WWWest-Online Development Blog

America’s a big place. Anyone who’s been there can tell you that. Even if you’re only looking at the area west of the Mississippi, you’ve still got quite a few miles between the Pacific and yourself. And if it seems big now, when we’ve got cars and planes to whisk us across it, imagine how vast it seemed 100 years ago. When people packed up and headed west, they did so with the knowledge that not only would they not see their friends and relatives for quite some time, they would not even be able to receive correspondence from them  frequently, as mail at the time was transported by boat or by stagecoaches, neither of which were particularly speedy. This problem became more pronounced as the drive westward progressed and settlements started popping out further and further west. To give you some idea of the “speed” of the mail carriers, mail from St. Louis took at least a month to reach San Francisco by boat. Sending it by stagecoach could shorten the trip by a few days, but the mail could still take up to 6 months to reach its destination (I’m stating Missouri as the starting point because it was the westernmost state reached by the railroad and telegraph lines at the time).

But it wasn’t just the citizens who wanted faster communication; the government also had great interest in a fast mail system. Near the middle of the 19th century, things were coming to a boil in the US, and civil war was a near certainty. Knowing this, the government needed to make sure that California and its newly discovered gold would side with the Union, which would have been very unlikely if there wasn’t even a fast and reliable method of communication in place.

A Horse is a Horse… and a Mail Carrier

And so, in January 1860, the Pony Express was founded by William H. Russell, Alexander Majors and William B. Waddell. On April 3rd, 1860, Johnny Fry (it’s worth noting that there is still some debate as to whether Fry was indeed the first rider) rode out of St. Josepth, Missouri and became the first Pony Express rider. Many young men signed up for the job. Even though it was a grueling and highly dangerous vocation, it was said to have been the dream of many a young man, to become a Pony Express rider.

So what was the Pony Express, really? The underlying concept of the Pony Express was to have a relay of riders and horses deliver a bundle of mail, instead of having it carried by the same people and transport throughout its entire route. Towards this end, dozens of stations were set up between Sacramento in California and St. Joseph, at intervals of 5-20 miles; these stations housed fresh mounts and relay riders. A rider would leave the home station on a fresh horse and ride to the next station, where he would leave his tired horse and mount a fresh one for the next leg of his journey. Every few stations, the rider would be replaced by a relief rider. This method of transporting the mail by horseback rather than stagecoach meant that the Pony Express could take shorter (though more difficult) routes across the west, and drastically cut down on the delivery time.

Post-Haste

And time was the issue of the day. Almost everything in the Pony Express was done with speed in mind. The horses they used were picked for their speed and stamina rather than their carrying capabilities. Morgans and Mustangs, California horses, Pintos and thoroughbreds; they were all small horses (hence the name, “Pony Express”) that could only manage a light rider, but they could quickly carry him across vast distances. They were saddled with a new type of saddle, specially designed for function and light weight. The riders, too, were picked with speed in mind: Pony Express riders were almost never large men (Mark Twain once said that they were “… usually a little bit of a man”). These slight men were outfitted with as little equipment as possible. At its inception, Pony Express riders carried a couple of revolvers, a knife and a rifle, in addition to a minimal load of equipment, which included a horn which they blew as they neared a station, to alert the station’s employees to ready a horse and perhaps a relief rider. As the months passed, this payload was gradually reduced until the riders only carried a single pistol with perhaps some extra ammunition. Weight was such an issue that even the pistol was usually a lightweight one. A rider’s main defense was his horse’s speed. The Pony Express carried its mochilas of mail across the west in no more than 10 days. Abraham Lincoln’s inaugural address was carried across the route in a record time of 7 days and 17 hours; nothing before the Pony Express came anywhere near such speed. This, along with many other communiques from the east, had a lot to do with California’s siding with the Union when the Civil War finally erupted, and with keeping it from joining the Confederacy as the war raged on.

The Pony Express was not only fast, but reliable, too. Only 2 accounts exist of mail getting lost along the way. But though it was an important establishment which made groundbreaking progress in its field, they Pony Express only lasted 19 months. The reason for this was simple: something better came along. Though the Pony Express knocked several weeks off the delivery time of a month or more, the telegraph lines could relay information across the US almost immediately. On October 24, 1861, the eastern and western telegraph lines of the US were joined in Salt Lake City, Utah, thus allowing almost instantaneous communication across the land. 2 days later, the Pony Express officially ended its operation.

The Memory Remains

Even though it existed less than two years, the Pony Express is an important part of the Old West, and an even bigger part of Western lore. In its day, the short delivery time provide by the Pony Express was nothing short of revolutionary. It also proved that a single, uninterrupted line of transportation and communication could be maintained across the west via the Central Route, and so set the groundwork for the transcontinental railroad: less than 10 years after the last ride, the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railways were joined in Utah. The Pony Express is still remembered today, both in lore and in more… solid ways. Statues commemorating the Express and its riders can be found in several states across its original route, and several museums were built along the route. And organizations such as the NPEA keep its memory alive, digging up and verifying ever more information about it (including reestablishing the trail) and even holding annual re-rides.

Kraz