the pony express essay

Why the Short-Lived Pony Express Still Fascinates Us

The Pony Express operated for less than two years, but its legend—burnished by Buffalo Bill Cody—lives on.

In its day, the Pony Express was like the Twitter or Facebook of the mid-1800s: a means of communication that could move information across the North American continent faster than ever before, though it was powered by horses .

Almost no records survived, though, so the history of the Pony Express is littered with impostors, inaccuracies, and plain bunkum . In West Like Lightning , author Jim DeFelice separates the facts from the fiction.

When National Geographic caught up with him at his home in Warwick, New York, DeFelice explained how the Pony Express came to embody rugged American virtues as much as rodeos or westerns; how Buffalo Bill Cody was its greatest promoter, though he never actually rode for the company; and why, if things had turned out differently, we would be using Pony Express cards, not American Express.

I was amazed to discover that the Pony Express existed for just 18 months and made less than 400 runs. Yet the legend has lived on. Why do you think that is?

I was kind of blown away when I first found that out myself! There are many factors, but the most important reason is because there’s so much embodied in the story of the Pony Express that’s part of the American spirit: man verses nature , rugged individual exploits. And you also have these famous personalities intersecting with it, from Buffalo Bill Cody to Mark Twain .

It was also happening at a really important time in American history, right on the cusp of the Civil War. It’s the tail end of the Gold Rush and there are all of these cool inventions, like the telegraph and railroads. Above all, it was the riders’ endurance and resilience that made the Pony Express live on, and still resonate today.

You follow one particularly momentous bit of news westward. Set the scene for us and tease out the parallels with today’s Internet.

The book is set a day or two after Abraham Lincoln’s election and the Pony Express is bringing news of what happened in the election to the West, not only to Sacramento, San Francisco, and the rest of California, but also to communities along the way. Just four years before it had taken months for the news to get there, but the Pony Express company set up knowing that this was a huge, momentous event. They added extra relay stations and made a lot of use of the telegraph and were able to deliver the message in a matter of days.

For Hungry Minds

Everybody back East knew that this was a huge election that very possibly was going to lead to war, and it was the kind of information that had to get out and be spread. The newspapers of the day had a symbiotic relationship with the Pony Express. They would get specific dispatches, almost what we would call a Facebook post today, and take that information, plop it on their front page and say, “Just Fresh in From the Pony Express…” The messages had to be light and small, so in another way they were like Twitter. For the election, they were so excited they wrote the news on the outside of the envelopes, so everyone would know right away what had happened.

Much of the history of the Pony Express was lost with its records. As a result there were many “liars of the purple sage,” the most notorious being Buffalo Bill Cody. He never actually rode with the Express, yet he more than anyone made it famous. Unpack that paradox.

Bill Cody is by far the most important rider of the Pony Express, but he never actually did ride for them. [laughs] A lot of ink has been spilled on both sides of the argument, but it’s clear from the evidence that he was just too young to have ridden in the Pony Express. On the other hand, what he did afterwards with his Wild West Shows catapulted the Pony Express into the public imagination. The Pony Express was almost always included as either an opening act or a finale.

The Wild West Show was like the Super Bowl coming to your town and it went not only all over America, but also to Europe, most notably, London. The Pony Express vignette had about as much to do with reality as motorcycles would have had to do with the Pony Express then. But it raised public awareness.

What sort of men actually did ride the Pony Express? Was there a particular type? And what sort of equipment did they have?

As a general rule, they were young men, usually late teens on up to early 20s. They were lightweight even for the time; sinewy and of course really good riders. To ride 100 miles, potentially four times a week, in all kinds of weather, day and night, you have to be a top rider with a lot of endurance. Some riders lasted a couple of rides and would leave.

There were quite strict rules for the riders. Two of the most important were that they were not allowed to drink alcohol, and that they were forbidden from using curse words. But there’s all sorts of tales about a lot of bad words and drinking heavily. [laughs]

The Pony Express was established by a man called William H. Russell. What sort of a man was he? And why did he create it?

Russell is a fascinating character. He’s a 19 th -century visionary showman entrepreneur, who goes to the dark side toward the end of his career. His vision was to create an empire transporting goods, people, and information everywhere west of the Missouri River to California. They had elements of that empire in place even before they started the Pony Express. They had a freight business where they delivered all sorts of goods, mostly for the U.S. Army, which was their biggest customer. They had a stagecoach business, a bank, and an insurance company. It sounds like an improbable idea, but a company had done that same thing barely a few decades before, starting in upstate New York, and it’s still with us today. It’s called the American Express. If the Pony Express had succeeded, we wouldn’t be leaving home without the Pony Express today instead of American Express. [laughs]

The hardest part of the trail was through the Sierra Nevada. Give us a picture of the challenges the riders faced there and elsewhere.

The hardest part of the Sierra Nevada would have been in winter. There would be snow drifts and the tracks are relatively narrow. You could fit a horse, sometimes two horses, but if there was a wagon in front of you, you had to wait until you got to a spot where you could get around it. In some places you’re up very high, with sheer cliffs below you, like the area where the Donner Party had succumbed a few years earlier.

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The desert was also very dangerous. If you knew where the path was, you were fine. In most places it was relatively well marked. But west of Salt Lake, in the desert, if you went off course a bit you could suddenly find yourself in a lot of trouble. There’s a story of at least one rider, who knew the trail very well, but was trying to take a short cut one night and ended up in quicksand and only survived by luck.

In the far West, relations with Native Americans were complex and sometimes violent, but some riders spanned both worlds. Tell us about Nick Wilson, “The White Indian.”

Nick Wilson is an interesting character. One caveat is that he’s so colorful, and there are so many different tales attached to him, that to be definitive is very difficult! Uncle Nick , as he was called in later life, was from a Mormon family, who as a young boy then went to live with a Shoshone Indian family in the Utah area. He then ends up as a teenager coming back home where he meets someone who is recruiting for the Pony Express, and he gets a job. Obviously he’d be a good rider if he could ride with the Pony Express. He also worked as a stagecoach driver and a trapper. He was also said to have had a good way with breaking horses, like a horse whisperer.

Relations between whites and Native Americans broke down completely with the Pyramid Lake War. Describe its origins and what effects it had on the Pony Express.

There’s some contention about what actually happened, but the Pyramid Lake War , or Paiute War as it is also known, was up to that point the biggest conflict between Indian tribes and white settlers. It almost certainly started when some whites raped, or wanted to rape, some Indian girls. Naturally, their families took exception and the end result was that a number of whites were killed and several Pony Express stations were burned down. As a result, the service was stopped because it was too dangerous to proceed.

Remarkably, the people of eastern California, who were served by the Pony Express, raised money to rebuild some of the stations and supplied volunteers to help. The work force went from West to East, rebuilding the stations, and the service got back up and running shortly thereafter. Interestingly, that happened while there was a census being taken. Because of that, riders who were part of the work force to rebuild the stations are recorded at certain locations where the census was taking place. That enabled me to see how they are being listed in the census and get a picture of their ages and work conditions.

Why did the Pony Express end? And is it today anything more than a colorful footnote in the history of the American West?

The Pony Express lives on because it’s that story of the American spirit, of individuals against nature, of endurance, and speed . It continues to resonate because for the most part it’s a very positive image. It’s a Western with only good guys, as long as you ignore the Indian War. And because of that, people can relate to it.

But the Pony Express was always intended as a short-term venture to raise public awareness—like a huge PR stunt—to get a big mail contract. When it came to the mail contract, sadly, then just as today, when you rely on Congress, you may find that at the end of the day that they’re not going to come through for you. That’s what happened with the Pony Express. The mail contract they were counting on came much too late to help them, and when it did come, it was far too small.

But it is financial stuff that sinks Russell. He is so desperate for money that he goes to the War Department and tries to get an advance on some other contracts they had. He doesn’t succeed, but ends up with bonds that are supposed to be in trust. They don’t belong to the government; they belong to the Indian tribes. But Russell uses them as collateral to get cash advances. Unfortunately, the whole scheme quickly collapsed. He was arrested, hauled before Congress and the judge, but for various reasons the whole matter gets dropped because then, as now, Congress doesn’t like to air its dirty laundry in public. Not only did that ignobly end the Pony Express, it also ended Russell’s career as an entrepreneur.

This interview was edited for length and clarity.

Simon Worrall curates Book Talk . Follow him on Twitter or at simonworrallauthor.com .

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History Resources

The Pony Express: The Fastest Delivery of a Message across America

The inauguration of a new service, the Pony Express, on April 3, 1860, promised the fastest communication ever from the Missouri River to California. How long did a Pony Express message take to go from its starting point in St. Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento, California? How many years was the Pony Express in existence? How many riders were employed? What hardships did the riders experience? Finding the answers to these questions and many more like them captivates youngsters, encouraging them to read about, imagine, and romanticize an era of long ago. Pre-Civil War settlers who had already reached California and its promise of gold found themselves cut off from the rest of the world. Butterfield Express was an overland mail route via stagecoach that took twenty-three days for delivery. Most people knew it was a matter of time before the telegraph and railroad would span the continent, but with the Civil War looming in the near future, something was needed now to replace the existing overland route. Elementary students can examine primary documents such as newspaper articles, stories, and letters to understand how important the Pony Express was for settlers seeking east-to-west communication in record time.

Essential Question

Why was the Pony Express described as an immediate success by Western settlers but a financial failure for its proprietors?

Mo​tivation

• Explain that advertisements were used in the 1860s to influence people to demand better and faster methods of communication.
• Ask how people communicate today.
• Students will analyze newspaper articles, stories, and letters to understand the significance of the Pony Express.
• Students will create a poster or a power-point presentation based on their research.
• Advertisement for Pony Express, 1860 , National Postial Museum
• "MEN WANTED!" Poster created by William Finney , Legends of America (scroll down on page)
• "Here is the Story of the Pony Express as published in the Newspapers of 1860-1861." , National Pony Express Association
• Pony Express Riders  (PDF)
• "Pony Express Stations."
• "Life on the Pony Express," Story of George S. Stiers. Taken from County Home Tarrant Co., Texas , Library of Congress
• Pony Express Facts , National Pony Express Association
• Story of the Pony Express , City of St. Joseph, Missouri
• "When the Pony Express was in Vogue." Taken from San News Letter, September 1925 , San Francisco Museum
• Blank poster boards
• Distribute to the students copies of the "MEN WANTED!" poster and the St. Joseph newspaper advertisement.
• Explain that the purpose of the advertisement was to draw public attention to the Central Route in order to gain a government mail contract for the Central Overland California and Pikes Peak Express Company. The demand was to speed communication from the East to West.
• Discuss the appeal the advertisement and poster had to the public.
• Divide students into groups of four and assign each group one topic listed below. Distribute copies of all primary documents to each group for analyzation and ask students to prepare presentations for Day Two that address their topic’s questions.

Topic A: Historical Background

• Who founded the Pony Express and when was it established?
• Why was the Pony Express established?
• What investments did the proprietors make to get the Pony Express in operation?

Topic B: The Riders

• List three of the earliest riders.
• What was their base salary?
• What were their qualifications?
• What was the average speed of a rider, and how often did a rider change?

Topic C: The Horse

• What type of horse was purchased and why?
• How often were the horses changed?
• Describe, explain, and provide a picture of the mochila (saddlebag).

Topic D: The Station Provide a brief overview of the following:

• general physical conditions of the structure
• sleeping arrangements
• food served at the stations
• hospitality of station masters

Topic E: The Route

• Use a map to point out the states that encompassed the 1,966 miles of the Pony Express.
• List the hardships the rider experienced along the route.

Topic F: Termination of the Pony Express

• When did the Pony Express end?
• Discuss the new method of technology that brought an end to the Pony Express and explain why it was used.

DOWNLOAD LESSON CHARTS 1&2 (PDF DOCUMENT) --> DOWNLOAD LESSON CHARTS 1&2 (PDF DOCUMENT) -->

In groups, the students will create a poster (or a power point-presentation) that will focus on the specific topics they were assigned on Day One and that will respond to the questions. The students will explain their posters or power-point presentations to the entire class.

Closure/Discussion

The teacher will lead a discussion of the successes and failures of the Pony Express and will write key points that emerge from the class discussion on the board.

Application

Students will make a timeline showing the progression of technology for communication from the days of the Pony Express to the present. They will write a paragraph explaining the advantages of the most modern forms of communication.

Suggested Books

• Adams, Samuel Hopkins. The Pony Express . Chicago: Spencer Press, Inc., 1950.
• Bailey, W.F. "The Pony Express." Golden West: True Stories of the Old West .
• Freeport, NY: Maverick Publications, Inc., Vol.1, No. 1, 1964.
• Banning, Captain William, and George Hugh Banning. Six Horses . New York: Century Company, 1930.
• Barrett, Ivan J. Eph Hanks -- Fearless Mormon Scout . American Fork, UT: Covenant Communications, Inc., 1990.
• Beck, Warren A, and Ynez D. Haase. Historical Atlas of the American West . Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992.
• Benson, Joe. Traveller’s Guide to the Pony Express Trail . Falcon Press, 1995.
• Biggs, Donald. "The Pony Express: Creation of a Legend." San Francisco: privately printed document, 1956.
• Bloss, Roy S. Pony Express: The Great Gamble . Berkeley: Howell-North, 1959.
• Corbet, Christopher. Orphans Preferred: The Twisted Truth and Lasting Legend of the Pony Express . New York: Broadway Books, 2003.
• Di Certo, Joseph. The Saga of the Pony Express . Missoula, MT: Mountain Press Publishing Company, 2002.
• Settle, Raymond W., and Mary Lund Settle. The Story of the Pony Express . London: W. Foulsham & Co. Ltd., 1955.

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• Topical Reference Pages
• Pony Express
• The Story Of The Pony Express

The Story of the Pony Express

By Nancy Pope

Volume 1, Issue 2 April–June 1992

The Pony Express is one of the most colorful episodes in American history, one which can be used to measure not only the growth of the nation, but the pioneering spirit of our predecessors. The name "Pony Express" evokes images of courageous young men crossing long stretches of country, frequently under harsh conditions, facing the constant threat of death. And, like so many legendary events of the "Old West," there have been wild exaggerations of the facts.

Despite the braggadocio, these young horsemen faced numerous dangers, such as thieves, deserts, or blizzards. Riders continued even at night when the only illumination came from the moon or flashes of lightning.

The Pony Express grew out of a need for swifter mail service between the East and West prior to the Civil War. After gold was discovered in 1848 in Sutter's Mill in California, prospectors joined with homesteaders flocking westward. That same year, the Post Office Department awarded a contract to the Pacific Mail Steamship Company to carry mail to California. Under the terms of the contract, the mail was carried by ship from New York to Panama, where it was taken across the Isthmus of Panama by horseback or rail, and then put aboard ships bound for San Francisco. Under the best of conditions, a letter could be carried to the West Coast in three or four weeks. But, that schedule was optimistic.

As the tensions of the approaching Civil War grew, the division between northern and southern states widened, exacerbating the problems of mail service to the western states. Both the North and the South desired California's vast resources. By 1860, almost 1/2 million people were living in the western states. Those people were determined to have the delivery time of their mail improved.

The completion of a coast-to-coast railroad was years away. At that time, the railroads extended only as far west as the Mississippi River. The completion of a telegraph linking both coasts was close to becoming a reality, but it would still be more than a year before it could be completed.

Some mail also was hauled by stagecoach across country, beginning on September 15, 1858, when the Post Office Department issued a contract to the Overland Mail Company, operated by John Butterfield. Butterfield's stages used the 2,795-mile "Southern Route" between Tipton, Missouri, and San Francisco. Although the advertised traveling time was 24 days, as a practical matter cross-country stagecoach mail service was often delayed for months. Such delays were keenly felt by Californians. The citizens of Los Angeles, for example, learned that California had been admitted to the Union fully six weeks after the fact.

Senator William M. Gwin of California was among those who saw the need to improve the timeliness of mail service to the West. Traveling from San Francisco to Washington, D.C., he was aware of the truth behind one of the jokes of the period—that the terms of the western members of Congress might expire before they even reached the District of Columbia.

Expecting the Confederacy to cut off the only land-based source of communication between the Federal Government and California, Gwin persuaded Congress to consider the approval of an alternate route. This route would be about 800 miles shorter and was known as the "Central Route."

Gwin found the answer to his concerns in William Russell, a stage express company owner. Russell agreed to establish a speedy and reliable express service over the Central Route, stretching from St. Joseph, Missouri to San Francisco. Russell hoped to prove that his company was an able competitor to John Butterfield's Overland Mail Company, and win away the exclusive government mail contract.

Russell, and his partners, Alexander Majors and William Waddell, were expected to operate the Pony Express for about a year. Once the race to connect the telegraph had ended, with both ends expected to meet at Salt Lake City, the Pony Express would no longer be needed.

Although both Russell and Gwin are referred to as the "Father of the Pony Express," the actual responsibility for making the venture work fell to Alexander Majors. Although he and Waddell had initially opposed the project, once his firm was pledged to the Pony Express, Majors committed his energies to the project's success.

With precision and expertise which would be envied by any military tactician, Alexander Majors arranged for the purchase of over 400 ponies; the building of 200 stations in desolate, uninhabited areas; the hiring of station masters to staff them; the stocking of provisions; and, of course, the hiring of the riders themselves. Majors' task, difficult under the best circumstances, had to be completed in two months.

Relay stations were placed 10 miles apart. Every third station was a home station, where extra ponies, firearms, men, and provisions were kept. Here, the mail would be handed over to a new rider.

The route form St. Joseph to San Francisco stretched over 1,966 miles, through the plains of Kansas and into Nebraska, along the valley of the Platte River, across the Great Plateau, through the Rockies, into the valley of the Great Salt Lake, through the alkali deserts of Nevada, then over the snow-covered Sierra Mountains and finally into the Sacramento Valley. The mail was carried between Sacramento and San Francisco by steamboat.

About 80 young men rode for the Pony Express. When he hired the riders, Alexander Majors gave each of them a Bible and required them to sign a pledge promising not to swear, drink alcohol, or fight with other employees. The riders carried the mail in the four pockets of a mochila which fit snugly over the saddle and was quickly switched from one horse to another. Letters were wrapped in oil silk to protect them from moisture. The price of a letter was $5 at first, and reduced to $1 per half-ounce by July 1, 1861. Weight was an important factor. Riders, horses, letters, and gear were all chosen with this in mind. The horses averaged about 14 1/2 hands high and weighed less than 900 pounds.

The arrival of the first rider into San Francisco was greeted with tumultuous excitement as the streets filled with people cheering the event. Even Jessie Benton Fremont, the widow of the famous western explorer John C. Fremont, was on hand to witness the rider's arrival shortly before midnight on April 13, 1860.

*EnRoute was the National Postal Museum's newsletter.

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Pony Express

Facts, information and articles about the pony express, an event of westward expansion from the wild west, pony express facts.

April 3, 1860 – October 24, 1861

2000 miles, between St. Joseph Missouri and Sacramento, California

William H. Russell, William B. Waddell, Alexander Majors

Pony Express Articles

Explore articles from the History Net archives about Pony Express

Pony Express summary: Three men in the mid-1800s had an idea to open up a mail delivery system that reached from the Midwest all the way to California. The lack of speedy communication between the mid-west and the west was accentuated by the looming threat of a civil war. Russell, Waddell and Majors designed a system that spanned a number of over one hundred stations, each approximately two hundred forty miles long, across the country.

The Pony Express employed about eighty deliverymen and had around four hundred to five hundred horses to carry these riders from one post to the next. Monthly pay for these riders was fifty dollars, which were good wages at the time. Although this method of carrying mail was dangerous and difficult, all save one delivery made it to their destination.

This new way of mail delivery carried mail between Missouri and California in the span between ten and thirteen days, an astonishing speed for the time. Nineteen months after launching the Pony Express, it was replaced by the Pacific Telegraph line. The Pony Express was no longer needed. While it existed, the Pony Express provided a needed service but it was never quite the financial success it was hoped to be. The founders of the Pony Express line found that they were bankrupt.

Even though the Pony Express Company was no longer operating, its logo lived on when Wells Fargo purchased it and used it from 1866 until 1890 in their freight and stagecoach company.

Articles Featuring Pony Express From History Net Magazines

Featured article, the pony express: riders of destiny.

Every spring the National Pony Express Association attempts a scrupulously authentic reenactment of the legendary cross-country mail ride linking St. Joe on the wide Missouri with the California state capital of Sacramento. But as no one is entirely sure exactly what happened on April 3, 1860 — or for the rest of the 78 or so weeks the Pony Express crossed the West — scrupulous authenticity is something of a problem. The run, of nearly 2,000 miles, is longer, its reenactors always stress, than the fabled Iditarod dog-sled race, but they don’t have to deal with Alaska’s cold. And they also avoid snow. Since there is still too much snow in much of the West at the beginning of April, the Pony re-rides are held in June.

The Pony Express was in business of one sort or another between April 3, 1860, and October 26, 1861. Purists like to tweak that ending date, noting that mailbags — called mochilas — were still in transit into November. But for all practical purposes ‘our little friend the Pony,’ as the Sacramento Bee called it, ran no more after the transcontinental telegraph was completed on October 24, 1861.

The story of the Pony Express is a bit like the story of Paul Revere’s ride — an actual historic event, rooted in fact and layered with centuries (a century and a half in the Pony’s case) of fabrications, embellishments and outright lies. In the mid-20th century, William Floyd, one of a legion of amateur historians to delve into the tale of the Pony Express, threw up his hands and observed, ‘It’s a tale of truth, half-truth and no truth at all.’ He was right on each account.

The business was called the Central Overland California and Pike’s Peak Express Company, a name too cumbersome to appear on anything. The company’s mail service across America in 1860 and 1861 became known as the Pony Express, a legend in its own time. Americans living on the Pacific slope in the newly minted state of California, drawn there by the Gold Rush, were desperate for news of home. The Pony Express dramatically filled that gap by promising to deliver mail across the country from the end of the telegraph in the East to the start of the telegraph in the West, in 10 days time or less. Normal mail, brought overland or via ship, took months. The term ‘pony express’ had been used before, and, indeed, Americans had transmitted information on the backs of fast horses since colonial times. Historians of mail service always note that Genghis Khan used mounted couriers.

It was from the first a madcap if wonderfully romantic idea. Well-mounted light fellows (Mark Twain called them ‘little bits of men, brimful of spirit’) would, by using a series of fresh horses and relief stations, cross wild and largely uninhabited expanses from Missouri to the far coast.

The firm that bankrolled the Pony — and the term bankrolled must be used very lightly, for the venture hemorrhaged money from day one — was Russell, Majors & Waddell. Household names in their heyday on the frontier, William Hepburn Russell, Alexander Majors and William Bradford Waddell had made their reputation hauling freight to military outposts. Their business may very well have been broke when the Pony Express started (the result of massive losses incurred freighting during the so-called Mormon War of the late 1850s), but no one appears to have known that. The firm’s reputation and the chutzpah of its primary spokesman, Russell, got things rolling.

The business — which originally intended to cross the west once a week, moving important mail on horseback — was not a financially sound venture. Russell, Majors & Waddell spent a great deal of money on horses and dozens of way stations, which were required every 10 to 15 miles depending on the terrain. They also had to hire riders and station tenders. East of Salt Lake City, the Pony Express appears to have piggybacked on existing overland stage operations, but west of the Mormon Jerusalem, things got a little dicey. It was expensive and complicated to operate such a venture. In many parts of the country, water had to be hauled considerable distances. And even at the initial rate of $5 a half ounce (later reduced), there was no way that a mochila , which held only 20 pounds of mail, could possibly carry enough correspondence to make this line pay. Its patrons were the government, newspapers, banks and businesses. The average person did not often send letters via Pony Express. We are dependent on notices that appeared in the California newspapers at the time announcing the arrival of the Pony and what mail it was carrying. Often the mochila contained only a couple of dozen letters. Considering how many riders and way station keepers had been involved in moving those letters from St. Joseph, Mo., the venture rates as one of the most fabled failed businesses in American history.

No sooner had the Pony Express begun than the Paiute War (or Pyramid Lake War) shut the line down in much of what today is Nevada and Utah. That war halted service from early May 1860 into July of that year and made travel in the region risky into October. Stations burned by the Paiutes had to be replaced, and the often overlooked war reportedly cost Russell, Majors & Waddell $75,000. To make up for lost business, the Pony started moving mail more than once a week, twice on average. But the Civil War came along, and Edward Creighton and his associates completed the transcontinental telegraph in unexpectedly fast time. That put the Pony down for good.

Most chroniclers of the story of the Pony Express have been little interested in how this’saga of the saddle,’ as one enthusiast called it, became what is in essence an American tall tale. Much of that is easily explained by the odd chronology of the tale. The Pony Express was short-lived and its financial collapse essentially ruined its backers. If Russell, Majors & Waddell left significant records, those have never been discovered. One explanation is simply that they did not keep many records; the other is that they destroyed whatever records they had to avoid creditors. Both Russell and Waddell died within a decade of the end of the Pony Express and never wrote a word about their exploits. Majors, an honest-to-God pioneer in western freighting on the fabled Santa Fe Trail, survived. But Majors, a simple man who was a devout Bible reader, did not compose his memoirs until the end of the 19th century. When he did, his life story was ghostwritten or at least heavily edited by Colonel Prentiss Ingraham, a fabled dime novelist and hack. William ‘Buffalo Bill’ Cody (we will return to Buffalo Bill anon) paid Rand McNally to print this hodgepodge of recollections — Seventy Years on the Frontier: Alexander Majors’ Memoirs of a Lifetime on the Border . Majors later complained that Colonel Ingraham had taken liberties with the story.

Despite the best efforts of enthusiasts, we are not even sure exactly who rode for the Pony Express. Majors said that he had 80 men in the saddle, but this was not the modern American space program. It seems plausible, and many personal anecdotes support this theory, that just about anyone could ride for the Pony if they were available and the Pony needed a rider. Dramatic images (and every painter in America from Frederic Remington to those who wished to be Remington painted the Pony Express) always show a rider at full gallop pursued by Indians or desperadoes. But the few remaining riders who were actually interviewed late in their lives never mentioned Indians or desperadoes. They always complained about the weather, understandable if you were riding a horse across western Nebraska or Wyoming in January at night in a snowstorm. They also complained bitterly about not being paid. Russell, Majors & Waddell were notorious deadbeats. Wags in the American West claimed that the initials C.O.C.& P.P. actually meant ‘clean out of cash and poor pay.’

The first chronicler of the Pony Express was Colonel William Lightfoot Visscher, a peripatetic newspaperman (but not a colonel) who drifted across the American West in the late 19th century. He is, on reflection, a perfect chronicler for such a tale. He never let the facts get in the way of anything he wrote. Visscher’s book A Thrilling and Truthful History of the Pony Express was published in 1908, nearly half a century after the Pony Express went out of business. Anyone wondering how the story of the Pony Express became muddled need only consider that it took half a century to write a book about the subject, and its author was a dubious chronicler.

