Anxious to obtain better mail service from the States, Hyrum Kimball, acting as agent for the Mormon BYX operation with headquarters at Salt Lake City, was low bidder for a U.S. Postal contract to carry the mail between western Missouri and that city.  The contract was formally awarded on October 9, 1856.  (Notice was not delivered until the following spring.)

Construction of a “Mail station” at Deer Creek (south of present-day Glenrock) began the following spring.  Elder john Taylor reported progress of construction, July 24, 1857: Fifteen acres had been planted to crops, a corral had been completed “... 150 feet square made of logs 12-1/2 feet long with their ends in the ground and dovetailed together near the top, and a stock-yard adjoining of the same dimensions nearly completed ... the fort is 320 feet square ... with a stockage enclosing 42 houses ...” (Not yet completed).  A survey plat prepared by Thomas D. Brown for the Mormons, dated July 11, 1857, showed the “Trading Station” (Bissonette’s Trading Post) to be 3-1/2 miles to the north (on the Oregon Trail).  As fate would have it, the project was never completed.

The United States government, acting on rumors of a Mormon insurrection, ordered federal troops to march against Utah that very summer, Upon learning of Col. Albert Johnson’s advancing army, the Mormons hastily withdrew from Deer Creek, returning to the sanctuary of Salt Lake Valley.