A short-lived experiment, the Pony Express—which delivered letters and important political and economic news between the eastern states and California in the early 1860s—was soon replaced by the telegraph. (Library of Congress)
A nineteenth-century privately funded mail service connecting the eastern and middle portions of the United States to the frontier region of the far West.
The Pony Express operated from April 3, 1860, to October 24, 1861, and covered 1,966 miles from Saint Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, California. Cross-country mail sent by stagecoach or by boat by way of South America or the Horn of Africa could take up two months. The horse relay of the Pony Express finished the journey in just ten days.
This rapid communication helped to bind the settlers of the distant western states to the rest of the country at a time of impending civil war. The Pony Express delivered Abraham Lincoln’s first inaugural address of March 4, 1860, to the California legislature in seven days and seventeen hours, a record for cross-country mail delivery.
The practice of using horses to ferry mail dates to antiquity. The Pony Express was unique in that it was a commercial enterprise and not a military or state-sponsored endeavor. It was the creation of Russell, Majors and Waddell, a Leavenworth, Kansas, freighting firm that supplied the funding and managed the operation through a subsidiary, the Central Overland California and Pike’s Peak Express Company. There is debate over who originated the concept, but William H. Russell is given the official credit. His partners were Alexander Majors and William B. Waddell.
The origins of the Pony Express began with the California gold rush of 1849. By 1860, 500,000 Americans lived west of the Rocky Mountains and 300,000 of those were in California. At that time, the railroad and telegraph blanketed the country from the East to the Midwest but did not yet extend all the way across the country. Only stagecoach or horse rider could cover the remaining distance.
Russell proposed the Pony Express to the federal government as an alternative to the Butterfield (or Oxbow) Route, which passed through southern states on its way to California. Although the Butterfield was the preferred route of the U.S. postal service, the expectation of civil war sent postal officials searching for other prospects.
Russell reached an understanding with Senator William Gwinn of the Senate Committee on Post Offices and Post Roads that if his firm could accomplish a horse relay, then the government would award it a federal mail contract.
The company opted for the Central Overland, a route that cut straight across the country, through Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, and California. It was a daring gamble. The terrain could be brutal, particularly for a lone rider. The geography included the arid Utah territory, and the freezing Sierra Nevada mountain range where the Donner party became stranded during the winter of 1846–1847. Pony riders and stationmasters would have to contend with American Indian attacks and horse thieves.
A short-lived experiment, the Pony Express—which delivered letters and important political and economic news between the eastern states and California in the early 1860s—was soon replaced by the telegraph. (Library of Congress)
In January 1860, the freighting firm hired Benjamin Ficklin to manage the logistics. Ficklin built and staffed 190 relay stations, bought 500 horses, and hired more than 50 horsemen willing to risk their lives to deliver the mail.
Letters and small parcels moving eastward would arrive by train at the station in Saint Joseph, Missouri, where a pony rider began the sprint westward. Another rider in California would do the honors for the eastward run. Pony riders covered an average of 250 miles a day. A rider would get a fresh horse every ten to fifteen miles. The mail sack, called a mochila, was passed from one rider to another approximately every fifty to seventy-five miles, depending on the difficulty of the ride.
Service was halted for four weeks after the Paiute War in the spring of 1860. During the war, 7 stations were burned, 150 horses were lost, and 16 men were killed at a cost of $75,000. The riders continued to deliver the mail during the rampage. One rider, “Pony Bob” Haslam, made a record ride of 380 miles in just 36 hours.
High operating costs and the success of the telegraph eventually drove the Pony Express out of business. Russell, Majors and Waddell filed for bankruptcy in January 1861 and turned its operations over to Benjamin Holladay, a competitor. He eventually sold his business to Wells Fargo and Company.
The last ride of the Pony Express went out on October 26, 1861. It completed 380 runs each way, covered more than 616,000 miles, and delivered 34,753 pieces of mail.
Ann Saccomano
See also: Communication; Railroads; Telegraph.
Settle, Raymond W., and Mary Lund. Saddles and Spurs: The Pony Express Saga. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1972.
Yancey, Diane. Life on the Pony Express. San Diego: Lucent, 2001.