Much of Visscher’s research appears to have been conducted at the bar of the Chicago Press Club, his legal address for many years. A terrible liar, a drunkard, a bad poet and a rascal, Visscher bore an amazing resemblance to comedian W.C. Fields. The colonel was a delightful if completely unreliable historian. We have no idea where he got most of his information, although he appears to have cribbed a fair bit of it from the few early attempts to set down some facts about the Central Overland. Historians of the Pony, such as there have been, have always ignored this jolly old lush, who drank two quarts of gin a day for much of his life but lived to be 82.

Five years after the colonel took up his pen, along came Professor Glenn D. Bradley at the University of Toledo. The professor did not do much to help the story either, and then he went and got malaria while having a Central American adventure and died. Bradley does not even mention Visscher or his book in his own effort, The Story of the Pony Express: An Account of the Most Remarkable Mail Service Ever in Existence and Its Place in History . It is possible that he never even read Visscher’s work.

After Bradley’s 1913 book, there was a period of dormancy in Pony Express scholarship for some years. But then came several other books, also long on embellishment. Some of them, such as Robert West Howard’s Hoofbeats of Destiny , are full of interesting details but also use fictional characters to drive the story. This does not help sort out the fact from the fancy.

Shakespeare tells us ‘old men forget,’ and the bard was so very right in the matter of the Pony Express. It was well into the 20th century before anyone tried to interview any of the remaining old riders. They either remembered nothing of significance or their memories were fabulous, resulting in wild stories in which the Pony just got bigger and bigger each year in the retelling.

Raymond and Mary Settle made one of the few serious attempts to write a Pony Express history. Their 1955 book Saddles and Spurs: Saga of the Pony Express provides a solid overview but does not consider how the story of the Pony Express came to be. They also failed to recognize that Russell, if not the other owners of the firm, was a con man and rascal of the worst sort. They make no mention of Colonel Visscher, either. Raymond Settle, a Baptist minister, left his papers to William Jewell College in Liberty, Mo. They remain, unsorted and uncataloged, in dusty boxes in the cellar of the college’s library.

The greatest proponent of the Pony Express story in modern times was William Waddell, the great-grandson of William Bradford Waddell. The Pony’s Waddell was actually a mousy bookkeeper who stands in the shadow of cohorts Russell and Majors. But his descendant decided that a spot of revisionism was in order. He obtained the copyright to Professor Bradley’s little book and reissued it in 1960 with his own annotations. There is no mention that it was actually Bradley’s book. What Waddell apparently liked most about Bradley’s account was how it pretty much ignored Alexander Majors, the real hero of the Pony Express, who lived until 1900.

The Pony Express story’s tremendous growth through the years can be explained in no small part by the wonderfully eccentric cast of characters who attached themselves to the tale from its beginning. One of the first was Captain Sir Richard Burton, the British explorer. Burton went down the line of the Pony Express in the summer and fall of 1860, the first credible eyewitness to the venture. A seasoned military man, he took copious notes, and after spending a mere 100 days in the American West produced a 700-page account of his adventures, City of the Saints . Burton provides us with the best solid information we have about conditions along the line. One year later, while Burton was writing his account in London, no less a chronicler of America than Mark Twain appeared on the scene.

The man who would become Mark Twain was merely Sam Clemens, a 25-year-old recent deserter from the Confederate Army when he ran into the Pony Express. Clemens had gone West in a Concord coach with his brother Orion, who was on his way to be secretary to the territorial governor of Nevada. Like Burton, the brothers left from St. Joe, probably from the Patee House, headquarters of the Pony Express. One day in the first week of August 1861 in western Nebraska Territory, near Mud Springs, Sam Clemens saw a Pony Express rider. His description is one of the most powerful bits of eyewitness testimony we have:

Presently the driver exclaims: ‘HERE HE COMES!’

Every neck is stretched further, and every eye stretched wider. Away across the endless dead level of the prairie a black speck appears against the sky, and it is plain that it moves. Well, I should think so! In a second or two it becomes a horse and rider, rising and falling, rising and falling — sweeping towards us nearer and nearer — growing more and more distinct, more and more sharply defined — nearer and still nearer, and the flutter of the hoofs comes faintly to the ear — another instant a whoop and a hurrah from our upper deck, a wave of the rider’s hand, but no reply, and man and horse burst past our excited faces, and go winging away like a belated fragment of a storm! So sudden is it all, and so like a flash of unreal fancy, that but for the flake of white foam left quivering and perishing on a mail sack after the vision had flashed by and disappeared, we might have doubted whether we had seen any actual horse and man at all, maybe.

Twain’s encounter with the Pony Express — he probably saw one rider — took all of two minutes. But writing from memory and without notes a decade later in Hartford, Conn., he got two whole chapters in Roughing It out of the experience, which shows you what you can do with your material if you are Mark Twain. While Burton loathed the West, complaining nonstop of fleas and flies and filth and Indians and stupid Irishmen, Twain had a grand time. But both writers left us a lot of solid information — what sort of food the men ate, the clothing they wore and descriptions of the stations, most of which were hovels — that is not available anywhere else.

Buffalo Bill Cody (1846-1917), though, is the reason Americans remember the Pony Express today. In essence, Buffalo Bill saved the memory of that enterprise. Long before there were books about the Pony Express, let alone motion pictures, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West presented the Pony Express rider — a fixture in Cody’s extravaganza from the day it opened in Omaha, Neb., in 1883 until the day it closed in 1916.

Not only Americans became dramatically acquainted with the Pony Express through Buffalo Bill; Europeans from penniless orphans in London (let into the show because of kind-hearted Cody) to Queen Victoria, Kaiser Wilhelm and the pope in Rome had the same pleasure. Part of Cody’s enthusiasm for celebrating this bit of the Wild West was that in his youth, he had actually known Alexander Majors. After Cody’s father died, Majors gave the boy (who was about 11 at the time) a job, riding a pony or a mule as a messenger for the freight-hauling firm. Never shy of embellishing his past, Cody always claimed to have ridden for the Pony Express — and ridden the longest distance, too! That claim, however, like so many of his yarns, is highly dubious (see accounts of his alleged Pony adventures in a related story, P. 38). The best examination of his boyhood, undertaken by a forensic pathologist with an interest in history, would seem to indicate that Cody never sat in the saddle for the Central Overland. He did, however, do a great deal for the memory of the Pony Express. Without his devotion, it is unlikely that anyone would remember the horseback mail service. Because of Buffalo Bill, people who did not speak a word of English knew what the Pony Express was. Even today there are Pony Express clubs in Germany and Czechoslovakia, reminders of Buffalo Bill’s legwork on behalf of the fast mail.

Students of the story of the Pony Express will note that its memory waxes and wanes. In about 1960 on the occasion of its centennial, the memory was sweetened when the Eisenhower administration (Ike was from Kansas, Pony Express country) festooned the West with historic markers recalling the days of saddles and spurs. Many western towns boast ‘authentic Pony Express stations,’ but the provenance of those shrines is best left unexplored. Like so much of the memory of the Pony Express, the more one knows about the story, the more fractured and fabulous it becomes. There is hardly a gift shop or historic shrine between Old St. Joe and Old Sac that does not sell an ‘authentic’ Pony Express rider recruiting notice.

The company recruited daredevils, placing eye-catching notices in the St. Louis and San Francisco newspapers that read: ‘Wanted. Young, Skinny, Wiry fellows not over 18. Must be expert riders willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred. Wages $25.00 per week.’ Alas, it appears that this memorable ad was the work of an early 20th-century journalist writing in the Western magazine Sunset .

In the 1920s, a remnant of what had been the U.S. cavalry in California tried to reenact a bit of the ride as a kind of exercise and found it too difficult. Frankly, in the 21st century we do not have horsemen or women who can ride like that any longer. Men are not born in the saddle now, and even the most accomplished modern equestrian could not take the mochila from Fort Churchill to Robbers Roost.

The annual reenactment is a wonderful thing to witness. To stand on the edge of a rain-soaked field in central Nebraska and see the lone figure of a man on a galloping horse appear on the distant horizon is still a stirring sight. It is the sight that inspired Mark Twain so long ago. It is the memory that Buffalo Bill Cody loved.

Hollywood has always been especially kind to the memory of the Pony Express. As might be expected, just about all references to it in film (and there were silent films as early as the turn of the last century featuring the Pony Express) are wrong. The entertaining 1953 Paramount movie The Pony Express has Charlton Heston as Buffalo Bill teaming up with Wild Bill Hickok (played by Forrest ‘F Troop’ Tucker) and heading to ‘Old Californy’ to start the Pony Express. There is not a shard of fact in the entire film. (Hickok actually worked for the firm but merely as a stock tender in Nebraska.) Several years ago, the film Hidalgo featured a wild tale of Frank Hopkins, a self-proclaimed equestrian who said that he rode for the Pony Express. Hopkins’ Arabian adventures showcased in the movie are fantasy (see the full story in the October 2003 Wild West ), and let it further be said that Hopkins most likely wasn’t even born when the real Pony riders were hitting the trail.

The memory of the Pony Express remains sweet. In the years in which I attempted to follow its trail, I met dozens, perhaps hundreds of Americans, who believe that their great-great-grandpas rode for the Pony, as the old-timers in the West still affectionately call it. There are so many people out there with ancestors who rode for the Pony that Russell, Majors & Waddell would not have needed to buy expensive horses but could have lined up all the riders so that the mail passed hand to hand all the way from St. Joseph to Sacramento.

A cursory examination of early 20th-century newspapers in the American West will amply illustrate that they regularly reported the death of the last Pony Express rider. The Tonopah Bonanza reported it on April 3, 1913, with the death of 76-year-old Louis Dean. A year later the same newspaper reported that another ‘last of the Pony Express riders’ was gone. This time he was Jack Lynch. The Reno Evening Gazette frequently dusted off the story, one of the best being the news of the death of James Cummings, the last of the Pony Express riders, dead at age 76 on March 3, 1930. He would have been riding for Russell, Majors & Waddell at age 6 or 7.

Broncho Charlie Miller, charming but no doubt full of beans, was the last man to claim the title of ‘last of the Pony Express riders.’ When the old boy died at Bellevue Hospital in New York City on January 15, 1955, ‘the brotherhood of the Pony Express riders wound up its affairs’ as one obituary put it. Miller was a delightful end piece to the story of the Pony Express. He claimed to have been born on a buffalo robe in a Conestoga wagon going west in 1850. His claims to have ridden for the Pony — a run that would have taken him up from Sacramento over the Sierra Nevada and down into Carson City, Nev. — were lively. He would have been 10 or 11.

A former rider and showman with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West (that part is true), Miller was the king of ‘the Last of the Pony Express riders.’ A charming rascal and shameless self-promoter who had Old West written all over his face and attire (and that played best in the East), Miller was a chain-smoking, hard-drinking admitted horse thief. But America forgave him. Pony Express purists and doubters regularly challenged the old boy, but they never laid a glove on him. He refused to even acknowledge that there were purists and doubters of his tales. America loved Broncho Charlie Miller, whether he was telling the truth or not. He was, in the words of The New York Times , ‘the incarnation of the Old West for thousands of delighted youngsters — and some folks not so young.’

When Miller was an old man — 82 if we believe his birth date — he rode an old horse named Polestar from New York City to San Francisco to remind America, lest it forget, that the Pony Express had once brought the mail. People stood in the streets and cheered to see the old man loping along. He took a crazy, circuitous route that did not follow the route of the Pony Express and rode hundreds of miles into the Southwest. Go figure.

Despite all the rascals and scamps associated with the story of the Pony Express, admirers of the bold venture will be cheered to learn that there were actual heroes. One of those was Robert Haslam, or Pony Bob, a legendary fast mail rider in the real 19th-century American West. An Englishman who came to Utah as a teenager at the time of the Mormon migration, Haslam rode for the Pony in Nevada at the time of the Paiute War, making a fabled ride of nearly 400 miles without relief. He later rode express mail for Wells, Fargo & Co., elsewhere in the West and was long associated with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, but Haslam died in a cold water flat on the south side of Chicago in 1912, forgotten. Haslam was the real deal. We have a vivid eyewitness account in the Territorial Enterprise , the newspaper where Mark Twain cut his teeth, of a race on the Fourth of July in 1868. This account leaves no doubt that Haslam was a fabled Pony Express rider in his day and that he was a great horseman.

Another of those Americans who helped to save the true story of the Pony Express, or at least as true as it could be, was Mabel Loving. Mrs. Loving was an amateur poetess in St. Joseph. She was a terrible poet but a prolific one, as bad poets often are (Colonel Visscher was a prolific bad poet, too).

Just before World War I, Mabel Loving did something that no one had thought to do. She sat down and began to write to the few surviving members of the Pony Express. Her correspondence with those riders provides us with some of the richest detail we have about that mail service. Loving’s work was a labor of love, and she provided in her will that her little book on the Pony Express be published (no commercial publisher would touch it). Today, if you can find a copy of The Pony Express Rides On! you will pay dearly for it. Imperfect as it is — the printer appears to have actually lost two chapters — it contains some fascinating information about a fabulous time when young men on fast horses could cross the West in 10 days’ time or less.

This article was written by Christopher Corbett and originally appeared in the April 2006 issue of Wild West .

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Taking Stock of the Pony Express

This article, which originally appeared in the April 2010 issue of Wild West Magazine received the coveted Western Heritage Award (Wrangler) in the Magazine category.

Young Robert Haslam started as a simple laborer, building way stations for the fledgling Pony Express, but he was soon offered an opening as an express rider—an offer he eagerly accepted and a job at which he quickly excelled. On May 10, 1860, he left his home base at Fridays Station—on the present-day border between California and Nevada—and had little difficulty on his 75-mile run east to Bucklands Station. But by the time the wiry 19-year-old completed his assigned run, the situation had changed.

‘Wanted: Young, skinny, wiry fellows not over 18. Must be expert pony riders willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred’

The Northern Paiutes were on the warpath, just one month after the Pony Express began service, and the next rider scheduled refused to get in the saddle. Haslam, however, remained undeterred by the Indian scare. Transferring the mail and himself onto a fresh mount, he galloped off on the next leg of the route, a ride that would put Haslam’s name in the history books. Riding over alkali flats and parched desert, he pushed through to Smith Creek, where, after 190 miles, he slid off of his pony for a brief rest before making the even more harrowing return run. Arriving at Cold Springs, Haslam found that the Paiutes had burned the station, killed the keeper and run off the relief horses. By the time he made it back to Fridays Station, “Pony Bob” had covered more than 380 grueling miles. Haslam made another famous ride in March 1861, carrying President Abraham Lincoln’s inaugural address 180 miles from Smith Creek west to Fort Churchill in a record 8 hours and 10 minutes. His dedication was exceptional, but he was not alone. Many Pony riders were willing to risk their backsides to deliver the mail in a timely fashion.

It has been 150 years since one of the most remarkable enterprises in American history carried the mail and the day. Yet, most of us can easily imagine these lone young riders racing the wind across the open plains, fleeing Indian pursuers. Yes, the Pony Express still stirs the imagination, conjuring a romantic but gritty picture. Look a little closer, though, and something else becomes clear: The Pony Express was, despite the Herculean efforts of Pony Bob and his fellows, also a terrible flop.

It is not difficult to find a failed business whose name lives on long after its collapse. History is replete with financially ruinous ventures and misadventures—from Edison Records to Betamax, from Swissair to Titanic ’s White Star Line, and from Charles Ponzi to Bernie Madoff. What is remarkable is for a failed business to be remembered not for its disappointing performance but for its determination and grit. For such a venture to be romanticized, commemorated and held in awe by the public is high praise indeed. That is the legacy of the Pony Express. On the sesquicentennial of the first ride (and, on that of the last ride, less than 19 months off), much of the nation is celebrating and singing the praises of a small group of men—many of them mere boys—who set out to provide a service that ultimately proved an economic failure.

The Pony Express started out as a very good idea. Founders William Russell, Alexander Majors and William Waddell, despite popular myths to the contrary, were not rough drovers or confidence men. Rather, they were well-established businessmen with a successful record of providing freight service to both the U.S. Army in the West and civilian mercantile efforts, which included the movement of merchandise over the Santa Fe Trail. These men recognized a need for improved communications between the Eastern United States and the burgeoning communities in California. With more than a half-million people already settled west of the Rocky Mountains, and the growing likelihood of a Civil War, the federal government was determined to establish and maintain more regular contact with an area rich in natural resources and susceptible to disruptive inroads by an increasingly belligerent South.

Russell, Majors and Waddell also saw an opportunity to compete for a million-dollar government contract for dedicated mail service to the region. The partners planned to fulfill the contract with their already established Central Overland California and Pikes Peak Express Company, of which the proposed Pony Express would be a subsidiary operation. From a business perspective, the enterprise seemed solid, especially considering the likelihood of Civil War. In wartime, service demands would surely skyrocket, and the resultant profits were bound to be enormous.

With these considerations in mind, Russell, Majors and Waddell set out to create the infrastructure that would allow them to pull off this daring scheme. Whereas communications links were good from the East Coast as far west as Missouri, anything from Kansas westward was problematic at best. Thus the challenge for these entrepreneurs was to come up with a support system to facilitate their plans.

They established a headquarters at the Patee House in St. Joseph, Mo., and selected a trail that ran west from St. Joe over the existing Central Overland route—to Marysville, Kan., northwest along the Little Blue River to Fort Kearny (near present-day Kearney, Neb.); from there along the Platte River Road and across a corner of Colorado Territory before swinging north to pass Courthouse Rock, Chimney Rock and Scotts Bluff and reach Fort Laramie (in what would become Wyoming); then up to Fort Caspar, through the South Pass to Fort Bridger and on into Utah Territory. The final leg went through Salt Lake City, on into Nevada and across the Sierra Nevada, finally ending in Sacramento, Calif. From Sacramento the mail would be forwarded by steamboat to the Pony Express offices in bustling San Francisco. The total distance covered would amount to nearly 2,000 miles.

Some stagecoach stations were already up and running, but the partners would have to place and construct many more. Ultimately, about 190 way stations covered the route, each spaced from 10 to 15 miles apart—the approximate range a medium-sized horse could sustain at a gallop. Some of these stations would become fairly elaborate affairs, comprising stables, bunkhouses, even taverns and a post office. Most, however, would remain rudimentary structures, offering a single-story cabin for the station keeper, a corral and a roughed-in shelter for spare horses. Establishing the stations was only the first step. Each would have to be equipped and manned. The service would require 400 station hands, including skilled farriers, as well as 500 horses and at least 200 riders.

Considering the combined weight of the mail and the gear to be carried at a gallop by each horse, the riders would necessarily have to weigh no more than 125 pounds. Waddell published ads for riders and others, but the oft-reprinted flier WANTED: YOUNG, SKINNY, WIRY FELLOWS NOT OVER 18. MUST BE EXPERT PONY RIDERS WILLING TO RISK DEATH DAILY. ORPHANS PREFERRED was probably a later concoction.

These wiry young fellows would be expected to ride at a gallop the 10 to 15 miles between way stations, quickly change mounts and repeat that pattern until they reached their other “home station,” between the 75- and 150-mile mark. At this point, the next rider would take charge of the mail and begin his run, the idea being to move the mail from St. Joseph to Sacramento in 10 days. It could be a grueling job—tough on both men and horses—and thus the wages offered, $25 per week, were high at a time when an unskilled laborer received an average of $1 per day for 12 hours of work. While the work of a Pony rider was both strenuous and dangerous, it was not considered an excuse for bad behavior. Each rider had to swear an oath to conduct themselves honestly and refrain from cursing, fighting or abusing their animals. Each was then issued a small leather-bound Bible.

“Pony Bob” Haslam’s heroics stand out, but plenty of other venturesome young men answered Waddell’s summons. Among them was Missouri horse racer Johnny Frey (often spelled Fry), who would later enlist in the Union Army, only to be shot down by Rebel guerrilla “Bloody Bill” Anderson’s followers at Baxter Springs, Kan. He is often credited with being the first rider to head west out of St. Joseph, on the evening of April 3, 1860, although that remains in dispute. Others—including Henry Wallace, Billy Richardson and Alex Carlyle—also claimed to have been the first to gallop westward.

The first rider heading east out of Sacramento was probably William Hamilton. Restless young William Frederick Cody—who would go on to win fame as scout and showman “Buffalo Bill”—either rode for the Pony or did not, depending on whose version of events you believe. Les Bennington, National Pony Express Association president, is one who doubts young Cody actually rode for the Pony, but adds, “I cut him some slack, because even if he didn’t dispatch mail at that time, he later kept the vision and memory alive by featuring the Pony Express at all his Wild West shows.”

While the riders were the stars of the Pony Express, they had a strong supporting cast. William Finney, for one, was a pugnacious station agent posted in San Francisco who bulldogged reconstruction of the Pony Express line after the Pyramid Lake War (May–August 1860). Despite popular legend, James Butler Hickok, later known as the famous lawman and shootist “Wild Bill,” was never a rider. He was too big and far too old (he was 23 when the service began). Rather, Hickok was an assistant keeper at Rock Creek Station in southeastern Nebraska (near the present-day town of Endicott). It was there he got into an argument with former property owner David McCanles and two of his companions. The ensuing gunfight left McCanles and his associates dead and Hickok with a reputation as a fearless gunfighter.

Wranglers carefully selected the horses that carried the young riders. The mounts stood an average of 14½ hands (58 inches) high and weighed no more than 900 pounds. Though smaller and lighter than most horses, they were not, strictly speaking, “ponies.” In fact, they represented various breeds—Morgan, mustang, pinto, even thoroughbred. But all were specially chosen for their strength and endurance.

With riders and horses assembled, the service was left to equip them for the job. Riders carried the mail in a leather saddle cover called a mochila (Spanish for “knapsack”). Designed with a hole for placement over the saddle horn and a slit partially up the back, the mochila was held in place by the rider’s weight. Each mochila comprised four reinforced leather boxes, or cantinas , each secured with a small, heart-shaped brass padlock. The four cantinas could carry about 20 pounds of mail in all.

A rider’s standard gear also included a canteen, a Bible, a brace of revolvers (or one revolver and one rifle, depending upon the rider’s preference) and a small horn, or “boob,” used by the rider to alert a station keeper of his imminent arrival. The combined weight of the rider, mail and accoutrements came to about 175 pounds. The service eventually trimmed that weight by stripping riders of their additional weapons and Bibles.

The routes were demanding, making it imperative that men and horses maintain top physical condition—an expensive proposition. Conditions at home stations, while not luxurious, were quite comfortable, and the food was often very good. Some home stations acquired such good reputations for well-prepared meals that they drew customers from miles around, eager to share the riders’ fare. The horses, for their part, weren’t left to graze but given nutrient-rich feed shipped from Iowa farms to each station—again a very costly proposition.

As it turned out, the rates charged for Pony mail—as much as $5 per half-ounce—could not cover daily expenses. While this seems a self-defeating proposition, it may well be that Russell, Majors and Waddell simply saw it as a necessary expenditure in view of their other business ambitions. Given the positive press generated by the Pony Express and the potential new contracts that press might garner in their freighting and stagecoach services, the business trio probably saw the debt incurred as a very legitimate “sunk cost” investment on potential future return.

The early reputation of the service supports this view. Mail was delivered at record speed. Newspaper coverage was uniformly positive, even laudatory, and the exploits of the riders were celebrated in ubiquitous dime novels and magazine series. But circumstances, fate and fiscal realities were to play pivotal roles in the organization’s future. Delivery, while fast and remarkably reliable, was exceptionally costly for that time. Charging rates as high as $15 for delivery of a single item, the Pony Express, while attractive to the general public, was almost invariably a prerogative of the very well-off. Russell, Majors and Waddell soon found that their enterprise, for all its glamour and public acclaim, was hemorrhaging money.

Making matters worse for the firm was the unanticipated conflict with Northern Paiute Indians and their allies. When Nevada businessman J.O. Williams abducted two young Paiute women, reportedly for illicit purposes, local tribes were quick to react—particularly since the father of one was a prominent Paiute warrior. In a retaliatory strike on May 6, 1860, angry warriors raided the Williams establishment, which housed a saloon and general store and served as both a stagecoach and Pony Express station. The Paiutes set the way station afire, killed three of the workers (Williams was away at the time) and then unleashed their wrath on other nearby stations. To the Paiutes, the Pony Express and its stations were emblematic of the encroaching white man and thus legitimate targets.

The Pyramid Lake War was not especially costly in terms of lives—each side suffered fewer than 200 casualties, small potatoes for a nation engaged in Civil War. But the fighting and its aftermath devastated the Pony Express. The Paiute warriors destroyed numerous stations and killed 16 employees, including one rider. The company actually suspended delivery for three weeks, and when it initially resumed, service was considerably slower. At one point, riders dared not cross the conflict zone without an accompanying cavalry detachment, which in turn reduced their rate of travel to a mere 40 miles per day.

The costs to reestablish the line were staggering. When Russell, Majors and Waddell ran up the damages incurred by the Pyramid Lake War, the total was more than $75,000, much of that to rebuild way stations and stables and replace equipment. When one considers that the initial cost of establishing the entire network of stations was $100,000, the impact of this setback becomes much more stark. And the day-to-day maintenance of the line and services continued to add up. Over the course of its operation, the Pony Express cost its owners $30,000 per month, or $480,000 for its duration. Thus, their enterprise not only failed to make a profit, but also incurred a significant loss of more than $200,000.

Adding to the discomfiture of Russell, Majors and Waddell were economic and political factors over which the partners had absolutely no control. The government contract for expanded mail delivery they had hoped to land for their Central Overland California and Pikes Peak Express Company fell apart, and the Butterfield Overland Stage began operations along the western division (from Salt Lake City to Sacramento) of the central route. In January 1861, Russell—his company bankrupt—signed over most of his holdings to his largest creditor, “Stagecoach King” Ben Holladay. In April 1861, Wells Fargo took over the Pony’s western leg and significantly reduced the cost of postage (which eventually fell as low as $1 a half-ounce). The Pony had become more affordable, but it was too little too late.

The outbreak of Civil War, contrary to expectations, also had a disruptive effect on government mail contracts. As the central Eastern seaboard devolved into a sprawling battlefield, affairs in the West took on diminished significance. The final nail in the coffin of the Pony Express was completion of the transcontinental telegraph at Salt Lake City on October 24, 1861. Two days later, the Pony Express ceased operations. The great experiment was over.

A major American enterprise had failed, but it was hardly the end of the world. Telegraphs were convenient, and stagecoaches kept the mail coming. And business boomed after the war as the country reunited and people sought new opportunities in the West. After completion of the transcontinental railroad on May 10, 1869, mail was delivered at speeds that soon made the Pony Express seem quaint. But it also seemed romantic, even more so through the years, as trains, trucks and planes mechanized mail delivery. Today, the Pony stands out among other failed enterprises, remembered not for its flaws and ultimate failure but for its mythical resonance. For almost 19 months, a relatively small group of daring young men galloped across the plains, forded streams, outran hostile Indians, braved blizzards and clattered along mountain trails. In sum they covered more than 650,000 miles and carried 374,753 pieces of mail. And, as far as anyone can determine, only one or two mochilas of mail went missing. It is small wonder, then, that 150 years later we still celebrate the Pony Express, not for the business failure it was but for the ideal it represented —humans overcoming time, distance, terrain and the elements to deliver the mail.

