Forty years at El Paso, 1858-1898; recollections of war, politics, adventure, events, narratives, sketches, etc., by W. W. Mills. Page: 27 of 163
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30
FORTY YEARS AT EL PASO.
greater number of men and better means of defense, they
were not so frequently "taken in" as the latter.
I quote here the prices of a few of the articles purchased
by me of El Paso merchants during the "sixties,"
having preserved the original bills: One common No.
7 kitchen stove, $I25; ham and bacon, 75 cents per
pound; coffee, 75 cents per pound; sugar, 60 cents per
pound; lard, 40 cents per pound; candles, 75 cents per
pound; one-half ream letter paper, $4; nails, 50 cents
per pound; matches, I2
cents per box; tobacco, $2
per pound; calico (print), 50 cents per yard; bleached
muslin, 75 cents per yard; unbleached muslin, 50 cents
per yard; coal oil, $5 per gallon; alcohol, $8 per gallon;
lumber, rough sawed, I2
cents per foot; empty
whiskey barrels, $5 each; starch, 50 cents per pound.
But if we paid high prices, we also received high prices
for what we had to sell. I will here state briefly a few
of my own business experiences. I made large quantities
of wine from the El Paso grape, and sold it readily at
$5 per gallon, $200 per barrel of forty gallons. For
two years I furnished the Government with all the vinegar
and salt used in the Military Department of New
Mexico, vinegar at $1.70 per gallon, and salt at 17 cents
per pound, delivered at El Paso. Vinegar, four thousand
gallons, and salt, one thousand bushels. The
vinegar was manufactured from the El Paso grape, and
the salt was brought from a natural salt lake, one hundred
and twenty-five miles northeast of El Paso, and
ground at Harts Mills, near El Paso, and sacked here.
The Government had previously been hauling these
articles from St. Louis, a distance of sixteen hundred
miles. My partner, Don Juan Zubiran, and myself one
day delivered three hundred head of beef cattle to the
Government at Las Cruces, New Mexico, at I8 cents
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Mills, William W. Forty years at El Paso, 1858-1898; recollections of war, politics, adventure, events, narratives, sketches, etc., by W. W. Mills., book, 1901; Chicago. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth6112/m1/27/: accessed April 24, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Special Collections.