS, trade
checks, “hickeys,” or whatever else they were called, played a vital part
in the economy and development of our West.
They were a medium of exchange used by stores, saloons, livery stables,
and restaurants; in factm about all of the early business enterprises used
tokens.
Some card rooms and taverns
in certain areas issue and redeem them at the present time.
They were generally made
of bass, bronze, aluminum, nickel, or German silver. The author has in his collection a set made
of lead, issued by an early-day merchant of Hays City, Kansas.
They were of various shapes, round being the most popular, and of various
denominations. The “bit”(12 ½ cents)
was in common use in the saloons, as drinks were generally two for two bits.
Other tokens were good in trade or merchandise for 5 cents, 10 cents,
25 cents, 50 cents, $100, and $5.00.
Others were good for one cigar, one drink at the barm one
feed for a team at the livery stable, one meal at the restaurant, etc. The writer has one in his collection, found
in the famous old mining town of Grass Valley, California, that reads, “Good
for one tune on the banjo” at Si Rowe’s Place.
Houses of ill repute issued them also, Fannie Porter’s of
Fort Worth and The Cliff House of Rossland, British Columbia, to name a couple.
These tokens were stamped on the reverse side, “Good for One.”
The sutler group, military, Indian trader and post exchange
types were issued or sold to soldier and other personnel by the sutler or
post exchange and were used by that body to purchase drinks and other extras
not on their regular issue. The writer
has in his collection tokens from Whipple Barracks, Arizona, Fort Grant, 21st
Infantry, 4th Cavalry counter-marked “7,” Fort Laramie and others.
The denomination is on the reverse side.
Some of the sutler token read “Good for $1.00 in Trade Goods”
and have the name of the sutler embossed on the reverse, as “Lowry, Beall
& Co.”
Another group which played an important part in the Northwest
and Canada were the “Beaver” tokens used by the Hudson’s Bay Company.
These were issued to trappers. The
value of these tokens was based on beaver skins and were in denominations
of 1 “Made Beaver,” ½, ¼, and 1/8.
When the tokens were made in England for the company, the
die maker assumed that MB was intended for NB, and that’s the way they were
struck. The genuine can be easily
identified by the NB on the reverse and the Company Coat of Arms on the obverse.
The trademark is a fox between two deer.
Other firms using similar tokens were the North West Company,
Lampson & Hubbard, and I. G. Baker, the latter having headquarters in
Fort Benton, Montana. These firms
were absorbed by the far-flung Hudson’s Bay Company and after the turn of
the century these tokens were rarely used.
Early-day railroads used a “Cord Wood” token for fuel for
their wood-burning locomotives. These
had the initials of the railroad followed by the denomination, 1 cord, ½ cord,
¼ cord, etc. and were given to the wood contractor or wood cutter and later
redeemed by the railroad for wood received.
The importance of transportation tokens can’t be minimized.
The early street railways, horse and mule-drawn cars used tokens, usually
of vulcanite or hard rubber composition.
They depicted horses or mules pulling a streetcar with the company’s
name or initials on the obverse, the reverse side showing the value, one fare,
one-half fare, one trip, etc. These
were followed the latter half of the last century by tokens of metal content
(nickel, silver, and German silver being widely used).
Bronze, aluminum, zinc and copper followed this composition and are
used to the present time.
Toll roads, bridges, ferries and omnibuses (the latter a predecessor
to streetcars) also used tokens. Toll
bridges and ferries of today use this medium of exchange.
“Depotels” (Hotel to Depot) or “Drummers Checks” were widely
used in towns that had no streetcars. In
some cases they were issued by the hotel itself if it ran its own “hack line”;
in other towns the livery stable had this business. Baggage firms, drayage firms and private individuals
used tokens. At first this form of
transportation was horse drawn hacks or express wagons; later it was followed
by the motorized ”jitneys” or buses. The
commercial men or salesmen of that bygone era, popularly known as “drummers”
always had their heavy sample cases and other baggage, and “hacks” were the
answer to their problems of getting from place to place.