Frederick J. Chiaventone, a former Army officer who taught guerrilla warfare and counterterrorist operations at the U.S. Army Command & General Staff College, is now an award-winning novelist, screenwriter and commentator. Suggested for further reading: Orphans Preferred: The Twisted Truth and Lasting Legend of the Pony Express , by Christopher Corbett, and Saddles and Spurs: The Pony Express Saga , by Raymond W. Settle and Mary Lund Settle.

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150 Years Later, Pony Express Rides On In Legend

Frank Morris

A stamp from a piece of mail delivered by the Pony Express. In the early days of the enterprise, it cost almost $100 in today's dollars to mail a letter across the country. Wikimedia Commons hide caption

A stamp from a piece of mail delivered by the Pony Express. In the early days of the enterprise, it cost almost $100 in today's dollars to mail a letter across the country.

The Pony Express dispatched its first rider from St. Joseph, Mo., on April 3, 1860. It was an all-out, high-speed information delivery service that traversed nearly 2,000 miles of open, desolate and hostile land.

The goal was to bring faster mail service to California. As a business proposition, it was a total failure. The service was expensive -- $5 a letter (more than $100 by today's standards). But as a Western legend, the Pony Express has been going strong for 150 years.

Delivering The News And Mail Faster

In 1860, the American West was booming, and the East was boiling. Civil war was at hand. A vast wilderness and high mountains blocked the rich West from the rest of the country.

Rail and telegraph lines stopped in St. Joseph. It took a month for news reports and government dispatches to cross that information abyss by stagecoach, says Cindy Daffron, director of the Pony Express National Museum .

"This is what people [in the West] didn't like -- they were living out there with money," says Daffron. "The fastest means was four weeks, so the idea became, 'How do we do it faster?'"

A stagecoach line ran through the country to the south, but that territory was increasingly hostile to the Union. A shorter but rougher trail took a northerly route over the mountains.

Historian Gerry Chilcote says a struggling freight company called Russell, Majors and Waddell was already using it. "And so they came up with the idea of, 'why not carry the mail and get a government contract?'" says Chilcote.

Riders galloping 24/7 and relaying a mail bag from horse to horse and man to man could cover the distance in 10 days. The first Pony Express rider arrived in Sacramento, Calif., on April 13, 1860, and received quite a reception.

"Banners were hung across the street," says Joe Nardone, master historian for the Pony Express Trail Association. "It was lined -- people were cheering."

Nardone is also among the modern Pony Express enthusiasts who re-enact the ride every year.

Legendary Folklore

Back in 1860, riding for the Pony Express was difficult work -- riders had to be tough and lightweight. There's a famous advertisement that reportedly read: "Wanted: Young, skinny, wiry fellows not over eighteen. Must be expert riders, willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred."

But like a lot of things associated with the Pony Express, that ad may be just another tall tale that grew out of an absence of hard information. Even the name of the first rider is disputed.

"This is a company that kept no records whatsoever," says Chilcote, "They didn't know who the riders were two years afterwards, so a lot of this is 'fakelore,' we call it."

Today you can drive much of the route the Pony Express followed, but aside from a couple of old station buildings and markers, there isn't much to see. The legend of the Pony Express, though, is still going strong.

Web Resources

Author Christopher Corbett wrote the book Orphans Preferred: The Twisted Truth and Lasting Legend of the Pony Express . He says there's a good reason the mail service is still remembered today.

"It doesn't have the baggage of the slaughter of buffalo and the decimation of Indians," says Corbett. "I think that's part of its appeal."

Corbett says Buffalo Bill's Wild West show probably did the most to keep the legend of the Pony Express alive. He says the show, which toured the world, always included the Pony Express in its productions.

Nearly all portrayals of the Pony Express stretch the truth, Corbett says. Lucky for his research, some of the original riders were asked about their experience before they died.

"Buffalo Bill" Cody probably did the most to keep the legend of the Pony Express alive, says historian Christopher Corbett. Cody included the Pony Express in his popular Buffalo Bill's Wild West show. Hulton Archive/Getty Images hide caption

"Buffalo Bill" Cody probably did the most to keep the legend of the Pony Express alive, says historian Christopher Corbett. Cody included the Pony Express in his popular Buffalo Bill's Wild West show.

"They remembered not outrunning outlaws and Indians -- you know those kind of popular images that we would have," says Corbett. "They remembered how cold it was, and they remembered how dangerous it was if you got off the trail at night in winter."

And Corbett says some riders remembered not getting paid because the Pony Express never made a profit. It operated for only about 19 months. The transcontinental telegraph put it out of business in short order.

'Thou Hast Run Thy Race'

These days, the U.S. Postal Service owns the Pony Express trademark, which may seem fitting, considering the current financial problems the agency is having.

Still, the U.S. Postal Service celebrates the history of the Pony Express, despite its short life.

"It's a legend, and I think deservedly so," says Postal Service historian Meg Ausman. "Because something is successful in its own time and not successful forever, I don't think that diminishes the importance of it at that time."

The Sacramento Bee newspaper certainly took the demise of Pony Express seriously. It published a front-page editorial in the fall of 1861 that offered these words of praise:

"Nothing that has blood and sinews was able to overcome your energy and ardor; but a senseless, soulless thing that eats not, sleeps not, tires not. ... Rest, then, in peace, for thou hast run thy race, thou hast followed thy course, thou hast done the work that was given thee to do."

-- Written by Jeff Brady

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The Story of the Pony Express

An account of the most remarkable mail service ever in existence, and its place in history., glenn d. bradley, to my parents, chapter i. at a nation's crisis, chapter ii. inception and organization of the pony express, chapter iii. the first trip and triumph, chapter iv. operation, equipment, and business, chapter v. california and the secession menace, chapter vi. riders and famous rides, chapter vii. anecdotes of the trail and honor roll, chapter viii. early overland mail routes, chapter ix. passing of the pony express.

This little volume has but one purpose—to give an authentic, useful, and readable account of the Pony Express. This wonderful enterprise played an important part in history, and demonstrated what American spirit can accomplish. It showed that the "heroes of sixty-one" were not all south of Mason and Dixon's line fighting each other. And, strange to say, little of a formal nature has been written concerning it.

I have sought to bring to light and make accessible to all readers the more important facts of the Pony Express—its inception, organization and development, its importance to history, its historical background, and some of the anecdotes incidental to its operation.

The subject leads one into a wide range of fascinating material, all interesting though much of it is irrelevant. In itself this material is fragmentary and incoherent. It would be quite easy to fill many pages with western adventure having no special bearing upon the central topic. While I have diverged occasionally from the thread of the narrative, my purpose has been merely to give where possible more background to the story, that the account as a whole might be more understandable in its relation to the general facts of history.

Special acknowledgment is due Frank A. Root of Topeka, Kansas, joint author with William E. Connelley of The Overland Stage To California, an excellent compendium of data on many phases of the subject. In preparing this work, various Senate Documents have been of great value. Some interesting material is found in Inman and Cody's Salt Lake Trail.

The files of the Century Magazine, old newspaper files, Bancroft's colossal history of the West and the works of Samuel L. Clemens have also been of value in compiling the present book.

I—At A Nation's Crisis II—Inception and Organization of the Pony Express III—The First Trip and Triumph IV—Operation, Equipment, and Business V—California and the Secession Menace VI— Riders and Famous Rides VII—Anecdotes of the Trail and Honor Roll VIII—Early Overland Mail Routes IX—Passing of the Pony Express

The Pony Express was the first rapid transit and the first fast mail line across the continent from the Missouri River to the Pacific Coast. It was a system by means of which messages were carried swiftly on horseback across the plains and deserts, and over the mountains of the far West. It brought the Atlantic coast and the Pacific slope ten days nearer to each other.

It had a brief existence of only sixteen months and was supplanted by the transcontinental telegraph. Yet it was of the greatest importance in binding the East and West together at a time when overland travel was slow and cumbersome, and when a great national crisis made the rapid communication of news between these sections an imperative necessity.

The Pony Express marked the highest development in overland travel prior to the coming of the Pacific railroad, which it preceded nine years. It, in fact, proved the feasibility of a transcontinental road and demonstrated that such a line could be built and operated continuously the year around—a feat that had always been regarded as impossible.

The operation of the Pony Express was a supreme achievement of physical endurance on the part of man and his ever faithful companion, the horse. The history of this organization should be a lasting monument to the physical sacrifice of man and beast in an effort to accomplish something worth while. Its history should be an enduring tribute to American courage and American organizing genius.

The fall of Fort Sumter in April, 1861, did not produce the Civil War crisis. For many months, the gigantic struggle then imminent, had been painfully discernible to far-seeing men. In 1858, Lincoln had forewarned the country in his "House Divided" speech. As early as the beginning of the year 1860 the Union had been plainly in jeopardy. Early in February of that momentous year, Jefferson Davis, on behalf of the South, had introduced his famous resolutions in the Senate of the United States. This document was the ultimatum of the dissatisfied slave-holding commonwealths. It demanded that Congress should protect slavery throughout the domain of the United States. The territories, it declared, were the common property of the states of the Union and hence open to the citizens of all states with all their personal possessions. The Northern states, furthermore, were no longer to interfere with the working of the Fugitive Slave Act. They must repeal their Personal Liberty laws and respect the Dred Scott Decision of the Federal Supreme Court. Neither in their own legislatures nor in Congress should they trespass upon the right of the South to regulate slavery as it best saw fit.

These resolutions, demanding in effect that slavery be thus safeguarded —almost to the extent of introducing it into the free states—really foreshadowed the Democratic platform of 1860 which led to the great split in that party, the victory of the Republicans under Lincoln, the subsequent secession of the more radical southern states, and finally the Civil War, for it was inevitable that the North, when once aroused, would bitterly resent such pro-slavery demands.

And this great crisis was only the bursting into flame of many smaller fires that had long been smoldering. For generations the two sections had been drifting apart. Since the middle of the seventeenth century, Mason and Dixon's line had been a line of real division separating two inherently distinct portions of the country.

By 1860, then, war was inevitable. Naturally, the conflict would at once present intricate military problems, and among them the retention of the Pacific Coast was of the deepest concern to the Union. Situated at a distance of nearly two thousand miles from the Missouri river which was then the nation's western frontier, this intervening space comprised trackless plains, almost impenetrable ranges of snow-capped mountains, and parched alkali deserts. And besides these barriers of nature which lay between the West coast and the settled eastern half of the country, there were many fierce tribes of savages who were usually on the alert to oppose the movements of the white race through their dominions.

California, even then, was the jewel of the Pacific. Having a considerable population, great natural wealth, and unsurpassed climate and fertility, she was jealously desired by both the North and the South.

To the South, the acquisition of California meant enhanced prestige - involving, as it would, the occupation of a large area whose soils and climate might encourage the perpetuation of slavery; it meant a rich possession which would afford her a strategic base for waging war against her northern foe; it meant a romantic field in which opportunity might be given to organize an allied republic of the Pacific, a power which would, perchance, forcibly absorb the entire Southwest and a large section of Northern Mexico. By thus creating counter forces the South would effectively block the Federal Government on the western half of the continent.

The North also desired the prestige that would come from holding California as well as the material strength inherent in the state's valuable resources. Moreover to hold this region would give the North a base of operations to check her opponent in any campaign of aggression in the far West, should the South presume such an attempt. And the possession of California would also offer to the North the very best means of protecting the Western frontier, one of the Union's most vulnerable points of attack.

It was with such vital conditions that the Pony Express was identified; it was in retaining California for the Union, and in helping incidentally to preserve the Union, that the Express became an important factor in American history.

Not to mention the romance, the unsurpassed courage, the unflinching endurance, and the wonderful exploits which the routine operations of the Pony Express involved, its identity with problems of nation-wide and world-wide importance make its story seem worth telling. And with its romantic existence and its place in history the succeeding pages of this book will briefly deal.

Following the discovery of gold in California in January 1848, that region sprang into immediate prominence. From all parts of the country and the remote corners of the earth came the famous Forty-niners. Amid the chaos of a great mining camp the Anglo-Saxon love of law and order soon asserted itself. Civil and religious institutions quickly arose, and, in the summer of 1850, a little more than a year after the big rush had started, California entered the Union as a free state.

The boom went on and the census of 1860 revealed a population of 380,000 in the new commonwealth. And when to these figures were added those of Oregon and Washington Territory, an aggregate of 444,000 citizens of the United States were found to be living on the Pacific Slope. Crossing the Sierras eastward and into the Great Basin, 47,000 more were located in the Territories of Nevada and Utah,—thus making a grand total of nearly a half million people beyond the Rocky Mountains in 1860. And these figures did not include Indians nor Chinese.

Without reference to any military phase of the problem, this detached population obviously demanded and deserved adequate mail and transportation facilities. How to secure the quickest and most dependable communication with the populous sections of the East had long been a serious proposition. Private corporations and Congress had not been wholly insensible to the needs of the West. Subsidized stage routes had for some years been in operation, and by the close of 1858 several lines were well-equipped and doing much business over the so-called Southern and Central routes. Perhaps the most common route for sending mail from the East to the Pacific Coast was by steamship from New York to Panama where it was unloaded, hurried across the Isthmus, and again shipped by water to San Francisco. All these lines of traffic were slow and tedious, a letter in any case requiring from three to four weeks to reach its destination. The need of a more rapid system of communication between the East and West at once became apparent and it was to supply this need that the Pony Express really came into existence.

The story goes that in the autumn of 1854, United States Senator William Gwin of California was making an overland trip on horseback from San Francisco to Washington, D. C. He was following the Central route via Salt Lake and South Pass, and during a portion of his journey he had for a traveling companion, Mr. B. F. Ficklin, then General Superintendent for the big freighting and stage firm of Russell, Majors, and Waddell of Leavenworth. Ficklin, it seems, was a resourceful and progressive man, and had long been engaged in the overland transportation business. He had already conceived an idea for establishing a much closer transit service between the Missouri river and the Coast, but, as is the case with many innovators, had never gained a serious hearing. He had the traffic agent's natural desire to better the existing service in the territory which his line served; and he had the ambition of a loyal employee to put into effect a plan that would bring added honor and preferment to his firm. In addition to possessing these worthy ideals, it is perhaps not unfair to state that Ficklin was personally ambitious.

Nevertheless, Ficklin confided his scheme enthusiastically to Senator Gwin, at the same time pointing out the benefits that would accrue to California should it ever be put into execution. The Senator at once saw the merits of the plan and quickly caught the contagion. Not only was he enough of a statesman to appreciate the worth of a fast mail line across the continent, but he was also a good enough politician to realize that his position with his constituents and the country at large might be greatly strengthened were he to champion the enactment of a popular measure that would encourage the building of such a line through the aid of a Federal subsidy.

So in January, 1855, Gwin introduced in the Senate a bill which proposed to establish a weekly letter express service between St. Louis and San Francisco. The express was to operate on a ten-day schedule, follow the Central Route, and was to receive a compensation not exceeding $500.00 for each round trip. This bill was referred to the Committee on Military Affairs where it was quietly tabled and "killed."

For the next five years the attention of Congress was largely taken up with the anti-slavery troubles that led to secession and war. Although the people of the West, and the Pacific Coast in particular, continued to agitate the need of a new and quick through mail service, for a long time little was done. It has been claimed that southern representatives in Congress during the decade before the war managed to prevent any legislation favorable to overland mail routes running North of the slave-holding states; and that they concentrated their strength to render government aid to the southern routes whenever possible.

At that time there were three generally recognized lines of mail traffic, of which the Panama line was by far the most important. Next came the so-called southern or "Butterfield" route which started from St. Louis and ran far to the southward, entering California from the extreme southeast corner of the state; a goodly amount of mail being sent in this direction. The Central route followed the Platte River into Wyoming and reached Sacramento via Salt Lake City, almost from a due easterly direction. On account of its location this route or trail could be easily controlled by the North in case of war. It had received very meagre support from the Government, and carried as a rule, only local mail. While the most direct route to San Francisco, it had been rendered the least important. This was not due solely to Congressional manipulation. Because of its northern latitude and the numerous high mountain ranges it traversed, this course was often blockaded with deep snows and was generally regarded as extremely difficult of access during the winter months.

While a majority of the people of California were loyal to the Union, there was a vigorous minority intensely in sympathy with the southern cause and ready to conspire for, or bring about by force of arms if necessary, the secession of their state. As the Civil War became more and more imminent, it became obvious to Union men in both East and West that the existing lines of communication were untrustworthy. Just as soon as trouble should start, the Confederacy could, and most certainly would, gain control of the southern mail routes. Once in control, she could isolate the Pacific coast for many months and thus enable her sympathizers there the more effectually to perfect their plans of secession. Or she might take advantage of these lines of travel, and, by striking swiftly and suddenly, organize and reinforce her followers in California, intimidate the Unionists, many of whom were apathetic, and by a single bold stroke snatch the prize away from her antagonist before the latter should have had time to act.

To avert this crisis some daring and original plan of communication had to be organized to keep the East and West in close contact with each other; and the Pony Express was the fulfillment of such a plan, for it made a close cooperation between the California loyalists and the Federal Government possible until after the crisis did pass. Yet, strange as it may seem, this providential enterprise was not brought into existence nor even materially aided by the Government. It was organized and operated by a private corporation after having been encouraged in its inception by a United States Senator who later turned traitor to his country.

It finally happened that in the winter of 1859-60, Mr. William Russell, senior partner of the firm of Russell, Majors, and Waddell, was called to Washington in connection with some Government freight contracts. While there he chanced to become acquainted with Senator Gwin who, having been aroused, as we have seen, several years before, by one of the firm's subordinates, at once brought before Mr. Russell the need of better mail connections over the Central route, and of the especial need of better communication should war occur.

Russell at once awoke to the situation. While a loyal citizen and fully alive to the strategic importance which the matter involved, he also believed that he saw a good business opening. Could his firm but grasp the opportunity, and demonstrate the possibility of keeping the Central route open during the winter months, and could they but lower the schedule of the Panama line, a Government contract giving them a virtual monopoly in carrying the transcontinental mail might eventually be theirs.

He at once hurried West, and at Fort Leavenworth met his partners, Messrs. Majors and Waddell, to whom he confidently submitted the new proposition. Much to Russell's chagrin, these gentlemen were not elated over the plan. While passively interested, they keenly foresaw the great cost which a year around overland fast mail service would involve. They were unable to see any chance of the enterprise paying expenses, to say nothing of profits. But Russell, with cheerful optimism, contended that while the project might temporarily be a losing venture, it would pay out in time. He asserted that the opportunity of making good with a hard undertaking—one that had been held impossible of realization—would be a strong asset to the firm's reputation. He also declared that in his conversation with Gwin he had already committed their company to the undertaking, and he did not see how they could, with honor and propriety, evade the responsibility of attempting it. Knowledge of the last mentioned fact at once enlisted the support or his partners. Probably no firm has ever surpassed in integrity that of Russell, Majors, and Waddell, famous throughout the West in the freighting and mail business before the advent of railroads in that section of the men, the verbal promise of one of their number was a binding guarantee and as sacredly respected as a bonded obligation. Finding themselves thus committed, they at once began preparations with tremendous activity. All this happened early in the year 1860.

The first step was to form a corporation, the more adequately to conduct the enterprise; and to that end the Central Overland California and Pike's Peak Express Company was organized under a charter granted by the Territory of Kansas. Besides the three original members of the firm, the incorporators included General Superintendent B. F. Ficklin, together with F. A. Bee, W. W. Finney, and John S. Jones, all tried and trustworthy stage employees who were retained on account of their wide experience in the overland traffic business. The new concern then took over the old stage line from Atchison to Salt Lake City and purchased the mail route and outfit then operating between Salt Lake City and Sacramento. The latter, which had been running a monthly round trip stage between these terminals, was known as the West End Division of the Central Route, and was called the Chorpenning line.

Besides conducting the Pony Express, the corporation aimed to continue a large passenger and freighting business, so it next absorbed the Leavenworth and Pike's Peak Express Co., which had been organized a year previously and had maintained a daily stage between Leavenworth and Denver, on the Smoky Hill River Route.

By mutual agreement, Mr. Russell assumed managerial charge of the Eastern Division of the Pony Express line which lay between St. Joseph and Salt Lake City. Ficklin was stationed at Salt Lake City, the middle point, in a similar capacity. Finney was made Western manager with headquarters at San Francisco. These men now had to revise the route to be traversed, equip it with relay or relief stations which must be provisioned for men and horses, hire dependable men as station-keepers and riders, and buy high grade horses[1] or ponies for the entire course, nearly two thousand miles in extent. Between St. Joseph and Salt Lake City, the company had its old stage route which was already well supplied with stations. West of Salt Lake the old Chorpenning route had been poorly equipped, which made it necessary to erect new stations over much of this course of more than seven hundred miles. The entire line of travel had to be altered in many places, in some instances to shorten the distance, and in others, to avoid as much as possible, wild places where Indians might easily ambush the riders.

The management was fortunate in having the assistance of expert subordinates. A. B. Miller of Leavenworth, a noteworthy employe of the original firm, was invaluable in helping to formulate the general plans of organization. At Salt Lake City, Ficklin secured the services of J. C. Brumley, resident agent of the company, whose vast knowledge of the route and the country that it covered enabled him quickly to work out a schedule, and to ascertain with remarkable accuracy the number of relay and supply stations, their best location, and also the number of horses and men needed. At Carson City, Nevada, Bolivar Roberts, local superintendent of the Western Division, hired upwards of sixty riders, cool-headed nervy men, hardened by years of life in the open. Horses were purchased throughout the West. They were the best that money could buy and ranged from tough California cayuses or mustangs to thoroughbred stock from Iowa. They were bought at an average figure of $200.00 each, a high price in those days. The men were the pick of the frontier; no more expressive description of their qualities can be given. They were hired at salaries varying from $50.00 to $150.00 per month, the riders receiving the highest pay of any below executive rank. When fully equipped, the line comprised 190 stations, about 420 horses, 400 station men and assistants and eighty riders. These are approximate figures, as they varied slightly from time to time.

Perfecting these plans and assembling this array of splendid equipment had been no easy task, yet so well had the organizers understood their business, and so persistently, yet quietly, had they worked, that they accomplished their purpose and made ready within two months after the project had been launched. The public was scarcely aware of what was going on until conspicuous advertisements announced the Pony Express. It was planned to open the line early in April.

[1] While always called the Pony Express, there were many blooded horses as well as ponies in the service. The distinction between these types of animals is of course well known to the average reader. Probably "Pony" Express "sounded better" than any other name for the service, hence the adoption of this name by the firm and the public at large. This book will use the words horse and pony indiscriminately.

On March 26, 1860, there appeared simultaneously in the St. Louis Republic and the New York Herald the following notice:

To San Francisco in 8 days by the Central Overland California and Pike's Peak Express Company. The first courier of the Pony Express will leave the Missouri River on Tuesday April 3rd at 5 o'clock P. M. and will run regularly weekly hereafter, carrying a letter mail only. The point of departure on the Missouri River will be in telegraphic connection with the East and will be announced in due time.

Telegraphic messages from all parts of the United States and Canada in connection with the point of departure will be received up to 5 o'clock P. M. of the day of leaving and transmitted over the Placerville and St. Joseph telegraph wire to San Francisco and intermediate points by the connecting express, in 8 days.

The letter mail will be delivered in San Francisco in ten days from the departure of the Express. The Express passes through Forts Kearney, Laramie, Bridger, Great Salt Lake City, Camp Floyd, Carson City, The Washoe Silver Mines, Placerville, and Sacramento.

Letters for Oregon, Washington Territory, British Columbia, the Pacific Mexican ports, Russian Possessions, Sandwich Islands, China, Japan and India will be mailed in San Francisco.

Special messengers, bearers of letters to connect with the express the 3rd of April, will receive communications for the courier of that day at No. 481 Tenth St., Washington City, up to 2:45 P. M. on Friday, March 30, and in New York at the office of J. B. Simpson, Room No. 8, Continental Bank Building, Nassau Street, up to 6:30 A. M. of March 31.

Full particulars can be obtained on application at the above places and from the agents of the Company.

This sudden announcement of the long desired fast mail route aroused great enthusiasm in the West and especially in St. Joseph, Missouri, Salt Lake City, and the cities of California, where preparations to celebrate the opening of the line were at once begun. Slowly the time passed, until the afternoon of the eventful day, April 3rd, that was to mark the first step in annihilating distance between the East and West. A great crowd had assembled on the streets of St. Joseph, Missouri. Flags were flying and a brass band added to the jubilation. The Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad had arranged to run a special train into the city, bringing the through mail from connecting points in the East. Everybody was anxious and excited. At last the shrill whistle of a locomotive was heard, and the train rumbled in— on time. The pouches were rushed to the post office where the express mail was made ready.

The people now surge about the old "Pike's Peak Livery Stables," just South of Pattee Park. All are hushed with subdued expectancy. As the moment of departure approaches, the doors swing open and a spirited horse is led out. Nearby, closely inspecting the animal's equipment is a wiry little man scarcely twenty years old.

Time to go! Everybody back! A pause of seconds, and a cannon booms in the distance—the starting signal. The rider leaps to his saddle and starts. In less than a minute he is at the post office where the letter pouch, square in shape with four padlocked pockets, is awaiting him. Dismounting only long enough for this pouch to be thrown over his saddle, he again springs to his place and is gone. A short sprint and he has reached the Missouri River wharf. A ferry boat under a full head of steam is waiting. With scarcely checked speed, the horse thunders onto the deck of the craft. A rumbling of machinery, the jangle of a bell, the sharp toot of a whistle and the boat has swung clear and is headed straight for the opposite shore. The crowd behind breaks into tumultuous applause. Some scream themselves hoarse; others are strangely silent; and some—strong men—are moved to tears.

The noise of the cheering multitude grows faint as the Kansas shore draws near. The engines are reversed; a swish of water, and the, craft grates against the dock. Scarcely has the gang plank been lowered than horse and rider dash over it and are off at a furious gallop. Away on the jet black steed goes Johnnie Frey, the first rider, with the mail that must be hurled by flesh and blood over 1,966 miles of desolate space—across the plains, through North-eastern Kansas and into Nebraska, up the valley of the Platte, across the Great Plateau, into the foothills and over the summit of the Rockies, into the arid Great Basin, over the Wahsatch range, into the valley of Great Salt Lake, through the terrible alkali deserts of Nevada, through the parched Sink of the Carson River, over the snowy Sierras, and into the Sacramento Valley—the mail must go without delay. Neither storms, fatigue, darkness, rugged mountains, burning deserts, nor savage Indians were to hinder this pouch of letters. The mail must go; and its schedule, incredible as it seemed, must be made. It was a sublime undertaking, than which few have ever put the fibre of Americans to a severer test.

The managers of the Central Overland, California and Pike's Peak Express Company had laid their plans well. Horses and riders for fresh relays, together with station agents and helpers, were ready and waiting at the appointed places, ten or fifteen miles apart over the entire course. There was no guess-work or delay.

