Short Lived but Long Remembered

 

      From the time the Pony Express was founded, people admired the speed with which it delivered mail in the West. The service gained a stellar reputation, often bordering on mythical. Perhaps that’s why it shows up in numerous novels, even some set in times when the Pony Express was no longer in business.

     The Pony Express actually operated for only eighteen months, from April 3, 1860 to October 26, 1861, although service continued into November until all the mail in the agency’s possession on the closure date had been delivered.

     Before the telegraph and the transcontinental railroad, letters from the Midwest sent by stagecoach could take nearly a month to reach the west coast. If sent by ship, delivery could take several months. The Pony Express could carry mail from St. Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento, California in an average of ten days.                                              

Pony Express Route - Library of Congress

     In order to attain this speed of delivery, the founders of this service—William Russell, Alexander Majors, and William B. Waddell—established a series of nearly 200 stations, approximately ten miles apart, across the current states of Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, and California. A rider generally changed horses at every station along his 75-100 mile route to make sure the steeds were fresh and could travel as fast as possible. Although the service was called “Pony” Express, most of the mounts were actually horses. The preponderance of the approximately 400 horses involved in the enterprise were half-breed mustangs (referred to as “California horses”), Thoroughbreds and Morgans. 

     The main goal of the Pony Express was speed, so great pains were taken to keep the weight the horses had to carry to a minimum. Most riders were small, wiry and thin, weighing between 100 and 125 pounds. Their average age was about 20. Many teenagers, some as young as fourteen, were employed. To further minimize weight, they wore close-fitting clothes. It is unlikely that they wore wide-brimmed cowboy hats, even though riders were frequently depicted with them. At any given time, a total of approximately 80 riders could be on the route, including those going east and those going west. 

This logo illustrates the special saddlebags.

     Special bags called mochilas were designed to minimize weight and expedite horse and rider changes. The mochila had a leather cover that fit over the saddle with four padlocked pockets beneath it. The rider sat on the leather with a mail pouch on either side of each leg. This special saddlebag could carry a total of twenty pounds, which was a significant amount of mail since most of it was written on very thin paper.

     Pony Express riders were required to swear an oath to the company, in which they pledged in part: "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 employee 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." Riders who broke their oath risked being dismissed without pay.

     Co-founder Alexander Majors gave each rider a leather-bound Bible and asked that he keep it with him. Most likely, riders ignored him as the books would have added weight thus compromising the effort to maximize speed.   

via Wikimedia Commons

     Sending a letter via the Pony Express was an expensive proposition, another incentive for using thin paper. The company initially charged $5.00 per half-ounce for each item sent. (That is more than $130 in today’s money.) Even when the price was later reduced to $1.00 per half-ounce, the cost was still too high for ordinary people to afford. Most of the material transported by the riders was made up of government dispatches, business documents and time-sensitive newspaper reports.

     Despite the high prices they charged, the Pony Express was a financial disaster. According to the Smithsonian Postal Museum, the owners of the fastest mail carrying company in the country lost $30 for every letter they carried because they were not able to win a government mail contract. They had lost approximately $200,000 by the time the service ended, two days after Western Union completed the transcontinental telegraph line.

  Ann Markim

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New Release — Expressly Yours, Samantha (Cotillion Ball Saga Book 7) by Becky Lower

Wanted: Young, skinny, wiry fellows. Not over eighteen. Must be expert riders. Willing to face death daily. Orphans preferred. 

With the death of her Aunt Hilda, Samantha Hughes is desperate to find a way to escape her Uncle Jack. The wanted poster for Pony Express riders just may be her way to freedom—death would be preferable to what Uncle Jack has planned for her! But can she pose as a man long enough to reach her eighteenth birthday a few months away? 

Valerian Fitzpatrick is ready to be his own man—as a Pony Express rider! The weight of responsibility in the family business is not for him—a Pony Express rider will give him the freedom he craves. When he befriends fellow employee “Sam” Hughes, he figures out her secret, and friendship quickly turns to much more between them.

With Samantha still in terrible danger from her uncle, Val vows to protect her. But Samantha is determined to keep Val safe as well, and she’s on the run again. Can Val find her before it’s too late? And once he does, will he give up his life of freedom for the sake of Samantha’s love?

EXCERPT

     The ceremony at the cemetery was hardly long enough to be called a service. The minister quoted a Bible passage and said some nice things about her aunt, but her casket was lowered into the ground within a matter of minutes. Samantha hesitated at the gravesite, tossing a handful of earth on the crude casket as the graveyard worker pierced the mound of dirt beside the site with his shovel, and began filling the hole he had created the previous evening The scraping of a shovel in the dirt and the scent of freshly turned earth would forever remind her of Aunt Hilda.

     Jack wasted no time at the gravesite and hurried to the tavern with his pouch of coins.

     Samantha took the letter containing Aunt Hilda’s dying words to the post office. She would accomplish this final act for her aunt, however futile it may be, since she fully expected her aunt and her grandmother to meet at heaven’s door at the same time. And then she’d be off, leaving this small town, and Uncle Jack, behind. But she still didn’t have a clue where she might head, with little money and no means of transportation.

     A sign at the post office caught Samantha’s eye. She feigned disinterest as she snuck sidelong glances at the poster about the new Pony Express, reading one line at a time.

