 Superintendent Woods prepared a self-contained outfit for this journey across the unsettled country of Texas, New Mexico Territory and Southern California with almost no existing infrastructure.The vehicles used were "celerity wagons" or "mud wagons", also called ambulances (which was the military use for the same type of vehicle at that time), rather than the better known Concord stagecoach.Water holes were set up at intervals but many were unmanned and actual stations sometimes were separated by as much as .