After crossing the Missouri River, out of St. Joseph, the official route[2] of the west-bound Pony Express ran at first west and south through Kansas to Kennekuk; then northwest, across the Kickapoo Indian reservation, to Granada, Log Chain, Seneca, Ash Point, Guittards, Marysville, and Hollenberg. Here the valley of the Little Blue River was followed, still in a northwest direction. The trail crossed into Nebraska near Rock Creek and pushed on through Big Sandy and Liberty Farm, to Thirty-two-mile Creek. From thence it passed over the prairie divide to the Platte River, the valley of which was followed to Fort Kearney. This route had already been made famous by the Mormons when they journeyed to Utah in 1847. It had also been followed by many of the California gold-seekers in 1848-49 and by Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston and his army when they marched west from Fort Leavenworth to suppress the "Mormon War" of 1857-58.

For about three hundred miles out of Fort Kearney, the trail followed the prairies; for two thirds of this distance, it clung to the south bank of the Platte, passing through Plum Creek and Midway[3]. At Cottonwood Springs the junction of the North and South branches of the Platte was reached. From here the course moved steadily westward, through Fremont's Springs, O'Fallon's Bluffs, Alkali, Beauvais Ranch, and Diamond Springs to Julesburg, on the South fork of the Platte. Here the stream was forded and the rider then followed the course of Lodge Pole Creek in a northwesterly direction to Thirty Mile Ridge. Thence he journeyed to Mud Springs, Court-House Rock, Chimney Rock, and Scott's Bluffs to Fort Laramie. From this point he passed through the foot-hills to the base of the Rockies, then over the mountains through South Pass and to Fort Bridger. Then to Salt Lake City, Camp Floyd, Ruby Valley, Mountain Wells, across the Humboldt River in Nevada to Bisbys', Carson City, and to Placerville, California; thence to Folsom and Sacramento. Here the mail was taken by a fast steamer down the Sacramento River to San Francisco.

A large part of this route traversed the wildest regions of the Continent. Along the entire course there were but four military posts and they were strung along at intervals of from two hundred and fifty to three hundred and fifty miles from each other. Over most of the journey there were only small way stations to break the awful monotony. Topographically, the trail covered nearly six hundred miles of rolling prairie, intersected here and there by streams fringed with timber. The nature of the mountainous regions, the deserts, and alkali plains as avenues of horseback travel is well understood. Throughout these areas the men and horses had to endure such risks as rocky chasms, snow slides, and treacherous streams, as well as storms of sand and snow. The worst part of the journey lay between Salt Lake City and Sacramento, where for several hundred miles the route ran through a desert, much of it a bed of alkali dust where no living creature could long survive. It was not merely these dangers of dire exposure and privation that threatened, for wherever the country permitted of human life, Indians abounded. From the Platte River valley westward, the old route sped over by the Pony Express is today substantially that of the Union Pacific and Southern Pacific Railroads.

In California, the region most benefited by the express, the opening of the line was likewise awaited with the keenest anticipation. Of course there had been at the outset a few dissenting opinions, the gist of the opposing sentiment being that the Indians would make the operation of the route impossible. One newspaper went so far as to say that it was "Simply inviting slaughter upon all the foolhardy young men who had been engaged as riders". But the California spirit would not down. A vast majority of the people favored the enterprise and clamored for it; and before the express had been long in operation, all classes were united in the conviction that they could not do without it.

At San Francisco and Sacramento, then the two most important towns in the far West, great preparations were made to celebrate the first outgoing and incoming mails. On April 3rd, at the same hour the express started from St. Joseph[4], the eastbound mail was placed on board a steamer at San Francisco and sent up the river, accompanied by an enthusiastic delegation of business men. On the arrival of the pouch and its escort at Sacramento, the capital city, they were greeted with the blare of bands, the firing of guns, and the clanging of gongs. Flags were unfurled and floral decorations lined the streets. That night the first rider for the East, Harry Roff, left the city on a white broncho. He rode the first twenty miles in fifty-nine minutes, changing mounts once. He next took a fresh horse at Folsom and pushed on fifty-five miles farther to Placerville. Here he was relieved by "Boston," who carried the mail to Friday Station, crossing the Sierras en route. Next came Sam Hamilton who rode through Geneva, Carson City, Dayton, and Reed's Station to Fort Churchill, seventy-five miles in all. This point, one hundred and eighty-five miles out of Sacramento had been reached in fifteen hours and twenty minutes, in spite of the Sierra Divide where the snow drifts were thirty feet deep and where the Company had to keep a drove of pack mules moving in order to keep the passageway clear. From Fort Churchill into Ruby Valley went H. J. Faust; from Ruby Valley to Shell Creek the courier was "Josh" Perkins; then came Jim Gentry who carried the mail to Deep Creek, and he was followed by "Let" Huntington who pushed on to Simpson's Springs. From Simpson's to Camp Floyd rode John Fisher, and from the latter place Major Egan carried the mail into Salt Lake City, arriving April 7, at 11:45 P. M.[5] The obstacles to fast travel had been numerous because of snow in the mountains, and stormy spring weather with its attendant discomfort and bad going. Yet the schedule had been maintained, and the last seventy-five miles into Salt Lake City had been ridden in five hours and fifteen minutes.

At that time Placerville and Carson City were the terminals of a local telegraph line. News had been flashed back from Carson on April 4 that the rider had passed that point safely. After that came an anxious wait until April 12 when the arrival of the west-bound express announced that all was well.

The first trip of the Pony Express westbound from St. Joseph to Sacramento was made in nine days and twenty-three hours. East-bound, the run was covered in eleven days and twelve hours. The average time of these two performances was barely half that required by the Butterfield stage over the Southern route. The pony had clipped ten full days from the schedule of its predecessor, and shown that it could keep its schedule—which was as follows:

From St. Joseph to Salt Lake City—124 hours.

From Salt Lake City to Carson City—218 hours, from starting point.

From Carson City to Sacramento—232 hours, from starting point.

From Sacramento to San Francisco—240 hours, from starting point.

From the very first trip, expressions of genuine appreciation of the new service were shown all along the line. The first express which reached Salt Lake City eastbound on the night of April 7, led the Deseret News, the leading paper of that town to say that: "Although a telegraph is very desirable, we feel well-satisfied with this achievement for, the present." Two days later, the first west-bound express bound from St. Joseph reached the Mormon capital. Oddly enough this rider carried news of an act to amend a bill just proposed in the United States Senate, providing that Utah be organized into Nevada Territory under the name and leadership of the latter[6]. Many of the Mormons, like numerous persons in California, had at first believed the Pony Express an impossibility, but now that it had been demonstrated wholly feasible, they were delighted with its success, whether it brought them good news or bad; for it had brought Utah within six days of the Missouri River and within seven days of Washington City. Prior to this, under the old stage coach régime, the people of that territory had been accustomed to receive their news of the world from six weeks to three months old.

Probably no greater demonstrations were ever held in California cities than when the first incoming express arrived. Its schedule having been announced in the daily papers a week ahead, the people were ready with their welcome. At Sacramento, as when the pony mail had first come up from San Francisco, practically the whole town turned out. Stores were closed and business everywhere suspended. State officials and other citizens of prominence addressed great crowds in commemoration of the wonderful achievement. Patriotic airs were played and sung and no attempt was made to check the merry-making of the populace. After a hurried stop to deliver local mail, the pouch was rushed aboard the fast sailing steamer Antelope, and the trip down the stream begun. Although San Francisco was not reached until the dead of night, the arrival of the express mail was the signal for a hilarious reception. Whistles were blown, bells jangled, and the California Band turned out. The city fire department, suddenly aroused by the uproar, rushed into the street, expecting to find a conflagration, but on recalling the true state of affairs, the firemen joined in with spirit. The express courier was then formally escorted by a huge procession from the steamship dock to the office of the Alta Telegraph, the official Western terminal, and the momentous trip had ended.

The first Pony Express from St. Joseph brought a message of congratulation from President Buchanan to Governor Downey of California, which was first telegraphed to the Missouri River town. It also brought one or two official government communications, some New York, Chicago, and St. Louis newspapers, a few bank drafts, and some business letters addressed to banks and commercial houses in San Francisco—about eighty-five pieces of mail in all[7]. And it had brought news from the East only nine days on the road.

At the outset, the Express reduced the time for letters from New York to the Coast from twenty-three days to about ten days. Before the line had been placed in operation, a telegraph wire, allusion to which has been made, had been strung two hundred and fifty miles Eastward from San Francisco through Sacramento to Carson City, Nevada. Important official business from Washington was therefore wired to St. Joseph, then forwarded by pony rider to Carson City where it was again telegraphed to Sacramento or San Francisco as the case required, thus saving twelve or fifteen hours in transmission on the last lap of the journey. The usual schedule for getting dispatches from the Missouri River to the Coast was eight days, and for letters, ten days.

After the triumphant first trip, when it was fully evident that the Pony Express[8] was a really established enterprise, the St. Joseph Free Democrat broke into the following panegyric:

Take down your map and trace the footprints of our quadrupedantic animal: From St. Joseph on the Missouri to San Francisco, on the Golden Horn—two thousand miles—more than half the distance across our boundless continent; through Kansas, through Nebraska, by Fort Kearney, along the Platte, by Fort Laramie, past the Buttes, over the Rocky Mountains, through the narrow passes and along the steep defiles, Utah, Fort Bridger, Salt Lake City, he witches Brigham with his swift ponyship —through the valleys, along the grassy slopes, into the snow, into sand, faster than Thor's Thialfi, away they go, rider and horse—did you see them? They are in California, leaping over its golden sands, treading its busy streets. The courser has unrolled to us the great American panorama, allowed us to glance at the homes of one million people, and has put a girdle around the earth in forty minutes. Verily the riding is like the riding of Jehu, the son of Nimshi for he rideth furiously. Take out your watch. We are eight days from New York, eighteen from London. The race is to the swift.

The Pony Express had been tried at the tribunal of popular opinion and given a hearty endorsement. It had yet to win the approval of shrewd statesmanship.

[2] Root and Connelley's Overland Stage to California.

[3] So called because it was about half way between the Missouri River and Denver.

[4] Reports as to the precise hour of starting do not all agree. It was probably late in the afternoon or early in the evening, no later than 6:30.

[5] Authorities differ somewhat as to the personnel of the first trip; also as to the number of letters carried.

[6] On account of the Mormon outbreak and the troubles of 1857-58, there was at this time much ill-feeling in Congress against Utah. Matters were finally smoothed out and the bill in question was of course dropped. Utah was loyal to the Union throughout the Civil War.

[7] Eastbound the first rider carried about seventy letters.

[8] The idea of a Pony Express was not a new one in 1859. Marco Polo relates that Genghis Khan, ruler of Chinese Tartary had such a courier service about one thousand years ago. This ambitious monarch, it is said, had relay stations twenty-five miles apart, and his riders sometimes covered three hundred miles in twenty-four hours.

About a hundred years back, such a system was in vogue in various countries of Europe.

Early in the nineteenth century before the telegraph was invented, a New York newspaper man named David Hale used a Pony Express system to collect state news. A little later, in 1830, a rival publisher, Richard Haughton, political editor of the New York Journal of Commerce borrowed the same idea. He afterward founded the Boston Atlas, and by making relays of fast horses and taking advantage of the services offered by a few short lines of railroad then operating in Massachusetts, he was enabled to print election returns by nine o'clock on the morning after election.

This idea was improved by James W. Webb, Editor of the New York Courier and Enquirer, a big daily of that time. In 1832, Webb organized an express rider line between New York and Washington. This undertaking gave his paper much valuable prestige.

In 1833, Hale and Hallock of the Journal of Commerce started a rival line that enabled them to publish Washington news within forty-eight hours, thus giving their paper a big "scoop" over all competitors. Papers in Norfolk, Va., two hundred and twenty-nine miles south-east of Washington actually got the news from the capitol out of the New York Journal of Commerce received by the ocean route, sooner than news printed in Washington could be sent to Norfolk by boat directly down the Potomac River.

The California Pony Express of historic fame was imitated on a small scale in 1861 by the Rocky Mountain News of Denver, then, as now, one of the great newspapers of the West. At that time, this enterprising daily owned and published a paper called the Miner's Record at Tarryall, a mining community some distance out of Denver. The News also had a branch office at Central City, forty-five miles up in the mountains. As soon as information from the War arrived over the California Pony Express and by stage out of old Julesburg from the Missouri River—Denver was not on the Pony Express route—it was hurried to these outlying points by fast horsemen. Thanks to this enterprise, the miners in the heart of the Rockies could get their War news only four days late.—Root and Connelley.

On entering the service of the Central Overland California and Pike's Peak Express Company, employees of the Pony Express were compelled to take an oath of fidelity which ran as follows:

"I,—-, do hereby swear, before the Great and Living God, that during my engagement, and while I am an employe of Russell, Majors Waddell, I will, under no circumstances, use profane language; that I will drink no intoxicating liquors; that I will not quarrel or fight with any other employe of the firm, and that in every respect I will conduct myself honestly, be faithful to my duties, and so direct all my acts as to win the confidence of my employers. So help me God."[9]

It is not to be supposed that all, nor any considerable number of the Pony Express men were saintly, nor that they all took their pledge too seriously. Judged by present-day standards, most of these fellows were rough and unconventional; some of them were bad. Yet one thing is certain: in loyalty and blind devotion to duty, no group of employees will ever surpass the men who conducted the Pony Express. During the sixteen months of its existence, the riders of this wonderful enterprise, nobly assisted by the faithful station-keepers, travelled six hundred and fifty thousand miles, contending against the most desperate odds that a lonely wilderness and savage nature could offer, with the loss of only a single mail. And that mail happened to be of relatively small importance. Only one rider was ever killed outright while on duty. A few were mortally wounded, and occasionally their horses were disabled. Yet with the one exception, they stuck grimly to the saddle or trudged manfully ahead without a horse until the next station was reached. With these men, keeping the schedule came to be a sort of religion, a performance that must be accomplished—even though it forced them to play a desperate game the stakes of which were life and death. Many station men and numbers of riders while off duty were murdered by Indians. They were martyrs to the cause of patriotism and a newer and better civilization. Yet they were hirelings, working for good wages and performing their duties in a simple, matter-of-fact way. Their heroism was never a self-conscious trait.

The riders were young men, seldom exceeding one hundred and twenty-five pounds in weight. Youthfulness, nerve, a wide experience on the frontier and general adaptability were the chief requisites for the Pony Express business. Some of the greatest frontiersmen of the latter 'sixties and the 'seventies were trained in this service, either as pony riders or station men. The latter had even a more dangerous task, since in their isolated shacks they were often completely at the mercy of Indians.

That only one rider was ever taken by the savages was due to the fact that the pony men rode magnificent horses which invariably outclassed the Indian ponies in speed and endurance. The lone man captured while on duty was completely surrounded by a large number of savages on the Platte River in Nebraska. He was shot dead and though his body was not found for several days, his pony, bridled and saddled, escaped safely with the mail which was duly forwarded to its destination. That far more riders were killed or injured while off duty than when in the saddle was due solely to the wise precaution of the Company in selecting such high-grade riding stock. And it took the best of horseflesh to make the schedule.

The riders dressed as they saw fit. The average costume consisted of a buckskin shirt, ordinary trousers tucked into high leather boots, and a slouch hat or cap. They always went armed. At first a Spencer carbine was carried strapped to the rider's back, besides a sheath knife at his side. In the saddle holsters he carried a pair of Colt's revolvers. After a time the carbines were left off and only side arms taken along. The carrying of larger guns meant extra weight, and it was made a rule of the Company that a rider should never fight unless compelled to do so. He was to depend wholly upon speed for safety. The record of the service fully justified this policy.

While the horses were of the highest grade, they were of mixed breed and were purchased over a wide range of territory. Good results were obtained from blooded animals from the Missouri Valley, but considerable preference was shown for the western-bred mustangs. These animals were about fourteen hands high and averaged less than nine hundred pounds in weight. A former blacksmith for the Company who was at one time located at Seneca, Kansas, recalls that one of these native ponies often had to be thrown and staked down with a rope tied to each foot before it could be shod. Then, before the smith could pare the hoofs and nail on the shoes, it was necessary for one man to sit astride the animal's head, and another on its body, while the beast continued to struggle and squeal. To shoe one of these animals often required a half day of strenuous work.

As might be expected, the horse as well as rider traveled very light. The combined weight of the saddle, bridle and saddle bags did not exceed thirteen pounds. The saddle-bag used by the pony rider for carrying mail was called a mochila; it had openings in the center so it would fit snugly over the horn and tree of the saddle and yet be removable without delay. The mochila had four pockets called cantinas in each of its corners one in front and one behind each of the rider's legs. These cantinas held the mail. All were kept carefully locked and three were opened en route only at military posts—Forts Kearney, Laramie, Bridger, Churchill and at Salt Lake City. The fourth pocket was for the local or way mail-stations. Each local station-keeper had a key and could open it when necessary. It held a time-card on which a record of the arrival and departure at the various stations where it was opened, was kept. Only one mochila was used on a trip; it was transferred by the rider from one horse to another until the destination was reached.

Letters were wrapped in oil silk to protect them from moisture, either from stormy weather, fording streams, or perspiring animals. While a mail of twenty pounds might be carried, the average weight did not exceed fifteen pounds. The postal charges were at first, five dollars for each half-ounce letter, but this rate was afterward reduced by the Post Office Department to one dollar for each half ounce. At this figure it remained as long as the line was in business. In addition to this rate, a regulation government envelope costing ten cents, had to be purchased. Patrons generally made use of a specially light tissue paper for their correspondence. The large newspapers of New York, Boston, Chicago, St. Louis, and San Francisco were among the best customers of the service. Some of the Eastern dailies even kept special correspondents at St. Joseph to receive and telegraph to the home office news from the West as soon as it arrived. On account of the enormous postage rates these newspapers would print special editions of Civil War news on the thinnest of paper to avoid all possible mailing bulk.

Mr. Frank A. Root of Topeka, Kansas, who was Assistant Postmaster and Chief Clerk in the post office at Atchison during the last two months of the line's existence, in 1861, says that during that period the Express, which was running semi-weekly, brought about three hundred and fifty letters each trip from California[10]. Many of these communications were from government and state officials in California and Oregon, and addressed to the Federal authorities at Washington, particularly to Senators and Representatives from these states and to authorities of the War Department. A few were addressed to Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States. A large number of these letters were from business and professional men in Portland, San Francisco, Oakland, and Sacramento, and mailed to firms in the large cities of the East and Middle West. Not to mention the rendering of invaluable help to the Government in retaining California at the beginning of the War, the Pony Express was of the greatest importance to the commercial interests of the West.

The line was frequently used by the British Government in forwarding its Asiatic correspondence to London. In 1860, a report of the activities of the English fleet off the coast of China was sent through from San Francisco eastward over this route. For the transmission of these dispatches that Government paid one hundred and thirty-five dollars Pony Express charges.

Nor did the commercial houses of the Pacific Coast cities appear to mind a little expense in forwarding their business letters. Mr. Root says there would often be twenty-five one dollar "Pony" stamps and the same number of Government stamps—a total in postage of twenty-seven dollars and fifty cents—on a single envelope. Not much frivolity passed through these mails.

Pony Express riders received an average salary of from one hundred dollars to one hundred and twenty-five dollars a month. A few whose rides were particularly dangerous or who had braved unusual dangers received one hundred and fifty dollars. Station men and their assistants were paid from fifty to one hundred dollars monthly.

Of the eighty riders usually in the service, half were always riding in either direction, East and West. The average "run" was seventy-five miles, the men going and coming over their respective divisions on each succeeding day. Yet there were many exceptions to this rule, as will be shown later. At the outset, although facilities for shorter relays had been provided, it was planned to run each horse twenty-five miles with an average of three horses to the rider; but it was soon found that a horse could rarely continue at a maximum speed for so great a distance. Consequently, it soon became the practice to change mounts every ten or twelve miles or as nearly that as possible. The exact distance was governed largely by the nature of the country. While this shortening of the relay necessitated transferring the mochila many more times on each trip, it greatly facilitated the schedule; for it was at once seen that the average horse or pony in the Express service could be crowded to the limit of its speed over the reduced distance.

One of the station-keeper's most important duties was to have a fresh horse saddled and bridled a half hour before the Express was due. Only two minutes time was allowed for changing mounts. The rider's approach was watched for with keen anxiety. By daylight he could generally be seen in a cloud of dust, if in the desert or prairie regions. If in the mountains, the clear air made it possible for the station men to detect his approach a long way off, provided there were no obstructions to hide the view. At night the rider would make his presence known by a few lusty whoops. Dashing up to the station, no time was wasted. The courier would already have loosed his mochila, which he tossed ahead for the keeper to adjust on the fresh horse, before dismounting. A sudden reining up of his foam-covered steed, and "All's well along the road, Hank!" to the station boss, and he was again mounted and gone, usually fifteen seconds after his arrival. Nor was there any longer delay when a fresh rider took up the "run."

Situated at intervals of about two hundred miles were division points[11] in charge of locally important agents or superintendents. Here were kept extra men, animals, and supplies as a precaution against the raids of Indians, desperadoes, or any emergency likely to arise. Division agents had considerable authority; their pay was as good as that received by the best riders. They were men of a heroic and even in some instances, desperate character, in spite of their oath of service. In certain localities much infested with horse thievery and violence it was necessary to have in charge men of the fight-the-devil-with-fire type in order to keep the business in operation. Noted among this class of Division agents, with headquarters at the Platte Crossing near Fort Kearney, was Jack Slade[12], who, though a good servant of the Company, turned out to be one of the worst "bad" men in the history of the West. He had a record of twenty-six "killings" to his credit, but he kept his Division thoroughly purged of horse thieves and savage marauders, for he knew how to "get" his man whenever there was trouble.

The schedule was at first fixed at ten days for eight months of the year and twelve days during the winter season, but this was soon lowered to eight and ten days respectively. An average speed of ten miles an hour including stops had to be maintained on the summer schedule. In the winter the run was sustained at eight miles an hour; deep snows made the latter performance the more difficult of the two.

The best record made by the Pony Express was in getting President Lincoln's inaugural speech across the continent in March, 1861. This address, outlining as it did the attitude of the new Chief Executive toward the pending conflict, was anticipated with the deepest anxiety by the people on the Pacific Coast. Evidently inspired by the urgency of the situation, the Company determined to surpass all performances. Horses were led out, in many cases, two or three miles from the stations, in order to meet the incoming riders and to secure the supreme limit of speed and endurance on this momentous trip. The document was carried through from St. Joseph to Sacramento—1966 miles—in just seven days and seventeen hours, an average speed of ten and six-tenths miles an hour. And this by flesh and blood, pounding the dirt over the plains, mountains, and deserts! The best individual performance on this great run was by "Pony Bob" Haslam who galloped the one hundred and twenty miles from Smith's Creek to Fort Churchill in eight hours and ten minutes, an average of fourteen and seven-tenths miles per hour. On this record-breaking trip the message was carried the six hundred and seventy-five miles between St. Joseph and Denver[13] in sixty-nine hours; the last ten miles of this leg of the journey being ridden in thirty-one minutes. Today, but few overland express trains, hauled by giant locomotives over heavy steel rails on a rock-ballasted roadbed average more than thirty miles per hour between the Missouri and the Pacific Coast.

The news of the election of Lincoln in November 1860, and President Buchanan's last message a month later were carried through in eight days.

Late in the winter and early in the spring of 1861, just prior to the beginning of the war, many good records were made with urgent Government dispatches. News of the firing upon Fort Sumter was taken through in eight days and fourteen hours. From then on, while the Pony Express service continued, the business men and public officials of California began giving prize money to the Company, to be awarded those riders who made the best time carrying war news. On one occasion they raised a purse of three hundred dollars for the star rider when a pouch containing a number of Chicago papers full of information from the South arrived at Sacramento a day ahead of schedule.

That these splendid achievements could never have been attained without a wonderful degree of enthusiasm and loyalty on the part of the men, scarcely needs asserting. The pony riders were highly respected by the stage and freight employees—in fact by all respectable men throughout the West. Nor were they honored merely for what they did; they were the sort of men who command respect. To assist a rider in any way was deemed a high honor; to do aught to retard him was the limit of wrong-doing, a woeful offense. On the first trip west-bound, the rider between Folsom and Sacramento was thrown, receiving a broken leg. Shortly after the accident, a Wells Fargo stage happened along, and a special agent of that Company, who chanced to be a passenger, seeing the predicament, volunteered to finish the run. This he did successfully, reaching Sacramento only ninety minutes late. Such instances are typical of the manly cooperation that made the Pony Express the true success that it was.

Mark Twain, who made a trip across the continent in 1860 has left this glowing account[14] of a pony and rider that he saw while traveling overland in a stage coach:

We had a consuming desire from the beginning, to see a pony rider; but somehow or other all that passed us, and all that met us managed to streak by in the night and so we heard only a whiz and a hail, and the swift phantom of the desert was gone before we could get our heads out of the windows. But now we were expecting one along every moment, and would see him in broad daylight. Presently the driver exclaims:

"Here he comes!"

Every neck is stretched further and every eye strained wider away across the endless dead level of the prairie, a black speck appears against the sky, and it is plain that it moves. Well I should think so! In a second it becomes a horse and rider, rising and falling, rising and falling— sweeping toward us nearer and nearer growing more and more distinct, more and more sharply defined—nearer and still nearer, and the flutter of hoofs comes faintly to the ear—another instant a whoop and a hurrah from our upper deck, a wave of the rider's hands but no reply and man and horse burst past our excited faces and go winging away like the belated fragment of a storm!

So sudden is it all, and so like a flash of unreal fancy, that but for a flake of white foam left quivering and perishing on a mail sack after the vision had flashed by and disappeared, we might have doubted whether we had seen any actual horse and man at all, maybe.

[9] This was the same pledge which the original firm had required of its men. Both Russell, Majors, and Waddell, and the C. O. C. and P. P. Exp. Co., which they incorporated, adhered to a rigid observance of the Sabbath. They insisted on their men doing as little work as possible on that day, and had them desist from work whenever possible. And they stuck faithfully to these policies. Probably no concern ever won a higher and more deserved reputation for integrity in the fulfillment of its contracts and for business reliability than Russell, Majors, and Waddell.

[10] Exact figures are not obtainable for the west bound mail but it was probably not so heavy.

At this time—Sept., 1861—the telegraph had been extended from the Missouri to Fort Kearney, Nebraska, and letter pouches from the Pony Express were sent by overland stage from Kearney to Atchison. Messages of grave concern were wired as soon as this station was reached.

[11] These were executive divisions and not to be confused with the riders' divisions. The latter were merely the stations separating each man's "run."

[12] Slade was afterward hanged by vigilantes in Virginia City, Montana. The authentic story of his life surpasses in romance and tragedy most of the pirate tales of fiction.

[13] The dispatch was taken from the main line to the Colorado capital by special service. Denver, it will be remembered, was not on the regular "Pony route," which ran north of that city. There was then no telegraph in operation west of the Missouri River in Kansas or Nebraska.

[14] Roughing It.