Many other businesses used some form of tokens, such as dairies,
orchards, poultry stores, berry growers, newsstands and shine parlors.
The White Elephant Saloon in Fort Worth was the place where
its proprietor, Luke Short, shot and killed “Long Haired” Jim Courtright,
who was trying to work an early version of the protection racket. Short, a former resident of such hurrahtowns
as Dodge City, Leadville and Rombstone, in that order, took a dim view of
this form of extortion and neatly drilled Courtright between the eyes.
The other famous Texas token was issued by the Palace Saloon
of Austin, a favorite gathering place for such famous gunmen as King Fisher,
Ben Thompson, and John Wesley Hardin. The
proprietor, Jules Bornefled, had his famous race horse, “Parole” depicted
on the tokens issued by the Palace.
The founder of the widely known saloon in the heart of Portland’s
skid row, August Erickson, issued aluminum tokens when he opened the Portland
and Astoria, Oregon, locations. The
Portland place supposedly had the longest bar in the West, more than 600 feet
in length. It, as well as it counterpart
in Seattle, “Our House,” was a hangout for loggers and seamen and had a very
colorful background. The Portland
place is still in operation.
Any tokens from the Eagle Saloon in Nevada City, California,
is a rare one. This saloon was operated
in the early days of the Gold Rush and was located a short distance from the
gambling house where Elenore Dumont, known later as “Madame Mustache,” made
her debut in the middle 1850’s. Madame
Mustache was a French woman and, after a couple of years in Nevada City, roamed
over the entire West-Eureka and Pioche in Nevada, Silver City and Boise in
Idaho, Bannack and Fort Benton in Montana.
She followed the construction camps in Wyoming when the Union Pacific
railroad was being built, made the Black Hills gold boom at Deadwood, went
to Tombstone, and finished up back in California, at Bodie, the wildest camp
of them all. She committed suicide
there in September, 1879.
The Teller House of Central City, Colorado, also represented
in this group of old tokens, was at the time of its opening, in 1872, finer
and more elaborate than anything Denver afforded.
When President Grant made his western tour in 1873, a sidewalk of solid
silver bars was laid from his stagecoach to the hotel for him to walk on.
The Occidental Hotel, of Buffalo, Wyoming, is a rather historical
building. It was in front of this
place that “the Virginian,” the hero of Owen Wister’s popular novel of that
time, shot it out with Trampas.
Tokens from the old ghost town of Tin Cup, Colorado are very
rare. Tin Cup was incorporated in
1882, and at that time had two smelters in operation and a population of 1,200
people. It got its name from one of
the prospectors, Fred Lottes, who used a tin cup to pan his gravel. The town was notorious in its heyday for the
high mortality rate among its peace officers.
My favorite token is the one from the ghost town of Wonder,
Nevada. Perhaps it is due to the circumstances
under which I acquired it. My guide
and companion for the day, an eighty-one-year-oldster born in the rip-roaring
town of Pioche, had driven over that morning to explore and look around.
I am a ghost town buff, have been since I was a small boy in Colorado,
and my companion had worked in the camp during its height.
He had gone there in 1908, shortly after it opened, and could give
first had information on the operation.
While poking around in the rubble of some of the buildings,
I found a woman’s high button shoe, twisted and curled by the elements, and
a sun-purpled bottle embossed with the words, “Bliss Liver & Kidney Cure,
Stockton, California.” We were walking
down what had formerly been the main street when I kicked up what appeared
to be a metal disc. After some of
the dirt was rubbed off, I recognized what was a bit token. This type was seldom used east of Kansas or Texas. It was embossed on the obverse, “The Overland,
Wonder, Nevada” and on the obverse read, “Good for 12 ½ cents in trade.”
This started the old man to “harking back” and we took advantage
of the sparse shade of one of the half-dead locust trees that lined the former main thoroughfare. My companion started telling of that long ago
era when the camp, as he put it, “was a going Jessie.” He told me he remembered The Overland very
well indeed, that at first it was a walled-up tent with a board floor, and
was owned and operated by a large, red-haired woman said to be from Nome,
Alaska.
