The other, Tulare Road, joined El Camino Viejo ("the old road") north via Mission San Fernando, over the San Fernando Pass (now the Newhall Pass) to the Santa Clarita Valley, and through the Old Tejon Pass to the Central Valley and the gold fields beyond. In 1854, the Army established Fort Tejon in the Grapevine Canyon (La Cañada de las Uvas) near Fort Tejon Pass. The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors authorized funds to construct a deep cut to make the steep route north over the San Fernando Pass easier for stagecoach traffic, and a group of businessmen raised funds by subscription to complete the work. Young entrepreneur Phineas Banning's staging and shipping partnership with County Supervisor David W. Alexander acquired the contract to supply Fort Tejon, and Banning drove the first stage run over the new cut in December 1854. Also the U. S. Army Pacific Railroad Surveys found the Fort Tejon Pass a much easier route for wagons than the old Tejon Pass, and this route became the Stockton - Los Angeles Road, the new wagon route to the southern goldfields on the Kern River and northward on the east side of the San Joaquin Valley to Stockton. The Butterfield Overland Mail stagecoach route between St. Louis, Missouri and San Francisco, California via Fort Yuma and Los Angeles made its first run in the fall of 1858. The original route entered the Valley through Cahuenga Pass and traveled northwest to the San Fernando Pass with a stage stop at Lopez Station north of the mission. In 1859, the California Legislature appropriated $15,000 (with additional funding provided by Los Angeles and Santa Barbara Counties) towards improving the old Santa Susana Pass wagon road into a new stagecoach road, now known as the Old Santa Susana Stage Road. The road ran over the Simi Hills between Santa Susana (now Chatsworth) and the Simi Valley. The precipitous portion of the route down from the summit on the San Fernando Valley side was called the Devil's Slide; horses were usually blindfolded and chains were used to augment brakes on the steep descent. Passengers debarked and walked. Southern California's boom market in beef had begun to decline as early as 1855 as it became profitable to drive cattle and sheep to California from the Midwest and Texas, and a drought in 1856 increased the pressure on the ranchos. By 1859, with the