When the Southern states withdrew, a conspiracy was on foot to force California out of the Union, and organize a new Republic of the Pacific with the Sierra Madre and the Rocky Mountains for its Eastern boundary. This proposed commonwealth, when once erected, and when it had subjugated all Union men in the West who dared oppose it, would eventually unite with the Confederacy; and in event of the latter's success—which at the opening of the war to many seemed certain—the territory of the Confederate States of America would embrace the entire Southwest, and stretch from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Aside from its general plans, the exact details of this plot are of course impossible to secure. But that the conspiracy existed has never been disproved.

That the rebel sympathizers in California were plotting, as soon as the War began, to take the Presidio at the entrance to the Golden Gate, together with the forts on Alcatraz Island, the Custom House, the Mint, the Post Office, and all United States property, and then having made the formation of their Republic certain, invade the Mexican State of Sonora and annex it to the new commonwealth, has never been gainsaid. That these conspiracies existed and were held in grave seriousness is revealed by the official correspondence of that time. That they had been fomenting for many months is apparently revealed by this additional fact: during Buchanan's administration, John B. Floyd, a southern man who gave up his position to fight for the Confederacy, was Secretary of War. When the Rebellion started, it was found[15] that Floyd, while in office, had removed 135,430 firearms, together with much ammunition and heavy ordnance, from the big Government arsenal at Springfield, Massachusetts, and distributed them at various points in the South and Southwest. Of this number, fifty thousand[16] were sent to California where twenty-five thousand muskets had already been stored. And all this was done underhandedly, without the knowledge of Congress.

California was unfortunate in having as a representative in the United States Senate at this time, William Gwin, also a man of southern birth who had cast his fortunes in the Golden State at the outset, when the gold boom was on. Until secession was imminent, Gwin served his adopted state well enough. His encouragement of the Pony Express enterprise has already been pointed out. It is doubtful if he were statesman enough to have foreseen the significant part this organization was to play in the early stages of the War. Otherwise his efforts in its behalf must have been lacking—though the careers of political adventurers like Gwin are full of strange inconsistencies[17].

Speaking in the Senate, on December 12, 1859, Gwin declared, that he believed that "all slave holding states of this confederacy can establish a separate and independent government that will be impregnable to the assaults of all foreign enemies." He further went on to show that they had the power to do it, and asserted that if the southern states went out of the Union, "California would be with the South." Then, as a convincing proof of his duplicity, he had these pro-rebel statements stricken from the official report of his speech, that his constituents might not take fright, and perhaps spoil some of the designs which he and his scheming colleagues had upon California. Of course these remarks reached the ears of his constituents anyhow, and though prefaced by a studied evasiveness on his part, they contributed much to the feeling of unrest and insecurity that then prevailed along the Coast.

It is of course a well-known fact that California never did secede, and that soon after the war began, she swung definitely and conclusively into the Union column. The danger of secession was wholly potential. Yet potential dangers are none the less real. Had it not been for the determined energies of a few loyalists in California, led by General E. A. Sumner and cooperating with the Federal Government by means of the swiftest communication then possible—the Pony Express— history today, might read differently.

Now to turn once more to the potential dangers[18] that made the California crisis a reality. About three-eighths of the population were of southern descent and solidly united in sympathy for the Confederate states. This vigorous minority included upwards of sixteen thousand Knights of the Golden Circle, a pro-Confederate secret organization that was active and dangerous in all the doubtful states in winning over to the southern cause those who feebly protested loyalty to the Union but who opposed war. Many of these "knights" were prosperous and substantial citizens who, working under the guise of their local respectability, exerted a profound influence. Here then, at the outset, was a vigorous and not a small minority, whose influence was greatly out of proportion to their numbers because of their zeal; and who would have seized the balance of power unless held in check by an aroused Union sentiment and military intimidation.

Another class of men to be feared was a small but powerful group representing much wealth, a financial class which proverbially shuns war because of the expense which war involves; a class that always insists upon peace, even at the cost of compromised honor. These men, with the influence which their money commanded, would inevitably espouse the side that seemed the most likely of speedy success; and in view of the early successes of the Confederate armies and the zealous proselytizing of rebel sympathizers in their midst they were a potential risk to loyal California.

The native Spanish or Mexican classes then numerically strong in that state, were appealed to by the anti-Unionists from various cunning approaches, chief of which was the theory that the many real estate troubles and complicated land titles by which they had been annoyed since the separation from Old Mexico in 1847, would be promptly adjusted under Confederate authority. While nearly all these natives were ignorant, many held considerable property and they in turn influenced their poorer brethren. Chimerical as this argument may sound, it had much weight.

Another group of persons also large potentially and a serious menace when proselyted by the apostles of rebellion, were the squatters and trespassers who were occupying land to which they had no lawful right. Many of these men were reckless; some had already been entangled in the courts because of their false land claims. Hence their attitude toward the existing Government was ugly and defiant. Yet they were now assured that they might remain on their lands forever undisturbed, under a rebel régime.

Added to all these sources of danger was the attitude of the thousands of well-meaning people—who, regardless of rebel solicitation, were at first indifferent. They thought that the great distance which separated them from the seat of war made it a matter of but little importance whether California aroused herself or not. They were of course counseling neutrality as the easiest way of avoiding trouble.

Turning now to the forces, moral, military, and political, that were working to save California—first there was a loyal newspaper press, which saw and followed its duty with unflinching devotion. It firmly held before the people the loyal responsibility of the state and declared that the ties of union were too sacred to be broken. It was the moral duty of the people to remain loyal. It truthfully asserted that California's influence in the Federal Union should be an example for other states to follow. If the idea of a Pacific Republic were repudiated by their own citizens, such action would discourage secession elsewhere and be a great moral handicap to that movement. And the press further pointed out with convincing clearness, that should the Union be dissolved, the project for a Pacific Railroad[19] with which the future of the Commonwealth was inevitably committed, would likely fail.

Aroused by the moral importance of its position, the state legislature, early in the winter of 1860-1861, had passed a resolution of fidelity to the Union, in which it declared "That California is ready to maintain the rights and honor of the National Government at home and abroad, and at all times to respond to any requisitions that may be made upon her to defend the Republic against foreign or domestic foes." Succeeding events proved the genuineness of this resolve.

In the early spring of 1861, the War Department sent General Edwin A. Sumner to take command of the Military Department of the Pacific with headquarters at San Francisco, supplanting General Albert Sidney Johnston who resigned to fight for the South. This was a most fortunate appointment, as Sumner proved a resourceful and capable official, ideally suited to meet the crisis before him. Nor does this reflect in any way upon the superb soldierly qualities of his predecessor. Johnston was no doubt too manly an officer to take part in the romantic conspiracies about him. He was every inch a brave soldier who did his fighting in the open. Like Robert E. Lee, he joined the Confederacy in conscientious good faith, and he met death bravely at Shiloh in April, 1862.

Sumner was a man of action and he faced the situation squarely. To him, California and the nation will always be indebted. One of his first decisive acts was to check the secession movement in Southern California by placing a strong detachment of soldiers at Los Angeles. This force proved enough to stop any incipient uprisings in that part of the state. Some of the disturbing element in this district then moved over into Nevada where cooperation was made with the pro-Confederate men there. The Nevada rebel faction had made considerable headway by assuring unsuspecting persons that it was acting on the authority of the Confederate Government. On June 5, 1861, the rebel flag was unfurled at Virginia City. Again Sumner acted. He immediately sent a Federal force to garrison Fort Churchill, and a body of men under Major Blake and Captain Moore seized all arms found in the possession of suspected persons. A rebel militia company with four hundred men enrolled and one hundred under arms was found and dispersed by the Federals. This decisive action completely stopped any uprisings across the state line, uprisings which might easily have spread into California.

In the meantime, under General Sumner's direction, soldiers had been enlisted and were being rapidly drilled for any emergency. The War Department, on being advised of this available force, at once sent the following dispatch, which, with those that follow are typical of the correspondence which the Pony Express couriers were now rushing across the Continent toward and from Washington.

Telegraph and Pony Express. Adjutant-General's Office.

Washington, July 24, 1861. Brigadier General Sumner, Commanding Department of the Pacific.

One regiment of infantry and five companies of cavalry have been accepted from California to aid in protecting the overland mail route via Salt Lake.

Please detail officers to muster these troops into service. Blanks will be sent by steamer.

By order: George D. Ruggles. Assistant Adjutant General.

While recognizing the great need of extending proper military protection to the mail route, it must have been disheartening to Sumner and the loyalists to see this force ordered into service outside the state. For now, late in the summer of 1861, the time of national crisis—the Californian trouble was approaching its climax. On July 20, the Union army had been beaten at Bull Run and driven back, a rabble of fugitives, into the panic stricken capital. Then came weeks and months of delay and uncertainty while the overcautious McClellan sought to build up a new military machine. The entire North was overspread with gloom; the Confederates were jubilant and full of self-confidence. In California the psychological situation was similar but even more acute, for encouraged by Confederate success, the rebel faction became bolder than ever, and openly planned to win the state election to be held on September 4. If successful at the polls, the reins of organized political power would pass into its hands and a secession convention would be a direct possibility. And to intensify the danger was the confirmed indifference or stubbornness of many citizens who seemed to place petty personal differences before the interests of the state and nation at large.

As is well known, Lincoln and the Federal Government accepted the defeat at Bull Run calmly, and set about with grim determination to whip the South at any cost. The President asked Congress for four hundred thousand men and was voted five hundred thousand. In pursuance of such policies, these urgent dispatches were hurried across the country:

War Department. Washington, August 14, 1861. Hon. John G. Downey,

Governor of California, Sacramento City, Cal.

Please organize, equip, and have mustered into service, at the earliest date possible, four regiments of infantry and one regiment of cavalry, to be placed at the disposal of General Sumner.

Simon Cameron, Secretary of War.

By telegraph to Fort Kearney and thence by Pony Express and telegraph.

War Department, August 15, 1861. Hon. John G. Downey,

In filling the requisition given you August 14th, for five regiments, please make General J. H. Carleton of San Francisco, colonel of a cavalry regiment, and give him proper authority to organize as promptly as possible.

Telegraph and Pony Express and telegraph.

The work of enlisting the five thousand men thus requisitioned was carried forward with great rapidity. Within two weeks, on the 28th, the Pony Express brought word that the War Department was about to order this force overland into Texas, to act, no doubt, as a barrier to the advancing Confederate armies who were then planning an invasion of New Mexico as the first decisive step in carrying the conflict into the heart of the Southwest. It was understood, further, that General Sumner would be ordered to vacate his position as Commander of the Department of the Pacific and lead his recruits into the service.

To the authorities at Washington, a campaign of aggression with western troops had no doubt seemed the best means of defending California and adjacent territory from Confederate attack. To the Unionists of California, the report that their troops and Sumner were to leave the state spelt extreme discouragement. They had felt some degree of hope and security so long as organized forces were in their midst, and the presence of Sumner everywhere inspired confidence among discouraged patriots. To be deprived of their soldiers was bad enough; to lose Sumner was intolerable. Accordingly, a formal petition protesting against this action, was drawn up, addressed to the War Department, and signed by important firms and prominent business men of San Francisco[20].

In this petition they said among other things, that the War Department probably was not aware of the real state of affairs in California, and they openly requested that the order, be rescinded. They declared that a majority of the California State officers were out-and-out secessionists and that the others were at least hostile to the administration and would accept a peace policy at any sacrifice. They were suspicious of the Governor's loyalty and declared that, "Every appointment made by our Governor within the last three months, unmistakably indicates his entire sympathy and cooperation with those plotting to sever California from her allegiance to the Union, and that, too, at the hazard of Civil War."[21]

Continuing at detailed length, the petitioners spoke of the great effort being put forth by the secession element to win the forthcoming election. Whereas their opponents were united, the Union party was divided into a Douglas and a Republican faction. Should the anti-Unionists triumph, they declared there were reasons to expect not merely the loss of California to the Union ranks but internecine strife and fratricidal murders such as were then ravaging the Missouri and Kansas border.

The petition then pointed out the truly great importance of California to the Union, and asserted that no precaution leading to the preservation of her loyalty should be overlooked. It was a thousand times easier to retain a state in allegiance than to overcome disloyalty disguised as state authority. The best way to check treasonable activities was to convince traitors of their helplessness. The petitioners further declared that to deprive California of needed United States military support just then, would be a direct encouragement to traitors. An ounce of precaution was worth a pound of cure.

The loyalists triumphed in the state election on September 4, 1861, and on that date the California crisis was safely passed. The contest, to be sure, had revealed about twenty thousand anti-Union voters in the state, but the success of the Union faction restored their feeling of self-confidence. The pendulum had at last swung safely in the right direction, and henceforth California could be and was reckoned as a loyal asset to the Union. Such expressions of disloyalty as her secessionists continued to disclose, were of a sporadic and flimsy nature, never materializing into a formidable sentiment; and, adding to their discouragement, the failure of the Confederate invasion of New Mexico in 1862, was no doubt an important factor in suppressing any further open desires for secession.

Sumner was not called East until the October following the election. His removal of course caused keen regret along the coast; but Colonel George Wright, his successor in charge of the Department of the Pacific, proved a masterful man and in every way equal to the situation. In the long run, Colonel Wright probably was as satisfactory to the loyal people of California as General Sumner had been. The five thousand troops were not detailed for duty in the South. Like the first detachment of fifteen hundred, their efforts were directed mainly to protecting the overland mails and guarding the frontier[22].

Throughout this crisis, news was received twice a week by the Pony Express, and, be it remembered, in less than half the time required by the old stage coach. Of its services then, no better words can be used than those of Hubert Howe Bancroft.

It was the pony to which every one looked for deliverance; men prayed for the safety of the little beast, and trembled lest the service should be discontinued. Telegraphic dispatches from Washington and New York were sent to St. Louis and thence to Fort Kearney, whence the pony brought them to Sacramento where they were telegraphed to San Francisco.

Great was the relief of the people when Hole's bill for a daily mail service was passed and the service changed from the Southern to the Central route, as it was early in the summer. * * * Yet after all, it was to the flying pony that all eyes and hearts were turned.

The Pony Express was a real factor in the preservation of California to the Union.

[15] Bancroft.

[17] After the War had started, Gwin deserted California and the Union and joined the Confederacy. When this power was broken up, he fled to Mexico and entered the service of Maximilian, then puppet emperor of that unfortunate country. Maximilian bestowed an abundance of hollow honors upon the renegade senator, and made him Duke of the Province of Sonora, which region Gwin and his clique had doubtless coveted as an integral part of their projected "Republic of the Pacific." Because of this empty title, the nickname, "Duke," was ever afterward given him. When Maximilian's soap bubble monarchy had disappeared, Gwin finally returned to California where he passed his old age in retirement.

[18] Senate documents.

[19] All parties in California were unanimous in their desire for a transcontinental railroad. No political faction there could receive any support unless it strongly endorsed this project.

[20] The signers of this petition were: Robert C. Rogers, Macondray Co., Jno. Sime Co., J. B. Thomas, W. W. Stow, Horace P. James, Geo. F. Bragg Co., Flint, Peabody Co., Wm. B. Johnston, D. 0. Mills, H. M. Newhall Co., Henry Schmildell, Murphy Grant Co., Wm. T. Coleman Co., DeWitt Kittle Co., Richard M. Jessup, Graves Williams Buckley, Donohoe, Ralston Co., H. M. Nuzlee, Geo. C. Shreve Co., Peter Danahue, Kellogg, Hewston Co., Moses Ellis Co., R. D. W. Davis Co., L. B. Beuchley Co., Wm. A. Dana, Jones, Dixon Co., J. Y. Halleck Co., Forbes Babcock, A. T. Lawton, Geo. J. Brooks Co., Jno. B. Newton Co., Chas. W. Brooks Co., James Patrick Co., Locke Montague, Janson, Bond Co., Jennings Brewster, Treadwell Co., William Alvord Co., Shattuck Hendley, Randall Jones, J. B. Weir Co., B. C. Hand Co., 0. H. Giffin Bro., Dodge Shaw, Tubbs Co., J. Whitney, Jr., C. Adolph Low Co., Haynes Lawton, J. D. Farnell, C. E. Hitchcock, Geo. Howes Co., Sam Merritt, Jacob Underhill Co., Morgan Stone Co., J. W. Brittan, T. H. J. S. Bacon, R. B. Swain Co., Fargo Co., Nathaniel Page, Stevens Baker Co., A. E. Brewster Co., Fay, Brooks Backus, Wm. Norris, and E. H. Parker.

(Above data taken from Government Secret Correspondence. Ordered printed by the second session of the 50th Congress in 1889, Senate Document No. 70.)

[21] In the writer's judgment, these charges against Governor Downey were prejudicial and unjust.

[22] During the War of the Rebellion, California raised 16,231 troops, more than the whole United States army had been at the commencement of hostilities. Practically all these soldiers were assigned to routine and patrol duty in the far West, such as keeping down Indian revolts, and garrisoning forts, as a defense against any uprising of Indians, or protection against Confederate invasion. The exceptions were the California Hundred, and the California Four Hundred, volunteer detachments who went East of their own accord and won undying honors in the thick of the struggle.

Bart Riles, the pony rider, died this morning from wounds received at Cold Springs, May 16.

The men at Dry Creek Station have all been killed and it is thought those at Robert's Creek have met with the same fate.

Six Pike's Peakers found the body of the station keeper horribly mutilated, the station burned, and all the stock missing from Simpson's.

Eight horses were stolen from Smith's Creek on last Monday, supposedly by road agents.

The above are random extracts from frontier newspapers, printed while the Pony Express was running. The Express could never have existed on its high plane of efficiency, without an abundance of coolheaded, hardened men; men who knew not fear and who were expert— though sometimes in vain—in all the wonderful arts of self-preservation practiced on the old frontier. That these employees could have performed even the simplest of their duties, without stirring and almost incredible adventures, it is needless to assert.

The faithful relation of even a considerable number of the thrilling experiences to which the "Pony" men were subjected would discount fiction. Yet few of these adventures have been recorded. Today, after a lapse of over fifty years, nearly all of the heroes who achieved them have gone out on that last long journey from which no man returns. While history can pay the tribute of preserving some anecdotes of them and their collective achievements, it must be forever silent as to many of their personal acts of heroism.

While lasting praise is due the faithful station men who, in their isolation, so often bore the murderous attacks of Indians and bandits, it is, perhaps, to the riders that the seeker of romance is most likely to turn. It was the riders' skill and fortitude that made the operation of the line possible. Both riders and hostlers shared the same privations, often being reduced to the necessity of eating wolf meat and drinking foul or brackish water.

While each rider was supposed to average seventy-five miles a trip, riding from three to seven horses, accidents were likely to occur, and it was not uncommon for a man to lose his way. Such delays meant serious trouble in keeping the schedule, keyed up, as it was, to the highest possible speed. It was confronting such emergencies, and in performing the duties of comrades who had been killed or disabled while awaiting their turns to ride, that the most exciting episodes took place.

Among the more famous riders[23] was Jim Moore who later became a ranchman in the South Platte Valley, Nebraska. Moore made his greatest ride on June 8, 1860. He happened to be at Midway Station, half way between the Missouri River and Denver, when the west-bound messenger arrived with important Government dispatches to California. Moore "took up the run," riding continuously one hundred and forty miles to old Julesburg, the end of his division. Here he met the eastbound messenger, also with important missives, from the Coast to Washington. By all the rules of the game Moore should have rested a few hours at this point, but his successor, who would have picked up the pouch and started eastward, had been killed the day before. The mail must go, and the schedule must be sustained. Without asking any favors of the man who had just arrived from the West, Moore resumed the saddle, after a delay of only ten minutes, without even stopping to eat, and was soon pounding eastward on his return trip. He made it, too, in spite of lurking Indians, hunger and fatigue, covering the round trip of two hundred and eighty miles in fourteen hours and forty-six minutes an average speed of over eighteen miles an hour. Furthermore, his west-bound mail had gone through from St. Joseph to Sacramento on a record-making run of eight days and nine hours.

William James, always called "Bill" James, was a native of Virginia. He had crossed the plains with his parents in a wagon train when only five years old. At eighteen, he was one of the best Pony Express riders in the service. James's route lay between Simpson's Park and Cole Springs, Nevada, in the Smoky Valley range of mountains. He rode only sixty miles each way but covered his round trip of one hundred and twenty miles in twelve hours, including all stops. He always rode California mustangs, using five of these animals each way. His route crossed the summits of two mountain ridges, lay through the Shoshone Indian country, and was one of the loneliest and most dangerous divisions on the line. Yet "Bill" never took time to think about danger, nor did he ever have any serious trouble.

Theodore Rand rode the Pony Express during the entire period of its organization. His run was from Box Elder to Julesburg, one hundred and ten miles and he made the entire distance both ways by night. His schedule, night run though it was, required a gait of ten miles an hour, but Rand often made it at an average of twelve, thus saving time on the through schedule for some unfortunate rider who might have trouble and delay. Originally, Rand used only four or five horses each way, but this number, in keeping with the revised policy of the Company, was afterward doubled, an extra mount being furnished him every twelve or fifteen miles.

Johnnie Frey who has already been mentioned as the first rider out of St. Joseph, was little more than a boy when he entered the pony service. He was a native Missourian, weighing less than one hundred and twenty-five pounds. Though small in stature, he was every inch a man. Frey's division ran from St. Joseph to Seneca, Kansas, eighty miles, which he covered at an average of twelve and one half miles an hour, including all stops. When the war started, Frey enlisted in the Union army under General Blunt. His short but worthy career was cut short in 1863 when he fell in a hand-to-hand fight with rebel bushwhackers in Arkansas. In this, his last fight, Frey is said to have killed five of his assailants before being struck down.

Jim Beatley, whose real name was Foote, was another Virginian, about twenty-five years of age. He rode on an eastern division, usually west out of Seneca. On one occasion, he traveled from Seneca to Big Sandy, fifty miles and back, doubling his route twice in one week. Beatley was killed by a stage hand in a personal quarrel, the affair taking place on a ranch in Southern Nebraska in 1862.

William Boulton was one of the older riders in the service; his age at that time is given at about thirty-five. Boulton rode for about three months with Beatley[24]. On one occasion, while running between Seneca and Guittards', Boulton's horse gave out when five miles from the latter station. Without a moment's delay, he removed his letter pouch and hurried the mail in on foot, where a fresh horse was at once provided and the schedule resumed.

Melville Baughn, usually known as "Mel," had a pony run between Fort Kearney and Thirty-two-mile Creek. Once while "laying off" between trips, a thief made off with his favorite horse. Scarcely had the miscreant gotten away when Baughn discovered the loss. Hastily saddling another steed, "Mel" gave pursuit, and though handicapped, because the outlaw had the pick of the stable, Baughn's superior horsemanship, even on an inferior mount, soon told. After a chase of several miles, he forced the fellow so hard that he abandoned the stolen animal at a place called Loup Fork, and sneaked away. Recovering the horse, Baughn then returned to his station, found a mail awaiting him, and was off on his run without further delay. With him and his fellow employes, running down a horse thief was but a trifling incident and an annoyance merely because of the bother and delay which it necessitated. Baughn was afterward hanged for murder at Seneca, but his services to the Pony Express were above reproach.

Another Eastern Division man was Jack Keetly, who also rode from St. Joseph to Seneca, alternating at times with Frey and Baughn. Keetley's greatest performance, and one of the most remarkable ever achieved in the service, was riding from Rock Creek to St. Joseph; then back to his starting point and on to Seneca, and from Seneca once more to Rock Creek —three hundred and forty miles without rest. He traveled continuously for thirty-one hours, his entire run being at the rate of eleven miles an hour. During the last five miles of his journey, he fell asleep in the saddle and in this manner concluded his long trip.

Don C. Rising, who afterwards settled in Northern Kansas, was born in Painted Post, Steuben County, New York, in 1844, and came West when thirteen years of age. He rode in the pony service nearly a year, from November, 1860, until the line was abandoned the following October, most of his service being rendered before he was seventeen. Much of his time was spent running eastward out of Fort Kearney until the telegraph had reached that point and made the operation of the Express between the fort and St. Joseph no longer necessary. On two occasions, Rising is said to have maintained a continuous speed of twenty miles an hour while carrying important dispatches between Big Sandy and Rock Creek.

One rider who was well known as "Little Yank" was a boy scarcely out of his teens and weighing barely one hundred pounds. He rode along the Platte River between Cottonwood Springs and old Julesburg and frequently made one hundred miles on a single trip.

Another man named Hogan, of whom little is known, rode northwesterly out of Julesburg across the Platte and to Mud Springs, eighty miles.

Jimmy Clark rode between various stations east of Fort Kearney, usually between Big Sandy and Hollenburg. Sometimes his run took him as far West as Liberty Farm on the Little Blue River.

James W. Brink, or "Dock" Brink as he was known to his associates, was one of the early riders, entering the employ of the Pony Express Company in April, 1860. While "Dock" made a good record as a courier, his chief fame was gained in a fight at Rock Creek station, in which Brink and Wild Bill[25] "cleaned out" the McCandless gang of outlaws, killing five of their number.

Charles Cliff had an eighty-mile pony run when only seventeen years of age, but, like Brink, young Cliff gained his greatest reputation as a fighter,—in his case fighting Indians. It seems that while Cliff was once freighting with a small train of nine wagons, it was attacked by a party of one hundred Sioux Indians and besieged for three days until a larger train approached and drove the redskins away. During the conflict, Cliff received three bullets in his body and twenty-seven in his clothing, but he soon recovered from his injuries, and was afterward none the less valuable to the Pony Express service.

J. G. Kelley, later a citizen of Denver, was a veteran pony man. He entered the employ of the company at the outset, and helped Superintendent Roberts to lay out the route across Nevada. Along the Carson River, tiresome stretches of corduroy road had to be built. Kelley relates that in constructing this highway willow trees were cut near the stream and the trunks cut into the desired lengths before being laid in place. The men often had to carry these timbers in their arms for three hundred yards, while the mosquitoes swarmed so thickly upon their faces and hands as to make their real color and identity hard to determine.

At the Sink of the Carson[26], a great depression of the river on its course through the desert, Kelley assisted in building a fort for protecting the line against Indians. Here there were no rocks nor timber, and so the structure had to be built of adobe mud. To get this mud to a proper consistency, the men tramped it all day with their bare feet. The soil was soaked with alkali, and as a result, according to Kelley's story, their feet were swollen so as to resemble "hams."

They next erected a fort at Sand Springs, twenty miles from Carson Lake, and another at Cold Springs, thirty-two miles east of Sand Springs. At Cold Springs, Kelley was appointed assistant station-keeper under Jim McNaughton. An outbreak of the Pah-Ute Indians was now in progress, and as the little station was in the midst of the disturbed area, there was plenty of excitement.

One night while Kelley was on guard his attention was attracted by the uneasiness of the horses. Gazing carefully through the dim light, he saw an Indian peering over the outer wall or stockade. The orders of the post were to shoot every Indian that came within range, so Kelley blazed away, but missed his man. In the morning, many tracks were found about the place. This wild shot had probably frightened the prowlers away, saving the station from attack, and certain destruction.