She was soon joined in this enterprise by a one-legged, hard-bitten
character remembered only as Nogales, because he hailed from the town in Arizona
by that name. Nogales used a Winchester
for a crutch and had a quieting influence on the customers of the place.
The old man said many an “exciting discussion” and fight in the making
withered on the vine when the clump-clump of Nogales and his crutch could
be heard approaching. Things rocked along in this cozy manner for
a year or so until one day the woman from Nome caught Nogales making love
to an occupant of “Madge’s Place,” and worked him over with his own crutch. When last seen, Nogales had hitched a ride
on a Mormon peddler’s watermelon wagon and was going in the direction of Fallon.
As for the woman from Nome, the old man said that after a
succession of paramours, each one more worthless than his predecessor, she
drifted to the wide open lead and silver
mining town of Eureka and then to oblivion.
As we was under the locust tree, that sun-drenched day of
long ago, the old man’s voice droned steadily on. It had a “gone” sound like the wind in pine trees, restful but somehow
sad, telling of people and happenings when the camp was young. He told of high-grading rich ore form the Nevada
Wonder mine, and then getting cold feet and dumping it down an outdoor “Chic
Sale”; of one Hallowe’en when pranksters took an ore wagon apart and reassembled
it on top of the camp’s one-room schoolhouse; of two occupants from one of
the houses of ill fame fighting a duel with half the camp cheering them on;
of small boys teasing the Chinese gardeners; of the six- and eight-horse ore
teams pulling the heavily loaded wagons; of the teamsters; of the Thomas Flyers
and White Mountain Wagons which provided the transportation. I always planned to go back and see this old-timer,
but never did and he is long since dead.
WHEN
I look at the old tokens they bring to mind
a portion of a poem I found in the old “Tie Hack” town of Encampment, Wyoming,
in 1942,
“Her picks are rust,
Her bones are dust,
‘Tis forty years
Since she went bust.”
There is no established market in tokens as yet. Mostly collectors buy and trade with other
collectors. Dealers have them but
usually they are thrown in their “junk” boxes with odds and ends.
Two apparently very similar tokens will bring far different
prices based on background and historical value. For example we will use two tokens of the bit denomination. One will read “Covey’s Bar, Afton, Wyoming,
good for 12 ½ cents in trade;” the other will read “The Buckhorn Saloon, San
Antonio, Texas, good for 12 ½ cents in trade.”
They are of the same composition, are the same diameter, in about the
same condition, and both saloons were in business at the same time. However, the Buckhorn Saloon token will bring
four or give times more than the Wyoming one due to the wide spread publicity
the Buckhorn got.
Scarcity, is another factor contributing to a token’s price.
One used currently in Ellensburg, Washington, wouldn’t be worth as
much as one from an Astoria, Oregon, concern that has been gone for seventy-five
years. There are only four or five tokens mentioned
in this article with an accepted going price on today’s market. D. M. Crowley, good for one drink at the bar,
Lewiston, Montana; Reverse, racing stallion “Zodiac” is valued at $4.00. white Elephant Saloon, Fort Worth, Texas is
valued at $12.50. Jules Bornefield,
Palace Saloon, Austin, Texas; Reverse, race horse “Parole,” is valued at $10.00.
the Hudson’s Bay Token “Made Beaver” is valued from $10.00 to $16.00.
All of these are scarce. Run
of the mill ones showing town, state, and firm are worth from twenty cents
to one dollar depending on age, location, and demand.
Military tokens, old transportation tokens, depotels from
famous places are worth whatever a collector will pay. Eventually, prices will become stabilized and
uniform. This hobby is more or less
in its infancy, but it is growing. There
are over 1,00 members in the Token and Medal Society at present and most of
us are busy doing research and digging out background information on particular
town, firms, and areas. They had a
monetary system all their own, and it’s a fascinating aspect of Western Americana.