author

Isaiah Churchill Woods

1825–1880

Best known today for a rare firsthand report on the San Antonio–San Diego overland mail route, this 19th-century businessman and adventurer also left his mark on early California history. His life stretched from seafaring and commerce to an ambitious, unsuccessful attempt to build the town of Ravenswood on the San Francisco Peninsula.

1 Audiobook

Report to Hon. A. V. Brown, Postmaster-General : on the opening and present condition of the United States overland mail route between San Antonio, Texas, and San Diego, California

Report to Hon. A. V. Brown, Postmaster-General : on the opening and present condition of the United States overland mail route between San Antonio, Texas, and San Diego, California

by Isaiah Churchill Woods

About the author

Isaiah Churchill Woods was born in Saco, Maine, on October 8, 1825. A note preserved by the Menlo Park Historical Association says he went to sea as a young man and later became a wealthy San Francisco businessman. Local histories of the Menlo Park and East Palo Alto area also connect him with a large landholding there in the 1850s.

For readers, Woods is chiefly remembered as the author of Report to Hon. A. V. Brown, Postmaster-General on the opening and present condition of the United States overland mail route between San Antonio, Texas, and San Diego, California, a work now listed by Project Gutenberg. The book gives a direct period account of travel, communication, and expansion in the American West, which makes it especially interesting as both a historical document and a personal record.

Woods is also associated with Ravenswood, a planned settlement near present-day East Palo Alto and Menlo Park that ultimately failed. Even so, the name endured in local geography, and his story survives at the crossroads of California land speculation, transportation history, and frontier-era ambition.