During this same morning, a Mexican pony rider came in, mortally wounded, having been shot by the savages from ambush while passing through a dense thicket in the vicinity known as Quaking Asp Bottom. Although given tender care, the poor fellow died within a few hours after his arrival. The mail was waiting and it must go. Kelley, who was the lightest man in in the place—he weighed but one hundred pounds— was now ordered by the boss to take the dead man's place, and go on with the dispatches. This he did, finishing the run without further incident. On his return trip he had to pass once more through the aspen thicket where his predecessor had received his death wound. This was one of the most dangerous points on the entire trail, for the road zigzagged through a jungle, following a passage-way that was only large enough to admit a horse and rider; for two miles a man could not see more than thirty or forty feet ahead. Kelley was expecting trouble, and went through like a whirlwind, at the same time holding a repeating rifle in readiness should trouble occur. On having cleared the thicket, he drew rein on the top of a hill, and, looking back over his course, saw the bushes moving in a suspicious manner. Knowing there was no live stock in that locality and that wild game rarely abounded there, he sent several shots in the direction of the moving underbrush. The motion soon ceased, and he galloped onward, unharmed.

A few days later, two United States soldiers, while traveling to join their command, were ambushed and murdered in the same thicket.

This was about the time when Major Ormsby's command was massacred by the Utes in the disaster at Pyramid Lake[27], and the Indians everywhere in Nevada were unusually aggressive and dangerous. There were seldom more than three or four men in the little station and it is remarkable that Kelley and his companions were not all killed.

One of Kelley's worst rides, in addition to the episode just related, was the stretch between Cold Springs and Sand Springs for thirty-seven miles without a drop of water along the way.

Once, while dashing past a wagon train of immigrants, a whole fusillade of bullets was fired at Kelley who narrowly escaped with his life. Of course he could not stop the mail to see why he had been shot at, but on his return trip he met the same crowd, and in unprintable language told them what he thought of their lawless and irresponsible conduct. The only satisfaction he could get from them in reply was the repeated assertion, "We thought you was an Indian!"[28] Nor was Kelley the only pony rider who took narrow chances from the guns of excited immigrants. Traveling rapidly and unencumbered, the rider, sunburned and blackened by exposure, must have borne on first glance no little resemblance to an Indian; and especially would the mistake be natural to excited wagon-men who were always in fear of dashing attacks from mounted Indians— attacks in which a single rider would often be deployed to ride past the white men at utmost speed in order to draw their fire. Then when their guns were empty a hidden band of savages would make a furious onslaught. It was the established rule of the West in those days, in case of suspected danger, to shoot first, and make explanations afterward; to do to the other fellow as he would do to you, and do it first!

Added to the perils of the wilderness deserts, blizzards, and wild Indians—the pony riders, then, had at times to beware of their white friends under such circumstances as have been narrated. And that added to the tragical romance of their daily lives. Yet they courted danger and were seldom disappointed, for danger was always near them.

[23] Root and Connelley.

[24] Pony riders often alternated "runs" with each other over their respective divisions in the same manner as do railroad train crews at the present time.

[25] "Wild Bill" Hickock was one of the most noted gun fighters that the West ever produced. As marshal of Abilene, Kansas, and other wild frontier towns he became a terror to bad men and compelled them to respect law and order when under his jurisdiction. Probably no man has ever equaled him in the use of the six shooter. Numerous magazine articles describing his career can be found.

[26] Inman Cody, Salt Lake Trail.

[27] Bancroft.

[28] Indians would sometimes gaze in open-mouthed wonder at the on-rushing ponies. To some of them, the "pony outfit" was "bad medicine" and not to be molested. There was a certain air of mystery about the wonderful system and untiring energy with which the riders followed their course. Unfortunately, a majority of the red men were not always content to watch the Express in simple wonder. They were too frequently bent upon committing deviltry to refrain from doing harm whenever they had a chance.

No detailed account of the Pony Express would be complete without mentioning the adventures of Robert Haslam, in those days called "Pony Bob," and William F. Cody, who is known to fame and posterity as "Buffalo Bill."

Haslam's banner performance came about in a matter-of-fact way, as is generally the case with deeds of heroism. On a certain trip during the Ute raids mentioned in the last chapter, he stopped at Reed's Station on the Carson River in Nevada, and found no change of horses, since all the animals had been appropriated by the white men of the vicinity for a campaign against the Indians. Haslam therefore fed the horse he was riding, and after a short rest started for Bucklands[29], the next station which was fifteen miles down the river. He had already ridden seventy-five miles and was due to lay off at the latter place. But on arriving, his successor, a man named Johnson Richardson, was unable or indisposed to go on with the mail[30]. It happened that Division Superintendent W. C. Marley was at Bucklands when Haslam arrived, and, since Richardson would not go on duty, Marley offered "Pony Bob" fifty dollars bonus if he would take up the route. Haslam promptly accepted the proposal, and within ten minutes was off, armed with a revolver and carbine, on his new journey. He at first had a lonesome ride of thirty-five miles to the Sink of the Carson. Reaching the place without mishap, he changed mounts and hurried on for thirty-seven miles over the alkali wastes and through the sand until he came to Cold Springs. Here he again changed horses and once more dashed on, this time for thirty miles without stopping, till Smith's Creek was reached where he was relieved by J. G. Kelley. "Bob" had thus ridden one hundred and eighty-five miles without stopping except to change mounts. At Smith's Creek he slept nine hours and then started back with the return mail. On reaching Cold Springs once more, he found himself in the midst of tragedy. The Indians had been there. The horses had been stolen. All was in ruins. Nearby lay the corpse of the faithful station-keeper. Small cheer for a tired horse and rider! Haslam watered his steed and pounded ahead without rest or refreshment. Before he had covered half the distance to the next station, darkness was falling. The journey was enshrouded with danger. On every side were huge clumps of sage-bush which would offer excellent chances for savages to lie in ambush. The howling of wolves added to the dolefulness of the trip. And haunting him continuously was the thought of the ruined little station and the stiffened corpse behind him. But pony riders were men of courage and nerve, and Bob was no exception. He arrived at Sand Springs safely; but here there was to be no rest nor delay. After reporting the outrage he had just seen, he advised the station man of his danger, and, after changing horses, induced the latter to accompany him on to the Sink of the Carson, which move doubtless saved the latter's life. Reaching the Carson, they found a badly frightened lot of men who had been attacked by the Indians only a few hours previously. A party of fifteen with plenty of arms and ammunition had gathered in the adobe station, which was large enough also to accommodate as, many horses. Nearby was a cool spring of water, and, thus fortified, they were to remain, in a state of siege, if necessary, until the marauders withdrew from that vicinity. Of course they implored Haslam to remain with them and not risk his life venturing away with the mail. But the mail must go; and the schedule, hard as it was, must be maintained. "Bob" had no conception of fear, and so he galloped away, after an hour's rest. And back into Bucklands he came unharmed, after having suffered only three and a half hours of delay. Superintendent Marley, who was still present when the daring rider returned, at once raised his bonus from fifty to one hundred dollars.

Nor was this all of Haslam's great achievement. The west-bound mail would soon arrive, and there was nobody to take his regular run. So after resting an hour and a half, he resumed the saddle and hurried back along his old trail, over the Sierras to Friday's Station. Then "Bob" rested after having ridden three hundred and eighty miles with scarcely eleven hours of lay-off, and within a very few hours of regular schedule time all the way. In speaking of this performance afterwards, Haslam[31] modestly admitted that he was "rather tired," but that "the excitement of the trip had braced him up to stand the journey."

The most widely known of all the pony riders is William F. Cody— usually called "Bill," who in early life resided in Kansas and was raised amid the exciting scenes of frontier life. Cody had an unusually dangerous route between Red Buttes and Three Crossings. The latter place was on the Sweetwater River, and derived its name from the fact that the stream which followed the bed of a rocky cañon, had to be crossed three times within a space of sixty yards. The water coming down from the mountains, was always icy cold and the current swift, deep, and treacherous. The whole bottom of the cañon was often submerged, and in attempting to follow its course along the channel of the stream, both horse and rider were liable to plunge at any time into some abysmal whirlpool. Besides the excitement which the Three Crossings and an Indian country furnished, Cody's trail ran through a region that was often frequented by desperadoes. Furthermore, he had to ford the North Platte at a point where the stream was half a mile in width and in places twelve feet deep. Though the current was at times slow, dangers from quicksand were always to be feared on these prairie rivers. Cody, then but a youth, had to surmount these obstacles and cover his trip at an average of fifteen miles an hour.

Cody entered the Pony Express service just after the line had been organized. At Julesburg he met George Chrisman, an old friend who was head wagon-master for Russell, Majors, and Waddell's freighting department. Chrisman was at the time acting as an agent for the express line, and, out of deference to the youth, he hired him temporarily to ride the division then held by a pony man named Trotter. It was a short route, one of the shortest on the system, aggregating only forty-five miles, and with three relays of horses each way. Cody, who had been accustomed to the saddle all his young life, had no trouble in following the schedule, but after keeping the run several weeks, the lad was relieved by the regular incumbent, and then went east, to Leavenworth, where he fell in with another old friend, Lewis Simpson, then acting as wagon boss and fitting up at Atchison a wagon train of supplies for the old stage line at Fort Laramie and points beyond. Acting through Simpson, Cody obtained a letter of recommendation from Mr. Russell, the head of the firm, addressed to Jack Slade, Superintendent of the division between Julesburg and Rocky Ridge, with headquarters at Horseshoe Station, thirty-six miles west of Fort Laramie, in what is now Wyoming. Armed with this letter, young Cody accompanied Simpson's wagon-train to Laramie, and soon found Superintendent Slade. The superintendent, observing the lad's tender years and frail stature, was skeptical of his ability to serve as a pony rider; but on learning that Cody was the boy who had already given satisfactory service as a substitute some months before, at once engaged him and assigned him to the perilous run of seventy-six miles between Red Buttes and Three Crossings. For some weeks all went well. Then, one day when he reached his terminal at Three Crossings, Cody found that his successor who was to have taken the mail out, had been killed the night before. As there was no extra rider available, it fell to young Cody to fill the dead courier's place until a successor could be procured. The lad was undaunted and anxious for the added responsibility. Within a moment he was off on a fresh horse for Rocky Ridge, eighty-five miles away. Notwithstanding the dangers and great fatigue of the trip, Cody rode safely from Three Crossings to his terminal and returned with the eastbound mail, going back over his own division and into Red Buttes without delay or mishap—an aggregate run of three hundred and twenty-two miles. This was probably the longest continuous performance without formal rest period in the history of this or any other courier service.

Not long afterward, Cody was chased by a band of Sioux Indians while making one of his regular trips. The savages were armed with revolvers, and for a few minutes made it lively for the young messenger. But the superior speed and endurance of his steed soon told; lying flat on the animal's neck, he quickly distanced his assailants and thundered into Sweetwater, the next station, ahead of schedule. Here he found—as so often happened in the history of the express service—that the place had been raided, the keeper slain, and the horses driven off. There was nothing to do but drive his tired pony twelve miles further to Ploutz Station, where he got a fresh horse, briefly reported what he had observed, and completed his run without mishap.

On another occasion[32] it became mysteriously rumored that a certain Pony Express pouch would carry a large sum of currency. Knowing that there was great likelihood of some bandits or "road agents" as they were commonly called getting wind of the consignment and attempting a holdup, Cody hit upon a little emergency ruse. He provided himself with an extra mochila which he stuffed with waste papers and placed over the saddle in the regular position. The pouch containing the currency was hidden under a special saddle blanket. With his customary revolver loaded and ready, Cody then started. His suspicions were soon confirmed, for on reaching a particularly secluded spot, two highwaymen stepped from concealment, and with leveled rifles compelled the boy to stop, at the same time demanding the letter pouch. Holding up his hands as ordered, Cody began to remonstrate with the thugs for robbing the express, at the same time declaring to them that they would hang for their meanness if they carried out their plans. In reply to this they told Cody that they would take their own chances. They knew what he carried and they wanted it. They had no particular desire to harm him, but unless he handed over the pouch without delay they would shoot him full of holes, and take it anyhow. Knowing that to resist meant certain death Cody began slowly to unfasten the dummy pouch, still protesting with much indignation. Finally, after having loosed it, he raised the pouch and hurled it at the head off the nearest outlaw, who dodged, half amused at the young fellow's spirit. Both men were thus taken slightly off their guard, and that instant the rider acted like a flash. Whipping out his revolver, he disabled the farther villain; and before the other, who had stooped to recover the supposed mail sack, could straighten up or use a weapon, Cody dug the spurs into his horse, knocked him down, rode over him and was gone. Before the half-stunned robber could recover himself to shoot, horse and rider were out of range and running like mad for the next station, where they arrived ahead of schedule.

The following is a partial list, so far as is known[33], of the men who rode the Pony Express and contributed to the lasting fame of the enterprise:

Baughn, Melville Beatley, Jim "Boston" Boulton, William Brink, James W. Burnett, John Bucklin, Jimmy Carr, William Carrigan, William Cates, Bill Clark, Jimmy Cliff, Charles Cody, William F. Egan, Major Ellis, J. K. Faust, H. J. Fisher, John Frey, Johnnie Gentry, Jim Gilson, Jim Hamilton, Sam Haslam, Robert Hogan (first name missing) Huntington, Let "Irish Tom" James, William Jenkins, Will D. Kelley, Jay G. Keetley, Jack "Little Yank" Martin, Bob McCall, J. G. McDonald, James McNaughton, Jim Moore, Jim Perkins, Josh Rand, Theodore Richardson, Johnson Riles, Bart Rising, Don C. Roff, Harry Spurr, George Thacher, George Towne, George Wallace, Henry Westcott, Dan Zowgaltz, Jose.

Many of these men were rough and unlettered. Many died deaths of violence. The bones of many lie in unknown graves. Some doubtless lie unburied somewhere in the great West, in the winning of which their lives were lost. Yet be it always remembered, that in the history of the American nation they played an important part. They were bold-hearted citizen knights to whom is due the honors of uncrowned kings.

[29] Afterwards named Fort Churchill. This ride took place in the summer of 1860.

[30] Some reports say that Richardson was stricken with fear. That he was probably suffering from overwrought nerves, resulting from excessive risks which his run had involved, is a more correct inference. This is the only case on record of a pony messenger failing to respond to duty, unless killed or disabled.

[31] After the California Pony Express was abandoned, Bob rode for Wells Fargo Co., between Friday's Station and Virginia City, Nevada, a distance of one hundred miles. He seems to have enjoyed horseback riding, for he made this roundtrip journey in twenty-four hours. When the Central Pacific R. R. was built, and this pony line abandoned, Haslam rode for six months a twenty-three mile division between Virginia City and Reno, traveling the distance in less than one hour. To accomplish this feat, he used a relay of fifteen horses. He was afterwards transfered to Idaho where he continued in a similar capacity on a one hundred mile run before quitting the service for a less exciting vocation.

[32] Inman Cody, Salt Lake Trail.

[33] Root and Connelley's Overland Stage to California.

In the history of overland transportation in America, the Pony Express is but one in a series of many enterprises. As emphasized at the beginning of this book, its importance lay in its opportuneness; in the fact that it appeared at the psychological moment, and fitted into the course of events at a critical period, prior to the completion of the telegraph; and when some form of rapid transit between the Missouri River and the Pacific Coast was absolutely needed. To give adequate setting to this story, a brief account of the leading overland routes, of which the Pony Express was but one, seems proper.

Before the middle of the nineteenth century, three great thoroughfares had been established from the Missouri, westward across the continent. These were the Santa Fe, the Salt Lake, and the Oregon trails. All had important branches and lesser stems, and all are today followed by important railroads—a splendid testimonial to the ability of the pioneer pathfinders in selecting the best routes.

Of these trails, that leading to Santa Fe was the oldest, having been fully established before 1824. The Salt Lake and Oregon routes date some twenty years later, coming into existence in the decade between 1840 and 1850. It is incidentally with the Salt Lake trail that the story of the Pony Express mainly deals.

The Mormon settlement of Utah in 1847-48, followed almost immediately by the discovery of gold in California, led to the first mail route[34] across the country, west of the Missouri. This was known as the "Great Salt Lake Mail," and the first contract for transporting it was let July 1, 1850, to Samuel H. Woodson of Independence, Missouri. By terms of this agreement, Woodson was to haul the mail monthly from Independence on the Missouri River to Salt Lake City, twelve hundred miles, and return. Woodson later arranged with some Utah citizens to carry a mail between Salt Lake City and Fort Laramie, the service connecting with the Independence mail at the former place. This supplementary line was put into operation August 1, 1851.

In the early fifties, while the California gold craze was still on, a monthly route was laid out between Sacramento and Salt Lake City[35]. This service was irregular and unreliable; and since the growing population of California demanded a direct overland route, a four year monthly contract was granted to W. F. McGraw, a resident of Maryland. His subsidy from Congress was $13,500.00 a year. In those days it often took a month to get mail from Independence to Salt Lake City, and about six weeks for the entire trip. Although McGraw charged $180.00 fare for each passenger to Salt Lake City, and $300.00 to California, he failed, in 1856. The unexpired contract was then let to the Mormon firm of Kimball Co., and they kept the route in operation until the Mormon troubles of 1857 when the Government abrogated the agreement.

In the summer of 1857, General Albert Sidney Johnston, later of Civil War fame, was sent out with a Federal army of five thousand men to invade Utah. After a rather fruitless campaign, Johnston wintered at Fort Bridger, in what is southwestern Wyoming, not far from the Utah line. During this interval, army supplies were hauled from Fort Leavenworth with only a few way stations for changing teams. This improvised line, carrying mail occasionally, which went over the old Mormon trail via South Pass, and Forts Kearney, Laramie, and Bridger, was for many months the only service available for this entire region.

The next contract for getting mail into Utah was let in 1858 to John M. Hockaday of Missouri. Johnston's army was then advancing from winter quarters at Bridger toward the valley of Great Salt Lake, and the Government wanted mail oftener then once a month. In consideration of $190,000.00 annually which was to be paid in monthly installments, Hockaday agreed to put on a weekly mail. This route, which ran from St. Joseph to Salt Lake City, was later combined with a line that had been running from Salt Lake to Sacramento, thus making a continuous weekly route to and from California. For the combined route the Government paid $320,000.00 annually. Its actual yearly receipts were $5,142.03.

The discovery of gold in the vicinity of Denver in the summer of 1858 caused another wild excitement and a great rush which led to the establishment in the summer of 1859 of the Leavenworth and Pike's Peak Express, from the Missouri to Denver. As then traveled, this route was six hundred and eighty-seven miles in length. The line as operated by Russell, Majors, and Waddell, and that same year they took over Hockaday's business. As has already been stated, the new firm of Pony Express fame—called the Central Overland California and Pike's Peak Express Co.—consolidated the old California line, which had been run in two sections, East and West, with the Denver line. In addition to the Pony Express it carried on a big passenger and freighting business to and from Denver and California.

Turning now to the lines that were placed in commission farther South. The first overland stage between Santa Fe and Independence was started in May, 1849. This was also a monthly service, and by 1850 it was fully equipped with the famous Concord coaches, which vehicles were soon to be used on every overland route in the West. Within five years, this route, which was eight hundred fifty miles in length and followed the Santa Fe trail, now the route of the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe railroad, had attained great importance. The Government finally awarded it a yearly subsidy of $10,990.00, but as the trail had little or no military protection except at Fort Union, New Mexico, and for hundreds of miles was exposed to the attacks of prairie Indians, the contractors complained because of heavy losses and sought relief of the Post Office and War Departments. Finally they were released from their old contract and granted a new one paying $25,000.00 annually, but even then they fell behind $5,000.00 per year.

By special act passed August 3, 1854, Congress laid out a monthly mail route from Neosho, Missouri, to Albuquerque, New Mexico, with an annual subsidy of $17,000.00. Since the Mexican War this region had come to be of great commercial and military importance. A little later, in March 1855, the route was changed by the Government to run monthly from Independence and Kansas City, Missouri, to Stockton, California, via Albuquerque, and the contractors were awarded a yearly bonus of $80,000.00 This line was also a financial failure.

The early overland routes were granted large subsidies and the privilege of charging high rates for passengers and freight. To the casual observer it may seem strange that practically all these lines operated at a disastrous loss. It should be noted however, that they covered an immense territory, many portions of which were occupied by hostile Indians. It is no easy task to move military forces and supplies thousands of miles through a wilderness. Furthermore, the Indians were elusive and hard to find when sought by a considerable force. They usually managed to attack when and where they were least expected. Consequently, if protection were secured at all, it usually fell to the lot of the stage companies to police their own lines, which was expensive business. Often they waged, single-handed, Indian campaigns of considerable importance, and the frontiersmen whom they could assemble for such duty were sometimes more effective than the soldiers who were unfamiliar with the problems of Indian warfare.

Added to these difficulties were those incident to severe weather, deep snow, and dangerous streams, since regular highways and bridges were almost unknown in the regions traversed. Not to mention the handicap and expense which all these natural obstacles entailed, business on many lines was light, and revenues low.

News from Washington about the creation of the new territory of Utah— in September 1850—was not received in Salt Lake City until January 1851. The report reached Utah by messenger from California, having come around the continent by way of the Isthmus of Panama. The winters of 1851-52, and 1852-53 were frightfully severe and such expensive delays were not uncommon. The November mail of 1856 was compelled to winter in the mountains.

In the winter of 1856-57 no steady service could be maintained between Salt Lake City and Missouri on account of bad weather. Finally, after a long delay, the postmaster at Salt Lake City contracted with the local firm of Little, Hanks, and Co., to get a special mail to and from Independence. This was accomplished, but the ordeal required seventy-eight days, during which men and animals suffered terribly from cold and hunger. The firm received $1,500.00 for its trouble. The Salt Lake route returned to the Government a yearly income of only $5,000.00.

The route from Independence to Stockton, which cost Uncle Sam $80,000.00 a year, collected in nine months only $1,255.00 in postal revenues, whereupon it was abolished July 1st, 1859.

By the close of 1859 there were at least six different mail routes across the continent from the Missouri to the Pacific Coast. They were costing the Government a total of $2,184,696.00 and returning $339,747.34. The most expensive of these lines was the New York and New Orleans Steamship Company route, which ran semi-monthly from New York to San Francisco via Panama. This service cost $738,250.00 annually and brought in $229,979.69. While the steamship people did not have the frontier dangers to confront them, they were operating over a roundabout course, several thousand miles in extent, and the volume of their postal business was simply inadequate to meet the expense of maintaining their business[36].

The steamer schedule was about four weeks in either direction, and the rapidly increasing population of California soon demanded, in the early fifties, a faster and more frequent service. Agitation to that end was thus started, and during the last days of Pierce's administration, in March 1857, the "Overland Mail" bill was passed by Congress and signed by the President. This act provided that the Postmaster-General should advertise for bids until June 30 following: "for the conveyance of the entire letter mail from such point on the Mississippi River as the contractors may select to San Francisco, Cal., for six years, at a cost not exceeding $300,000 per annum for semi-monthly, $450,000 for weekly, or $600,000 for semi-weekly service to be performed semi-monthly, weekly, or semi-weekly at the option of the Postmaster-General." The specifications also stipulated a twenty-five day schedule, good coaches, and four-horse teams.

Bids were opened July 1, 1857. Nine were submitted, and most of them proposed starting from St. Louis, thence going overland in a southwesterly direction usually via Albuquerque. Only one bid proposed the more northerly Central route via Independence, Fort Laramie, and Salt Lake. The Postoffice Department was opposed to this trail, and its attitude had been confirmed by the troubles of winter travel in the past. In fact this route had been a failure for six consecutive winters, due to the deep snows of the high mountains which it crossed.

On July 2, 1857, the Postmaster General announced the acceptance of bid No. "12,587" which stipulated a forked route from St. Louis, Missouri and from Memphis, Tennessee, the lines converging at Little Rock, Arkansas. Thence the course was by way of Preston, Texas; or as nearly as might be found advisable, to the best point in crossing the Rio Grande above El Paso, and not far from Fort Filmore; thence along the new road then being opened and constructed by the Secretary of the Interior to Fort Yuma, California; thence through the best passes and along the best valleys for safe and expeditious staging to San Francisco. On September is following, a six year contract was let for this route. The successful firm at once became known as the "Butterfield Overland Mail Company." Among the firm members were John Butterfield, Wm. B. Dinsmore, D. N. Barney, Wm. G. Fargo and Hamilton Spencer. The extreme length of the route agreed upon from St. Louis to San Francisco was two thousand seven hundred and twenty-nine miles; the most southern point was six hundred miles south of South Pass on the old Salt Lake route. Because of the out-of-the-way southern course followed, two and one half days more than necessary were nominally-required in making the journey. Yet the postal authorities believed that this would be more than offset by the southerly course being to a great extent free from winter snows.

On September 15, 1858, after elaborate preparations, the overland mails started from San Francisco and St. Louis on the twenty-five day schedule —which was three days less than that of the water route. The postage rate was ten cents for each half ounce; the passenger fare was one hundred dollars in gold. The first trip was made in twenty-four days, and in each of the terminal cities big celebrations were held in honor of the event. And yet today, four splendid lines of railway cover this distance in about three days!

These stages—to use the west-bound route as an illustration— traveled in an elliptical course through Springfield, Missouri, and Fayetteville, Arkansas, to Van Buren, Arkansas, where the Memphis mail was received. Continuing in a southwesterly course, they passed through Indian Territory and the Choctaw Indian reserve—now Oklahoma - crossed the Red River at Calvert's Ferry, then on through Sherman, Fort Chadbourne and Fort Belknap, Texas, through Guadaloupe Pass to El Paso; thence up the Rio Grande River through the Mesilla Valley, and into western New Mexico—now Arizona to Tucson. Then the journey led up the Gila River to Arizona City, across the Mojave desert in Southern California and finally through the San Joaquin Valley to San Francisco.

Today a traveler could cover nearly the same route, leaving St. Louis over the Frisco Railroad, transferring to the Texas Pacific at Fort Worth, and taking the Southern Pacific at El Paso for the remainder of the trip.

As has been shown, the outbreak of the Civil War in the spring of 1861 made it necessary for the Federal Government to transfer this big and important route further north to get it beyond the latitude of the Confederacy. Hence the Southern route was formally abandoned[37] on March 12, 1861, and the equipment removed to the Central or Salt Lake trail where a daily service was inaugurated. About three months was necessary to move all the outfits and in July 1861, the first daily overland mail—running six times a week—was started between St. Joseph and Placerville, California, 1,920 miles by the way of Forts Kearney, Bridger, and Salt Lake City.

The Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad had been built into St. Joseph and was doing business by February 1859. For some time that city enjoyed the honor of being the eastern stage terminal; but within a year the railroad was extended to Atchison, about twenty miles down the stream. The latter place is situated on a bend of the river fourteen miles west of St. Joseph, and so the terminal honors soon passed to Atchison since its westerly location shortened the haul.

In transferring the Butterfield line from the Southern to the Central route, it was merged with the Central Overland California and Pike's Peak Express Company which already included the Leavenworth and Pike's Peak Express Company, under the leadership of General Bela M. Hughes. This line was known to the Government as the Central Overland California Route. As soon as the transfer was completed, through California stages were started on an eighteen day schedule a full week less time than had been required by the Butterfield route, and ten days less than that of the Panama steamers. This was the most famous of all the stage routes, and except for three interruptions, due to Indian outbreaks in 1862, 1864, and 1865, it did business continuously for several years.

Within a few months came another change of proprietorship, the route passing on a mortgage foreclosure into the hands of Benjamin Holladay, a famous stage line promoter, late in 1861. Early the following year Holladay reorganized the management under the name of the Overland Stage Line. This seems to have been what today is technically known as a holding company; for until the expiration of the old Butterfield contract in 1863[38], he allowed the business east of Salt Lake City to be carried on by the old C. O. C. P. P. Co.; west of Salt Lake, the new Overland Line allowed, or sublet the through traffic to a vigorous subsidiary, the Pioneer Stage Line[39].

Holladay was fortunate in securing a new mail contract for the Central route which he now controlled. For supplying a six day letter mail service from the Missouri to Placerville together with a way mail to and from Denver and Salt Lake City, he was paid $1,000,000 a year for the three years beginning July 1, 1861. At the expiration of this period he was to get $840,000.

In the meantime gold was discovered in Idaho and Montana, and Holladay, encouraged by his big subsidy from the Government, put stage lines into Virginia City, Montana, and Boise City, Idaho.

In 1866 the Butterfield Overland Despatch, an express and fast freight line, was started above the Smoky Hill route from Topeka and Leavenworth across Kansas to Denver. Within a short time this organization, mainly because of the heavy expense caused by Indian depredations, and was consolidated with the Holladay Company. Just prior to this transfer, Mr. Holladay received from the Colorado Territorial legislature a charter for the "Holladay Overland Mail and Express Company," which was the full and formal name of the new concern. This corporation now owned and controlled stage lines aggregating thirty-three hundred miles. It brought the service up to the highest point of efficiency and used only the best animals and vehicles it was possible to obtain.

In addition to his federal mail bonus, Holladay had the following rates for passenger traffic in force:

In 1863, from Atchison to Denver $75.00

In 1863, from Atchison to Salt Lake City $150.00

In 1863, from Atchison to Placerville $225.00

In 1865, on account of the rise of gold and the depreciation of currency, these rates were increased; the fare from the Missouri River to Denver was changed to $175.00; to Salt Lake $350.00. The California rate varied from $400.00 to $500.00. A year later the fare to Virginia City, Montana, was fixed at $350.00 and the rate to Salt Lake City reduced to $225.00.

These high rates and Indian dangers did not seem to check the desire on the part of the public to make the overland trip. Stages were almost always crowded, and it was usually necessary for one to apply for reservations several days in advance.

Late in the year 1866, Holladay's entire properties[40] were purchased by Wells Fargo and Co. This was a new concern, recently chartered by Colorado, which had been quietly gaining power. Within a short time it had exclusive control of practically all the stage, express, and freighting business in the West and this business it held.

Meanwhile the overland stage and freight lines were rapidly shortening on account of the building of the Pacific railroads, and the terminals of the through routes became merely the temporary ends of the fast growing railway lines. By the early autumn of 1866, the Kansas Pacific had reached Junction City, Kansas, and the Union Pacific was at Fort Kearney, Nebraska. The golden era of the overland stage business was from 1858 to 1866. After that, the old through routes were but fragments "between the tracks" of the Central Pacific and Union Pacific roads which were building East and West toward each other.

Wells Fargo Co., however, clung to these fragments until the lines met on May 10th, 1869, and a continuous transcontinental railroad was completed. Then they turned their attention to organizing mountain stage and express lines in the railroadless regions of the West,— some of which still exist. And they also turned their energies to the railway express business, in which capacity this great firm, the last of the old stage companies, is now known the world over.

[34] Authority for Early Mail Routes is Root and Connelley's Overland Stage to California.

[35] The reader will keep in mind that during the early days of California history, practically all communication between that locality and the East was carried on by steamship from New York via Panama.

[36] In June, 1860, Congress got into trouble with this company over postal compensations. The steamship company, it appears, thought its remuneration too low and it further protested that the diversion of mail traffic, due to the daily Overland Stage Line and the Pony Express would reduce its revenues still further. Congress finally adjourned without effecting a settlement, and the mail, which was far too heavy for the overland facilities to handle at that time, was piling up by the ton awaiting shipment. Matters were getting serious when Cornelius Vanderbilt came to the Government's relief and agreed to furnish steamer service until Congress assembled in March, 1861, provided the Federal authorities would assure him "a fair and adequate compensation." This agreement was effected and the affair settled as agreed. At the expiration of the period, the war and the growing importance of the overland route made steamship service by way of the Isthmus quite obsolete.

[37] The contractors are said to have been awarded $50,000 by the Government for their trouble in haying the agreement broken.

[38] See page 153. Holladay secured possession of the outfits of the C. O. C. P. P. Exp. Co., between the Missouri and Salt Lake City.

[39] The Pioneer Line which had recently come into power and prominence had gained possession of the equipment west of Salt Lake. This line was owned by Louis and Charles McLane. Louis McLane afterward became President of the Wells Fargo Express Co.

[40] Holladay is said to have received one million five hundred thousand dollars cash, and three hundred thousand dollars in express company stock for his interests. Besides these amounts which covered only the animals, rolling stock, stations, and incidental equipment, Wells Fargo and Co. had to pay full market value for all grain, hay and provisions along the line, amounting to nearly six hundred thousand dollars more.

When Edward Creighton completed the Pacific telegraph, and, on October 24, 1861, began sending messages; by wire from coast to coast, the California Pony Express formally went out of existence. For over three months since July 1, it had been paralleled by the daily overland stage; yet the great efficiency of the semi-weekly pony line in offering quick letter service won and retained its popularity to the very end of its career. And this was in spite of the fact that for several weeks before its discontinuance the pony men had ridden only between the ends of the fast building telegraph which was constructed in two divisions—from the Sierra Nevada Mountains and the Missouri River—at the same time, the lines meeting near the Great Salt Lake.

The people of the far West strongly protested against the elimination of the pony line service. Early in the winter of 1862 it became rumored— perhaps wildly—that the Committee on Finance in the House of Representatives had, for reasons of economy, stricken out the appropriation for the continuance of the daily stage. Whereupon the California legislature[41] addressed a set of joint resolutions to the state's delegation in Congress, imploring not only that the Daily Stage be retained, but that the Pony Express be reestablished. The stage was continued but the pony line was never restored.

As a financial venture the Pony Express failed completely. To be sure, its receipts were sometimes heavy, often aggregating one thousand dollars in a single day. But the expenses, on the other hand, were enormous. Although the line was so great a factor in the California crisis, and in assisting the Federal Government to retain the Pacific Coast, it was the irony of fate that Congress should never give any direct relief or financial assistance to the pony service. So completely was this organization neglected by the government, in so far as extending financial aid was concerned, that its financial failure, as foreseen by Messrs. Waddell and Majors, was certain from the beginning. The War Department did issue army revolvers and cartridges to the riders; and the Federal troops when available, could always be relied upon to protect the line. Yet it was generally left to the initiative and resourcefulness of the company to defend itself as best it could when most seriously menaced by Indians. The apparent apathy regarding this valuable branch of the postal service can of course be partially excused from the fact that the Civil War was in 1861 absorbing all the energies which the Government could summon to its command. And the war, furthermore, was playing havoc with our national finances and piling up a tremendous national debt, which made the extension of pecuniary relief to quasi-private operations of this kind, no matter how useful they were, a remote possibility.

That the stage lines received the assistance they did, under such circumstances, is to be wondered at. Yet it must be borne in mind that at the outset much of the political support necessary to secure appropriations for overland mail routes was derived from southern congressmen who were anxious for routes of communication with the West coast, especially if such routes ran through the Southwest and linked the cotton-growing states with California.

At the very beginning, it cost about one hundred thousand dollars to equip the Pony Express line in those days a very considerable outlay of capital for a private corporation. Besides the purchase of more than four hundred high grade horses, it cost large sums of money to build and equip stations at intervals of every ten or twelve miles throughout the long route. The wages of eighty riders and about four hundred station men, not to mention a score of Division Superintendents was a large item.

Most of the grain used along the line between St. Joseph and Salt Lake City was purchased in Iowa and Missouri and shipped in wagons at a freight rate of from ten cents to twenty cents a pound. Grain and food stuffs for use between Salt Lake City and the Sierras were usually bought in Utah and hauled from two hundred to seven hundred miles to the respective stations. Hay, gathered wherever wild grasses could be found and cured, often had to be freighted hundreds of miles.

The operating expenses of the line aggregated about thirty thousand dollars a month, which would alone have insured a deficit as the monthly income never equaled that amount.

A conspicuous bill of expense which helped to bankrupt the enterprise was for protection against the savages. While this should have been furnished by the Government or the local state or territorial militia, it was the fate of the Company to bear the brunt of one of the worst Indian outbreaks of that decade.

Early in 1860, shortly after the Pony Express was started, the Pah-Utes, mention of whom has already been made, began hostilities under their renowned chieftain Old Winnemucca. The uprising spread; soon the Bannocks and Shoshones espoused the cause of the Utes, and the entire territory of Nevada, Eastern California and Oregon was aflame with Indian revolt. Besides devastating many white settlements wherever they found them, the Indians destroyed nearly every pony station between California and Salt Lake, murdered numbers of employes, and ran off scores of horses. For several weeks the service was paralyzed, and had it been in the hands of faint-hearted men it would have been ended then and there.

The climax came with the defeat and massacre of Major Ormsby's force of about fifty men by the Utes at the battle of Pyramid Lake in western Nevada. Help was finally sent in from a distance, and before the first of June, eight hundred men, including three hundred regulars and a large number of California and Nevada volunteers, had taken the field. This formidable campaign finally served the double purpose of protecting the Pony Express and stage line and in subduing the Indians in a primitive and effective manner. Order was restored and the express service resumed on June 19. Desultory outbreaks, of course, continued to menace the line and all forms of transportation for months afterwards.

During this campaign, the local officers and employes of the express gave valiant service. It was remarkable that they could restore the line so quickly as they did. The total expense of this war to the Company was $75,000, caused by ruined and stolen property and outlays for military supplies incidental to the equipment of volunteers.

This onslaught, coming so soon after the enterprise had begun, and when there was already so little encouragement that the line would ever pay out financially, must have disheartened less courageous men than Russell, Majors and Waddell and their associates. It is to their everlasting credit that this group of men possessed the perseverance and patriotic determination to continue the enterprise, even at a certain loss, and in spite of Federal neglect, until the telegraph made it possible to dispense with the fleet pony rider. Not only did they stick bravely to their task of supplying a wonderful mail service to the country, but they even improved their service, increasing it from a weekly to a semi-weekly route, immediately after the disastrous raids of June, 1860. Nor did they hesitate at the instigation of the Government a little later to reduce their postal rates from five dollars to one dollar a half ounce.

This condensed statement shows the approximate deficit which the business incurred:

Total ................................................ $700,000

The receipts are said to have been about $500,000 leaving a debit balance of $200,000. That the Company changed hands in 1861 is not surprising.

While the Pony Express failed in a financial way; it had served the country faithfully and well. It had aided an imperiled Government, helped to tranquilize and retain to the Union a giant commonwealth, and it had shown the practicability of building a transcontinental railroad, and keeping it open for traffic regardless of winter snows. All this Pony Express did and more. It marked the supreme triumph of American spirit, of God-fearing, man-defying American pluck and determination— qualities which have always characterized the winning of the West.

[41] Senate Documents.

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Agricultural Literacy Curriculum Matrix

Lesson plan, grade levels, type of companion resource, content area standards, agricultural literacy outcomes, common core, horse and rider: the pony express (grades 6-8), grade level.

Students investigate the importance of the Pony Express to the settlement and expansion of the American West by mapping Pony Express stations.  Grades 6-8

Estimated Time

Materials needed.

• The Cowboy's Horse

Supporting Question 1: What was the purpose of the Pony Express?

• Pony Express Poster
• The Surprisingly Short History of the Pony Express
• Pony Express Timeline Slideshow
• Unlined 8-1/2 x 11 paper, 1 per student
• Colored pencils or crayons

Supporting Question 2: What challenges did the Pony Express riders face?

• Pony Express Recruiting Poster, 1860
• Pony Express Station Map  (Use Chrome browser for this Google Earth map)
• Pony Express Stations Activity Sheet , 2 per student

Supporting Question 3: Which horse breeds were selected for the Pony Express and why?

• Pony Express Horse Breeds Cards
• Unusual Heroes: American Mustang
• Meet the Morgan
• Thoroughbred Horse Characteristics

horsepower: a unit used to measure the power of engines

Pony Express: mail route between Missouri and California (1860-61)

telegraph: a system for transmitting messages from a distance along a wire, especially one creating signals by making and breaking an electrical connection

Did You Know?

• Lifting 33,000 pounds up 1 foot in 1 minute
• Lifting 1 pound up 33,000 feet in 1 minute
• Lifting 1,000 pounds up 33 feet in 1 minute
• Lifting 1,000 pounds up 330 feet in 10 minutes
• Lifting 100 pounds up 33 feet in 6 seconds
• Since speed was its main goal, there was a weight limit for Pony Express riders. Most were small, wiry men who weighed between 100 and 125 pounds—roughly the same size as a modern horse-racing jockey. 2
• Ordinary people almost never used the Pony Express because the price of the service was so high. In the early days, a half-ounce of mail cost $5, the equivalent of $130 today. The service was mainly used to deliver newspaper reports, government dispatches, and business documents, most of which were printed on thin tissue paper to keep costs down. 2

Background Agricultural Connections

The Role of Horses in the Settlement and Expansion of the American West

Horses played an important role in the settlement and expansion of the American West. These hardy animals were the primary mode of transportation. Horses and mules were also used extensively on farms, in mines and forests, and later in building railroads and roads that were eventually used by trains and automobiles. The term horsepower is a reminder of a horse's ability to perform hard work day after day in a variety of conditions.

The Pony Express depended on fast horses and was an important piece of the history of the American West. The Pony Express was a mail delivery service founded, owned, and operated by the freighting firm of William H. Russell, Alexander Majors, and William B. Waddell. 3  It was very different from how we receive mail today. Beginning in 1860, young men on horseback carried letters from Missouri to California as fast as they could ride. Riding in the Pony Express across the western United States was very dangerous for the horses and the riders. Many of the men who rode in the Express were orphans or didn't have parents to worry about their safety.

The Pony Express trail went through eight present-day states (some of the states had not yet entered the Union at the time of the Pony Express)—Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, and California. Before the telegraph, this mail relay system was the most direct and practical means of east-west communication. 4  

Between 400-500 horses were used by the Pony Express for mail delivery. Horses were selected for swiftness and endurance. On the eastern end of the Pony Express route, the horses were usually selected from US Calvary units and included Morgans and Thoroughbreds. In the west, mustangs were used to navigate the harsh terrain. 5 During the 80-100 mile route, a Pony Express rider would change horses 8 to 10 times. The horses were ridden quickly between stations at a fast trot or canter, around 10-15 miles per hour. Sometimes the horses were galloped at speeds up to 25 miles per hour. 5 The Pony Express had 190 stations. At each relay station, tired horses were exchanged for a fresh horse. Each station had a corral and barn. A keeper and stablehand were responsible for having a rested horse saddled and ready when a rider arrived. Home stations housed the riders between trips. 4

The Pony Express generally provided excellent service, covering the 1,966-mile one-way distance in 10 days or less. It was the quickest form of mail delivery at that time, but was very expensive—nearly $5 to send a letter. At its peak, the service employed 80 riders and 400 horses. In October 1861, the Pacific Telegraph line, joining Carson City, Nevada to St. Joseph, Missouri, was completed, and messages could be relayed almost instantaneously. The Pony Express became obsolete overnight. In the short life of the Pony Express, only 18 months, 37,753 letters were delivered and only one mail pouch was lost.

Compelling Question: What was the importance of the Pony Express to the settlement and expansion of the American West?

• Explain to the students that the period between 1829-1870, when settlers moved to the American West, is known as westward expansion.
• Ask the class to consider what animals they think were most useful to the settlers.

• Horses were used as a main mode of transportation.
• Horses performed farm duties, such as pulling plows and gathering cattle.
• Horses were used to pull wagons.
• Explain to the students that they will be investigating another important service horses provided during westward expansion—The Pony Express.
• On a whiteboard or chart paper display the question, "What was the importance of the Pony Express to the settlement and expansion of the American West?"

Explore and Explain

Supporting Question 1: What was the purpose of the Pony Express?

• Explain to the students that they will investigate the question, "What was the purpose of the Pony Express?" to better understand the importance of the Pony Express to the settlement and expansion of the American West.
• Project the Pony Express Poster and ask the students, "What information does the poster provide about the Pony Express?"

• Before the Pony Express, what was the quickest way to send a letter from Missouri to California?  (stagecoach)  How long did it take?  (3-4 weeks)
• How long did it take for the Pony Express to deliver a letter from Missouri to California?  (10 days)
• How long did the Pony Express last?  (almost 19 months)
• What replaced the Pony Express?  (the telegraph)

• January 1860:  The quickest way to send a letter from Missouri to California was by stagecoach.
• April 3, 1860:  The first Pony Express letter left Missouri.
• April 14, 1860: The first Pony Express letter arrived in California.
• October 24, 1861:  The first telegraph message was sent.
• October 26, 1861:  The Pony Express ended.
• Provide each student with an unlined piece of paper, scissors, and colored paper or crayons. Use the Pony Express Timeline slideshow to model how to create a foldable timeline.
• Allow time for the students to complete their timelines.
• Revisit the question, "What was the purpose of the Pony Express?"  (The Pony Express was a solution for sending mail between the East and West faster. Before the Pony Express, the quickest way to send a letter from Missouri to California was by stagecoach, which took 25 days. The Pony Express could complete the delivery in 10 days.)
• Explain to the students that they will investigate the question, "What challenges did the Pony Express riders face?"
• Show the students the Pony Express Recruiting Poster, 1860 .
• Ask the students to consider the unique challenges of riding a horse as a Pony Express rider. 
• Explain to the students that they are going to use a satellite imagery map to determine the topography of the Pony Express stations and explore what it may have been like to pass through these areas. Each student will need access to a computer (students can be paired if technology is limited), or the map can be projected and completed as a class activity. 
• Provide each student or group a link to the  Pony Express Station Map  (use Chrome browser for this Google Earth map). Explain to the students that this map shows the locations of 149 stations. At each relay station, a tired horse was exchanged for a fresh horse. Each station had a corral and barn. A keeper and stablehand were responsible for having a rested horse saddled and ready when a rider arrived. Home stations housed the riders between trips.
• Explain that the Pony Express trail went through eight present-day states (some of the states had not yet entered the Union at the time of the Pony Express)—Missouri (1821) and California (1850) had already entered the Union. Kansas (1861) entered while the Pony Express was active, and Nevada (1864), Nebraska (1867), Colorado (1876), Wyoming (1890), and Utah (1896) entered the Union after the Pony Express ceased service.
• Have the students choose two stations, click on the pins and read the information, and identify any landmarks, streams, roads, forests, mountains, or other indicating features of the landscape.
• Emphasize that the climate varies greatly along the Pony Express trail. Climates can be affected by latitude, elevation, and distance from the ocean. In general, the climates along the Pony Express trail can be grouped as steppe, desert, and mountain. The steppe climate is temperate with warm to hot summers and cool to very cold winters and favors the growth of grasses and shrubs. Deserts are defined by very low levels of precipitation. Mountain climates receive relatively high levels of precipitation and have very cold winters and cool summers.
• Have the students complete the Pony Express Station Activity Sheet for their chosen locations.
• As a class, discuss some of the possible challenges horses, riders, and station keepers may have had at the different station locations.
• Revisit the question, "What challenges did the Pony Express riders face?"  (lack of water, extreme temperatures, thieves, steep mountain ranges, lack of populated areas, dangerous wildlife, exhaustion)

Supporting Question 3: Which horse breeds were selected for the Pony Express and why? 

• Ask the students what characteristics they think a horse would need to be a good choice for the Pony Express.
• Explain to the students that they will investigate the question, "Which horse breeds were selected for the Pony Express and why?"
• Organize the class into small groups. Provide each group with a Pony Express Horse Breed Card . 
• Have the groups share some of the characteristics they noted with the class. Discuss reasons why these horse breeds might have been selected for the Pony Express.
• Revisit the question, "Which horse breeds were selected for the Pony Express and why?"  (Mustangs, Morgans, and Thoroughbreds were selected because of their strength, speed, endurance, energy, intelligence, bravery, and ability to be trained.)

Summative Performance Task

Using evidence from historical sources, construct an argument (e.g., essay, project, video production, portfolio, detailed outline, poster) that addresses the compelling question, "What was the importance of the Pony Express to the settlement and expansion of the American West?"

Taking Informed Action

• Understand:  Identify other forms of communication that are widely used today (e.g., email, telephone, text messaging, social media).
• Assess:  Examine the advantages and disadvantages of each method.
• Act:  Write a letter to a friend or family member about the benefits of modern-day forms of communication and related challenges.
• https://auto.howstuffworks.com/horsepower.htm
• https://www.history.com/news/10-things-you-may-not-know-about-the-pony-express
• https://nationalponyexpress.org/historic-pony-express-trail/founders/
• https://www.nps.gov/poex/index.htm
• https://www.nps.gov/poex/planyourvisit/upload/National-Park-Service-Large-Print-Text-of-Pony-Express-Brochure-508.pdf
• https://www.asanet.org/sites/default/files/savvy/documents/students/docs/FINAL%20C3%20Fact%20Sheet%209-13-13-1.pdf

Pony Express Station Map:

• https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/poex/hrs/hrs6a.htm
• https://www.legendsofamerica.com/pony-express-division-three/#wyoming
• http://twainsgeography.com/content/cottonwood-springs-station
• https://bscottholmes.com/content/deer-creek-station-wyoming-pony-express
• https://expeditionutah.com/featured-trails/pony-express-trail/wyoming-pony-express-stations/

Acknowledgements

Pony Express Horse Breeds Cards  Photo Credits:

• "Wild Mustang horses"   by  Carol M Highsmith  is marked with CC0 1.0
• By Ealdgyth -  Own work ,  CC BY-SA 3.0
• By Laura Behning -  Silver Morgan ,  CC BY 2.0
• Morgan Horses
• Thoroughbred Horses

Recommended Companion Resources

• Black Storm Comin'
• Frontier House
• Growing a Nation Multimedia Timeline
• Immigration, Migration, and the Industrial Revolution
• Off Like the Wind! The First Ride of the Pony Express
• The Sweetwater Run: The Story of Buffalo Bill Cody and the Pony Express
• They're Off! The Story of the Pony Express
• Whatever Happened to the Pony Express?
• You Wouldn't Want to be a Pony Express Rider!

Debra Spielmaker & Lynn Wallin

Organization

National Center for Agricultural Literacy

Culture, Society, Economy & Geography

• Highlight the interaction and significance of state historical and current agricultural events on governmental and economic developments (e.g., the building of railroads, the taxation of goods, etc.) (T5.6-8.f)

Education Content Standards

Social studies - history (history).

NCSS 8 (Grades 6-8): Science, Technology, and Society

• Objective 5    Science and technology have changed peoples' perceptions of the social and natural world, as well as their relationship to the land, economy and trade, their concept of security, and their major daily activities.

History Era 4 Standard 2E (Grades 6-8): The settlement of the West.

• Objective 1    Explore the lure of the West and the reality of life on the frontier.

Common Core Connections

Anchor standards: writing.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.W.4 Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.

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Buffalo Bill and the Pony Express: Fame, Truth and Inventing the West

Buffalo Bill Cody was just 14 years old, so the story goes, when he made his world-famous ride for the Pony Express. Leaving Red Buttes on the North Platte River near present-day Casper, Wyo., he galloped 76 miles west to Three Crossings on the Sweetwater River. His route took him along what we now call the Oregon/California/Mormon Trail. There was a station—at least a rough cabin and a horse corral—along the road every 12 miles or so. At each station, Buffalo Bill would have jumped off his sweaty horse and onto a fresh one.

As he dismounted, he drew the mochila —the leather saddle cover with special pockets for the mail—from the saddle, and threw it over the saddle of the horse the wrangler brought up. This happened in a matter of seconds. There was no time to lose.

The Pony Express began in the spring of 1860 and lasted for 19 months. Its purpose was to get the U.S. Mail across the country as fast as possible. California, a state since 1850, was filling up with white people. The forces that soon would lead to civil war were pulling the nation apart. If the United States was going to hold together, there had to be fast, reliable communication between the West Coast and the centers of power in the East.

When he arrived at Three Crossings, the story goes on, Buffalo Bill found that Miller, the rider who was to take over for him, had been killed the night before in a drunken brawl.

“I did not hesitate for a moment to undertake an extra ride of 85 miles to Rocky Ridge, and I arrived at the latter place on time,” Buffalo Bill remembered many years later. Rocky Ridge was near South Pass. There, another rider would have picked up the westbound mail young Bill delivered. But the eastbound mail needed a carrier, too, to take it back the way he had just come. Bill volunteered, again. When he got back to Three Crossings, the same man was, of course, still dead, and so Bill again transferred the mochila and galloped back to Red Buttes. The entire distance, supposedly, was 322 miles.

All in all, it was a thrilling ride, made by a valiant boy who was a great horseman all his life. By the time he was 50, in fact, Buffalo Bill was the most famous man in America. His Pony Express ride was one of the reasons for his stardom.

But Bill had things mixed up. For one thing, Three Crossings and Rocky Ridge are only 25 miles apart, not 85. For a second thing, much more important, he never did make the famous ride. In fact, William F. Cody never rode for the Pony Express at all.

Young Will Cody

Young Will Cody was born in 1846 into a middle-class family on the Iowa frontier. After moving to Kansas in the 1850s, the family was thrust into poverty by the violence that then was leading up to the Civil War. Will Cody’s father, Isaac, was a surveyor, a founder of towns, a real-estate investor and a locator of land claims. During a dispute at a political meeting, a pro-slavery sympathizer stabbed him. Isaac Cody never recovered entirely from his wounds and died three years later. Young Will, meanwhile, had to find work to help support his mother and sisters.

When he was just 11 years old he took a job carrying messages on horseback for the freighting firm of Majors and Russell. He rode from the company’s offices in the town of Leavenworth to the telegraph office at Fort Leavenworth, three miles away.

Majors and Russell soon became Russell, Majors and Waddell, the largest transportation company in the West, which owned stagecoaches, thousands of freight wagons and tens of thousands of horses, oxen and mules to pull them, as well as a network of stations, corrals and employees across the West. This was the company that started the Pony Express system in 1860. Because young Will had worked for them briefly when he was 11, it may not have seemed to him such a stretch later to claim he had in fact ridden for the Pony Express when he was 14.

Will Cody’s real teenage years were troubling, not thrilling. When Congress made Kansas a territory in 1854, lawmakers left it up to the people there to decide whether to allow slavery. Armed men poured in. Some supported slavery, some opposed it. Elections were often violent. For a time, “bleeding Kansas,” as it was called, had two territorial legislatures. One supported slavery, one opposed it and each claimed to be the legal, rightful lawmaking body of the territory.

During the late 1850s, Will Cody did take jobs driving horses and wagons to places as far away as Fort Laramie and Denver. During the 19 months of 1860 and 1861, when the Pony Express was a going concern, he was in school in Leavenworth. He could not have been riding back and forth across what’s now central Wyoming at the same time, on the Sweetwater Division of the Pony Express.

A bloody border war

The Civil War broke out nationwide in April 1861. Sometime in 1862 young Will, consumed by a desire to avenge his father’s death, joined the Kansas Redlegs, an anti-slavery militia. These men and boys were not regular soldiers. They were unpaid and lived only on what they could steal, according to Louis Warren’s 2005 book, Buffalo Bill’s America, source of most of the biographical material in this article. Mostly the Redlegs stole horses and burned farms. More so even than other militias in Kansas and Missouri, they were criminals. They paid little attention to whether the families whose farms they burned were pro- or antislavery, or pro- or anti-union. Young Will Cody rode with them for about a year and a half.

Later in the war, he joined a regular Kansas regiment of the Union Army, and his soldiering became more respectable. After the war, he worked in western Kansas for a meat contractor that provided food for crews building the Kansas Pacific Railroad across the state. His job was to kill buffalo. He became known as Buffalo Bill, one of several hunters on the plains with that nickname at the time. He also became friends with a man who held various police jobs in the towns of western Kansas—James Butler Hickok, better known as Wild Bill. Hickok became suddenly famous in 1867, when a reporter wrote an article about him in Harper’s Weekly , a national magazine.

Soon, both Bills were the heroes of so-called dime novels. Authors of these cheaply made, pulp-paper books used Hickok’s and Cody’s real names but made up their thrilling adventures. Part of the fun for the readers was separating fact from fiction—guessing what was true in the stories and what wasn’t.

Cody understood this. By the early 1870s, Hickok, Cody, a friend named Texas Jack Omohundro, and Jack’s Italian-born wife, Giuseppina Morlacchi, were appearing together during the winters in stage plays around the West. Many of these they wrote themselves. The plays were full of scrapes, escapes, daring rides, fights, rescues, noble heroes and evil villains—the same kind of stuff that thrilled the dime-novel readers.

At the same time, the Indian wars on the plains were escalating. The U.S. Army always needed expert help to find its Indian enemies. Most of this work was done by other Indians and by mixed-race men. They were generally fluent at least in English and their mothers’ Indian languages, which made them useful as interpreters. But because of their race, the white officers were never entirely comfortable around them.

Cody was smart and friendly. The officers liked him because of this, because he liked to drink whiskey and tell stories and because he was white. But Cody also was comfortable around Indians in a way that most white officers were not. When it came time to chase Indian enemies, Cody stuck close to the Indian scouts and stayed out ahead of the troops. When the enemy was found, Cody could take the credit for the discovery.

Soon the officers were praising him in their official reports and in their conversations with newspaper reporters. And they passed his name along to rich men looking for a guide for hunting trips. When Gen. Philip Sheridan arranged for Grand Duke Alexis, son of the Czar of Russia, to come hunt buffalo in 1872, he made sure his favorite officer, George A. Custer, was along on the trip, and that Cody was the guide. At Sheridan’s suggestion, Cody persuaded Spotted Tail, chief of the Brule Lakotas, to visit the hunting camp in western Nebraska with a number of warriors and their families. To entertain the bigwigs, the Indians staged large dances and killed buffalo with bows and arrows from horseback. Custer and the duke were the stars of the event, but the newspapers noticed Cody, too: “He was seated on a spanking charger,” one columnist wrote, “and with his long hair and spangled buckskin suit he appeared in his true character of one feared and beloved by all for miles around.”

Cody was learning a lot about fame. He continued his double life, appearing in plays in the winter and scouting for the Army in the summers. He took part in a few skirmishes in the Indian wars, and they became part of his plays. Eventually, too, he wore his stage costumes when he went out on campaign. A few weeks after Custer’s defeat and death on the Little Bighorn in 1876, Cody was scouting with the 5th Cavalry in western Nebraska.

He was wearing a red shirt with billowing sleeves and silver-trimmed, black velvet trousers when he encountered a Cheyenne warrior named Yellow Hair. In the skirmish Cody killed him and scalped him on the spot. He sent Yellow Hair’s scalp, warbonnet, shield and weapons home to his wife, Louisa, by then living in Rochester, N.Y., where it was displayed in a store window. Newspapers covered the story. The following winter he toured with a new play, “The Red Right Hand; or, Buffalo Bill’s First Scalp for Custer,” implying that Cody’s was the first act of real revenge after the Custer fight.

In 1879, when he was 33 years old, Cody published his autobiography. The book smoothed the stories of his early life, and expanded his stock-driving jobs, supposed Pony Express service and Indian skirmishes into dramas of frontier nerve, pluck and progress. About this time, with the Indian wars on the plains all but over, with the buffalo nearly gone and the plains filling up with cattle, Cody must have realized that the demand for his scouting skills would only continue to shrink. But still, America was hungry for the other half of Cody’s skills—his skills in show business.

Buffalo Bill’s Wild West

In 1883, Cody and a partner named William "Doc" Carver put together a traveling show that was part pageant, part circus, part rodeo, part parade and part huge, open-air drama. It was built out of the same thrilling dime-novel and stage-play episodes Cody now knew as well as the episodes of his own life.

Versions of this show, known as Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, ran for more than 30 years, from 1883 to 1916. All over North America and Europe, audiences loved it. In the earlier years, Cody found the most efficient way to make money was to park the show in a single spot near a large city—on Staten Island across the harbor from New York, for example, or in a 30-acre field outside Paris—and let the crowds come to him. In later years, after the show became well known, the production had to travel constantly to find audiences still new enough to want to pay to attend.

The show featured mounted Indians attacking a stagecoach or attacking a wagon train, and Indians attacking and burning a settler’s cabin, with the settlers rescued at the last minute by a band of mounted men led by Buffalo Bill. The company included as many as 650 people in the largest years—cowboys, Indians, buffalo soldiers, sharpshooters, trick riders and trick ropers, as well as cooks, wranglers, animal trainers and all the laborers needed to set up, take down and move the show.

Indians played themselves. In 1885, they included Sitting Bull, victor of the Little Bighorn. Other well-known chiefs and warriors took part over the years, too, among them Spotted Tail, Red Shirt and Standing Bear. The show even featured a pretend buffalo hunt.

Thanks to Buffalo Bill, all these events became central to America’s ideas—and the world's ideas—about how the West was settled. For decades after Cody’s death in 1917, they appeared and reappear still in Western novels and especially in Western movies. Year after year, and decade after decade, the show seemed thrillingly real to its audiences. “Down to its smallest details, the show is genuine,” Mark Twain, no stranger to the West, wrote to Cody in an unsolicited fan letter in 1884. The word “show” was never in the show’s actual title. It was called “Buffalo Bill’s Wild West,” as though people could depend on it as the genuine article.

And year after year, decade after decade, the opening act was the one many found most thrilling of all: the Pony Express. A rider galloped at full speed to the grandstand and reined his pony back onto its haunches, front feet pawing the air. The rider leapt to the ground, lifted the mochila onto the next horse and was off again at a full gallop. The crowd was left breathless. Then people burst into cheers and applause.

In their luxurious, 10-in by 7-inch printed programs, audience members could read all about Buffalo Bill’s adventures. What did it matter if they were true or not? They seemed true. Cody’s genius lay in offering his audience what it needed to hear.

“Somehow,” writes Texas novelist Larry McMurtry, “Cody succeeded in taking a very few elements of western life—Indians, buffalo, stagecoach and his own superbly mounted self—and created an illusion that successfully stood for a reality that had been almost wholly different.”

In the end, those realities caught up with the star of the spectacle. Cody’s debts were so large that he lost his show in 1913. He toured with other shows through 1916, but died broke, at his sister’s house in Denver, in 1917.

His legacy, however, is very much alive. Promoters in Wyoming and the West have since the turn of the last century used techniques that Cody taught the world. Cheyenne’s annual Frontier Days rodeo, still continuing today, was founded in 1897 partly with Cody’s Wild West in mind. “Let’s get up an old times day of some sort, we will call it ‘Frontier Day,’ Cheyenne Leader Editor E.A. Slack wrote that year. “We will get all the old timers together, have the remnant of the cow punchers come in with a bunch of wild horses, get out the old stage coaches, and some Indians, etc., and we will have a lively time of it!”

By the 1920s and 1930s, dime novels had given way to western movies. Tourists were driving regularly to Wyoming to see Yellowstone Park—and cowboys. Articles in the Cody Enterprise urged locals to dress western to supply the visitors with what they’d come to see, especially during the week of the Cody Stampede: “Get on the red shirt and top boots and help put ‘er on Wild. On June 1 st the localities will be urged to don their eight-gallon hats and buckskin vests and ‘go western’ for the summer.”

That promotional tradition remains as strong as ever in Wyoming. “Roam Free,” the Wyoming Office of Tourism proclaims today at the top of its website. A large part of the West people come to roam—the imagined part, the part they most want to see—is the West that Buffalo Bill began showing us more than 125 years ago, when he let the world believe he really did make those thrilling rides for the Pony Express, right across central Wyoming.

Primary Sources

• Buffalo Bill. The Life of Hon. William F. Cody, Known as Buffalo Bill, the Famous Hunter, Scout, and Guide: an Autobiography. Hartford, Conn.: Frank E. Bliss, 1879. Republished in a facsimile edition, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1978. Cody’s account of his supposed experiences with the Pony Express are on pages 90-92 and 103-125.
• Sherwood, Elmer. Buffalo Bill and the Pony Express . Racine, Wis.: Whitman Publishing, 1940. Accessed Aug. 21, 2015, at http://www.kellscraft.com/BuffaloBill/BuffaloBillcontentpage.html . A children’s book, and a great example of how the story gets retold.

Secondary Sources

• Gray, John S. “Fact Versus Fiction in the Kansas Boyhood of Buffalo Bill.” Kansas History vol. 8, no. 1 (Spring 1985): 2-20, accessed Sept. 4, 2015 at https://www.kshs.org/p/kansas-history-spring-1985/15208 . Some scholars had long been skeptical of Buffalo Bill’s Pony Express account, but Gray, in this highly detailed and thoughtful article, was the first to show that W. F. Cody never rode for the Pony Express at all.
• Hedren, Paul L. “The Contradictory Legacy of Buffalo Bill Cody’s First Scalp for Custer.” : The Magazine of Western History, Spring 2005. Accessed Sept. 4, 2015 via jstor at http://www.jstor.org/stable/4520671?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents . This article is mostly about the art inspired over the years by Cody’s “duel” with Yellow Hair.
• McMurtry, Larry. The Colonel and Little Missie: Buffalo Bill, Annie Oakley, and the Beginnings of Superstardom in America . New York: Simon and Schuster, 2005. A short, readable book by a master novelist who is affectionately tolerant of the foibles of his subjects. The quote about a “reality that had been almost wholly different” is on p. 138.
• Warren, Louis S. Buffalo Bill’s America: William Cody and the Wild West Show . New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005. The first full-fledged biography of Cody in 45 years and among the best in print. Warren leans on Gray (see above) in his conclusion that Cody never rode with the Pony Express.

For Further Reading and Research

• The website of the Buffalo Bill Center of the West is excellent, packed with information and links of all kinds. The site’s biographical page on William F. Cody is especially useful, though we would disagree with its remark that “at 15, he reportedly rode for the Pony Express.” Reportedly—yes, but not in fact. Of special interest are two You Tube conversations posted on the website between Cody biographer Louis S. Warren and Center of the West Curator of Public History John Rumm. Find them at  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJxUSp72yx8 and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtxTlwXzj54 .
• 
For an unflattering, highly entertaining view of the Kansas Redlegs, watch the 1976 shoot-‘em-up The Outlaw Josey Wales , starring Clint Eastwood.
• The McCracken Research Library at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West maintains a rich storehouse of material related to Buffalo Bill’s Wild West—show programs, Cody’s correspondence, posters and much more.
• Sweetwater County Historical Museum. "The Pony Express," accessed April 15, 2020 at  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHyZerba1T4 . Despite its claim that Buffalo Bill was among the riders, this is an excellent, concise five-minute You Tube video on the history and geography of the Pony Express in what's now Wyoming, with particular attention to the route through Sweetwater County.

Illustrations

• The image of the cover of Buffalo Bill and the Pony Express is from Kellscraft.com . Used with thanks.
• The photos of W.F. Cody at age 11, Buffalo Bill in his show costume, 1887 and W.F. Cody horseback near Pahaska Teepee in 1913 are from the great online photo archive of the Buffalo Bill Museum and Grave in Colorado. Used with thanks.
• The photo of Buntline, Buffalo Bill, Giuseppina Morlacchi and Texas Jack Omohundro is from Wikipedia . Used with thanks.

UC Santa Cruz

Instant Messenger: The Pony Express, Media, and Modern Virtuality

• Corfield, Christina
• Advisor(s): Horne, Jennifer

This dissertation explores the power that messaging systems play in the symbolic structures of American identity by focusing on the legendary status of the Pony Express in film, literature, commemorative events, and historical site museums. In four chapters and two multi-dimensional installation artworks combining performance, painted sets, and digital viewers, I examine persistent myths surrounding modern American identity and American exceptionalism as articulated through technological development and communications infrastructures. Using a media archeological method to examine the idea of media as message bearers and organizational frameworks, this project engages with theorists of media and modernity from Walter Benjamin and Marshall McLuhan, to infrastructural theorist John Durham-Peters, as well as Lisa Gitelman and Jussi Parikka. Situating the Pony Express as a feature of an American cultural mythology that supports a wide array of twentieth and twenty-first century modes of conveyance, this project seeks to understand what is at stake with the mythological deployment of communications infrastructures past and present.

This is a project about the role of media in media history, and the role of absence and historical loss in shaping the underlying meaning of technologies of communication that are themselves portrayed as empire-building entities. Using a mixture of traditional archival methods (spanning rare materials, artifactual collections, official histories) and new media tools (digital code and videography) the dissertation brings questions of virtual communication into the present moment to ask the reader and viewer about the immediate context of our message delivery habitats.

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The pony express.

The Pony Express was the fastest way to get mail from California to the rest of the nation in the early 1860s. The exciting nature of the enterprise has earned the Pony Express a place in American folklore. Learn about the Pony Express in this text and answer multiple-choice and extended response questions based on the passage. Suggested reading level for this text: Grade 2-6.

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Welcome to Kansas!

Visit the beautiful rolling hills of northeast Kansas, and enjoy 139 miles of the Pony Express National Historic Trail.

NEWS & EVENTS

Re-ride late but mail was delivered.

Marysville’s Pony Express Barn and Museum was humming at dawn Saturday. Expectant riders, with families along to watch, prepared to, Continue Reading

Pony Express Museum gets grant

Marysville’s Pony Express Barn Museum received a $100,000 state grant   Read More….

History comes alive with Pony Express Re-Ride

A family tradition with historic roots continued last week with the annual re-ride effort coordinated by the National Pony Express, Continue Reading

Pony Express Re-ride retraces historic trail from Missouri to Pacific coast

MARYSVILLE, KS — It’s a tradition working to keep a part of western U.S. history alive. See More……

2024 Kansas Re-Ride Schedule

**for 2024 national re-ride schedule — click here**, ** for printable 2024 kansas re-ride schedule–click here **.

(Kansas Allotted Time:  19 Hours)

*All times in CDT*

LOCATION                          ARRIVES                             DEPARTS St. Joe Bridge                       3:30 p.m.                              3:45 p.m. *Horton                             8:45 p.m.                              9:00 p.m. HWY 75 (Sac & Fox)               10:45 p.m.                             11:00 p.m. *Seneca Museum                    2:00 a.m.                              2:15 a.m. Koch & Co West, east lot            2:30 a.m.                              2:45 a.m.

Summit (HWY 99)                   5:30 a.m.                              5:45 a.m. *Marysville                          9:00 a.m.                              9:15 a.m. *Hollenberg Station                11:30 a.m.                             11:45 a.m. Nebraska State Line                                                        12:30 p.m. *Pony Express riders will stop at these stations a few minutes giving people time to meet and visit with the riders.

Kansas Division Officers

• Lyle Ladner - President 2458 Navajo Rd Frankfort, Ks. 66427 Cell phone 785-799-5538 E-mail [email protected]
• Dan Pralle - Vice President 422 N. Wullf St Hanover, Ks. 66945 Cell phone 402-239-4310 E-mail [email protected]
• Amanda Svoboda - Secretary & Treasurer 1782 11th Rd. Marysville, Ks. 66508 Cell phone 785-268-1159 E-mail [email protected]

Scholarships

Each year the Pony Express Riders of Kansas sponsor a scholarship essay contest for seniors graduating from high schools in Washington, Marshall, Nemaha, Brown, and Doniphan Counties in Kansas. The twenty one available scholarships are as follows: First Place $2,000.00; two $1,750.00; three $1,250.00; four $1000.00; five $750.00; and six $500.00 scholarships.

Materials are made available to seniors at their high school. Applications should be returned by March 15th. Completed applications are to be mailed to: Kansas Division of NPEA, Lyle Ladner, 2458 Navajo Rd, Frankfort, KS 66427 or E-mail to [email protected] (Call 785-799-5538 for additional information)

I, _______________ do hereby swear, before the great and living God, that during my engagement as a member of the National Pony Express Association Re-Ride, I will under no circumstances use profane language, that I will drink no intoxicating liquors, that I will not quarrel or fight with any other member of the Association, and that in every respect, I will conduct myself honestly, be faithful to my duties and so direct all my acts as to win the confidence of my associates.

So help me God.

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In Memoriam

Patsy Ann Hubbard

1933 – 2019

Patsy was involved with the Kansas Division of the NPEA from its beginning.

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The Last Ride of the Pony Express

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"Spellbinding" (Douglas Preston) and "completely fascinating" (Elizabeth Letts), cowboy and journalist Will Grant takes us on an epic and authentic horseback journey into the modern West on an adventure of a lifetime.   The Last Ride of the Pony Express boldly illuminates both our mythic fascination with the Pony Express, and how its spirit continues to this day. ​    The Pony Express was a fast-horse frontier mail service that spanned the American West— the high, dry, and undeniably lonesome part of North America. While in operation during the 1860s, it carried letter mail on a blistering ten-day schedule between Missouri and San Francisco, running through a vast and mostly uninhabited wilderness. It covered a massive distance—akin to running horses between Madrid and Moscow— and to this day, the Pony Express is irrefutably the greatest display of American horsemanship to ever color the pages of a history book.   Though the Pony Express has enjoyed a lot of traction over the years, among the authors that have attempted to encapsulate it, none have ever ridden it themselves. While most scholars would look for answers inside a library, Will Grant looks for his between the ears of a horse. Inspired by the likes of Mark Twain, Sir Richard Burton, and Horace Greeley, all of whom traveled throughout the developing West, Will Grant returned to his roots: he would ride the trail himself with his two horses, Chicken Fry and Badger, from one end to the other.   Will Grant captures the spirit of the west in a way that few writers have.  Along with rich encounters with the ranchers, farmers, historians, and businessmen who populate the trail, his exploits on horseback offer an intimate portrait of how the West has evolved from the rough and tumble 19th century to the present, and it’s written with such intimacy that you’ll feel as though you’re riding right alongside of him. Along the way, he fights off wild mustangs wanting to steal his horses in Utah, camps with Peruvian sheepherders in the mountains, and even spends three days riding under the Top Gun aviator school in Nevada, which are just a handful of extraordinary tales Will Grant unveils as he makes his way across the treacherous and, at times, thrilling landscape of the known and unknown American West.   The Last Ride of the Pony Express is a uniquely tenacious tale of adventure by a native son of the West who defies most modern conveniences to compass some two thousand miles on horseback. The result is an unforgettable narrative that will forever change how you see the West, the Pony Express, and America as a whole.  

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• Release date: June 6, 2023

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Biography & Autobiography History Travel Nonfiction

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Kindle Book Release date: June 6, 2023

OverDrive Read ISBN: 9780316422307 Release date: June 6, 2023

EPUB ebook ISBN: 9780316422307 File size: 22031 KB Release date: June 6, 2023

• Will Grant - Author
• Formats Kindle Book OverDrive Read EPUB ebook
• Languages English

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Zadie Smith’s ‘New Yorker’ essay on US campus protests: It is out-of-touch and misleading

She ignores her own privilege and speaks, almost solely, to the most ill-informed parts of a protesting crowd.

Zadie Smith is a little confused in her latest essay, ‘Shibboleth’, out in The New Yorker this weekend, arguing that language and rhetoric must be used carefully when protesting Israel’s actions in Gaza. The piece reminds me of Margaret Atwood’s oft-quoted rebuttal to cancel culture, “If you’re speaking truth to power, make sure it’s the truth”, or, less charitably, the hundreds of words spoken at White House press briefings when humanitarian aid in Gaza is discussed without mentioning Israel.

The essay raises some decent points about protest rhetoric. She asks protestors to be considerate of the Jewish student who walks past an encampment on the Columbia campus, is called a Zionist, and then asked to stay away. She needles into the student activist’s insecurity of having to say what everyone else is saying, fast, to avoid ostracisation and accusations of ignorance/inaction. She even calls out Israel-sympathisers and their use of terms like “surgical strikes” and “controlled military operations” when the bombs’ drop zones have been anything but. She harkens to the anti-Vietnam War protests on the same campus and salutes the students’ willingness to “place their body between the enemy’s gears” in both instances.

But that’s about it. The piece’s timing, the recent reportage of its publisher, the ideas discussed, and the author’s ignorance of her own privilege and influence make it sound needlessly contrarian and out-of-touch.

What’s wrong with the timing and publisher? The New Yorker rubs shoulders with The New York Times , both panned widely for using the passive voice in headlines about Palestinian deaths and starvation, instead of an active voice that would clearly assign blame to Israel. ‘Gaza Is Starving’, read the headline of a New Yorker piece in January; how about “Israel is starving Gaza”? Smith doesn’t mention the latest US funding of Israeli artillery only two weeks ago, to the tune of $17.28 billion, or the Columbia president’s statements to the US Congress about “failing to protect Jewish students” on campus without a word of support for the protests themselves.

Then there’s what she does mention. Smith opens her piece with a semantic discussion about how “a politics unmoored… from ethical philosophy” is dangerous. Then, in over 200 words, she narrates how she refused to commit an arrestable offence during a climate protest years ago because it would make travel to the United States difficult: “I could not give up my relationship with New York City for the future of the planet.” Then she raps old people for dismissing student activism. Then she (falsely) argues that pro-ceasefire activists don’t care about Hamas’s hostages (ironically, using the passive voice: “There is a dangerous rigidity… in the idea that concern for the dreadful situation of the hostages is somehow in opposition to… the demand for a ceasefire.” Who’s saying this, exactly? One Twitter activist?) Then she conflates the slogan “From the River to the Sea” with one calling for Gaza’s Jewish residents to “vanish”. Finally, she spends 500 words saying that words like “Hamas” and “Zionist” have “unbelievably labyrinthine histories”.

Her own best counter-argument for this: “The objection may be raised… that I am behaving like a novelist… making some rarefied point about language and rhetoric while people commit bloody murder. This would normally be my own view, but, in the case of Israel/Palestine, language and rhetoric are and always have been weapons of mass destruction .”

True, they have been. But by choosing to write this essay as a world-famous writer in a world-famous publication, Smith ignores her own privilege and considerable influence. She speaks, almost solely, to the most ill-informed parts of a protesting crowd, forgetting that her position has already been advocated for in mainstream media, college campuses and history books. She spends 2,300-odd words arguing for nuance and then dismisses them all by calling her essay “a little stream of words” that “have no more weight than an ear of corn”. If so, should this space not have gone to activists and journalists closer to the movement, like journalist Motaz Azaiza or comedian Bassem Youssef? Why pretend your views exist in a media vacuum that does not displace others’ and take up real estate on social media feeds and is distributed to doorsteps worldwide?

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• Rashid Khan’s music was a healing and illuminating force

I understand the need for nuance. It is the fiction writer’s bread-and-butter, the tactic by which the form is distinguished from journalism by accessing a space of amorality, ambiguity and contradicting ideologies. But a fiction writer is also a citizen. In India, that’s the role novelist Arundhati Roy has often assumed in her political essays, facing both bouquets and brickbats. Even when you doubt her politics, you don’t doubt her conviction. But Smith’s essay? You just wonder why it was written.

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40 Years Ago

Abdu Rozik, of Bigg Boss 16 fame, announced his engagement to fiancé Amira on social media. The couple's love story and upcoming July wedding, attended by Salman Khan, were shared by the singer. Amira, studying business administration in Sharjah, was praised by Abdu for her beauty and their strong chemistry.

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Erie's Pony Express owners ready to retire. They're looking for someone to take over

Since 2002, Dave and Terry Grab have owned and operated a retail pack and ship business unique in the Erie area, at 1903 W. Eighth St.

"We have a contract with the (U.S. Postal Service) that lets us ship at the same cost as you would at a post office," Dave Grab, 63, said. "We also have contracts with Fed Ex and UPS, so customers have choices and can compare costs."

He said he can also tell customers which service will give them the best price and service, and he doesn't have to charge extra to make a profit.

Pony Express offers to pack anything for shipping. "Anything, anywhere, we can get it there," is the shop's motto, according to Terry Grab, 66.

They specialize in custom shipping options for special items such as artwork.

"They offer great service," according to longtime customer Herman Weber, retired lawyer from Weber Murphy Fox. "I'm a painter (now) and I send my work to shows and galleries and as gifts. (Pony Express personnel) always know the best method. I trust them and like them. I'll be sad to see them go."

The couple has owned Pony Express for 22 years and are hoping to retire soon, so they are selling the business. Grab said the asking price depends on whether the buyer wants the business and the property, or any combination, including financing options. Both Terry and Dave said they hope the next owner continues the services they offer, which also include a gift shop, rubber stamps, postage stamps, package recycling, money orders, personal mail boxes, lottery tickets, bill paying through Western Union, faxing, boxes, process mailing, printing, laminating, shredding and stocking office supplies.

"It's a neighborhood convenience," Weber said.

Packing, shipping since 1986

Pony Express was the first such pack-and-ship operation in the area when it opened in 1986, Grab said. In ensuing years, others have popped up, including Mail Boxes Etc., which was purchased by UPS, and other similar operations, but the Pony Express keeps chugging along, frequently with long lines around the 2,000-square-foot operation.

"We've expanded it quite a bit," Dave Grab said. "Nobody else in Erie has contracts with Fed Ex, UPS and the (the postal service)."

Dave Grab said he still enjoys working, and solving complex shipping problems, but the two have family including grandchildren they'd like to visit in Oregon, Ireland and Cranberry, Pennsylvania, and some traveling of their own to do before they get older.

They're also the only pack-and-ship place that offers visits with Harley, the Grabs' dog, who likes to sit on the far left portion of the counter and greet customers as they come in.

"He's probably more well-known in Erie than we are," Dave Grab said. "He's even on our website."

"This is really a hands-on business," Terry Grab said. "And we just want a little more flexibility."

Contact Jennie Geisler at [email protected] . Or at 814-870-1885 .

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