Wanted: Young, skinny, wiry fellows.

     She tore her glance from the sign and studied the customers queued up in front of her.

Another quick look.

Not over eighteen.

     She posted her letter and turned away from the window, catching the last of the poster’s message.

Must be expert riders. Willing to face death daily. Orphans preferred.

A FAST RIDE INTO HISTORY--THE PONY EXPRESS

"Wanted, young skinny, wiry fellows not over eighteen, must be expert riders willing to risk death daily, orphans preferred. Wages $25 a week.”

On April 3, 1860, the citizens of St. Joseph, Missouri, knowing something big was about to happen, gathered just after dark to witness an event never before attempted.

Major M. Jeff Thompson, who would soon leave St. Joseph to make a name for himself as a Confederate General, initiated the Pony Express with the following words:

"This is a great day in the history of St. Joseph. For more than a decade she has been the portal through which passed the wagon trains for the great west… Now she is to become the connecting link between the extremes of the continents… For the first time in the history of America, mail will go by an overland route from east to west… Citizens of St. Joseph, I bid you three cheers for the Pony Express - three cheers for the first overland passage of the United States Mail."

With that, the first rider, either Johnny Fry or Billie Richardson--historians can’t agree on which--galloped out of the barn and into history.

The first westbound trip was made in 9 days and 23 hours. A rider left simultaneously from Sacramento, California, and made the eastbound journey in 11 days and 12 hours. On average, the pony riders covered 250 miles in a 24-hour day.

The route of the Pony Express was 1840 miles of brutal riding: west out of St. Joseph, following the Oregon Trail through Kansas, up the Little Blue River to Fort Kearney, Nebraska, along the Platte River to Fort Laramie, Wyoming; then the Sweetwater River to Fort Caspar, Wyoming, through South Pass to Fort Bridger, Wyoming, on to Salt Lake City; across the Great Basin and Utah-Nevada Desert, skirting Lake Tahoe; then over the Sierra Nevada mountains into Sacramento, California.

Riding day and night, the Pony Express delivered the mail in less than 10 days. [The westbound trip took 11 ½ days-don’t ask me why.]

But that wasn’t the end of the line. Upon arrival in Sacramento, the mail was placed on a steamer and continued down the Sacramento River to San Francisco. In all, the mail traveled 1966 miles.

Delivery of the print version of Lincoln's inaugural address set a new record for delivery, crossing the west in slightly less than eight days.

The Pony Express service lasted only 18 months, ending on October 24, 1861, when the completion of the Pacific Telegraph line ended the need for its existence. But in that time, the less than 100 riders covered 650,000 miles on horseback and rode into a permanent place in the history of the American West. Though the route was extremely hazardous, only one carrier was killed and one bag of mail lost.

Exciting as it was, the Pony Express was a financial bust. And it was never a part of the U.S. Postal service, although the galloping Pony Express rider was the official symbol on every letter carrier's shoulder until the invention of Mr. Zip.

The most significant accomplishment of the Pony Express, besides keeping families in touch, was helping hold California - and its gold - for the Union at the start of the Civil War.

The Express was started by businessmen William H. Russell, William Bradford Waddell, and Alexander Majors, who were already in the freighting business and held government contracts for delivering army supplies in the West. Russell envisioned a similar contract for fast mail delivery. That contract never came about.

According to the Pony Express Museum website [ponyexpress.org], Russell, Majors and Waddell lost $500,000 on the Pony Express. Eventually, entrepreneur Ben Holladay bought what remained of the Pony Express and merged it with his Central Overland Stage Lines.

If you’re ever in St. Joseph, Missouri, just a few minutes north of Kansas City, be sure to stop in at the Pony Express Museum. St. Joseph was the terminus for the westbound trains, and the launching point of the Pony Express. The original structure used by The Pony Express, Pikes Peak Stables, still stands at 9th & Penn.

Within its walls you can hear a recreation of the countdown and release of the very first rider, complete with the cheers of the assembled crowd. You can wander through exhibits showing the gear a rider carried and the route they took. They have several original saddles on display, and even a typical Pony Express “station” - which was nothing more than a 10-foot by 8-foot log cabin with an open fireplace.

The museum also houses displays of period settlers’ wagons and other historical memorabilia. All in all, a nice way to spend an afternoon.

Tracy

The Pony Express in Stamps

As a retired rural letter carrier for the United States Postal Service, I feel a certain connection to the Pony Express riders of yester-yore. Although my “ride” was a right-hand drive surplus government jeep (later a RHD Subaru) instead of a horse, and my risk of being attacked came in the form of aggressive guard dogs instead of hostile Indians, I also rode many miles for long hours day after day to deliver the mail. I also developed a love for stamp artwork, although my personal collection is limited.

The Pony Express began operations on April 3, 1860 and ended eighteen months later in October, 1861. It was organized by the owners of Russell, Majors & Waddell, the overland transportation and communications service started in 1854 to supply military posts. They knew the Pony Express would be of short duration due to the rapid expansion of railroad and telegraph services, but it turns out it ended because the parent company was failing.

Pony Express marker by Fort Laramie, WY

Between losses on the Pony Express and their other shipping services, Russell, Majors & Waddell went bankrupt in 1862.

However in the months leading up to the start of the Pony Express, California was still a fairly new state in the Union that was separated by the railroads east of the Mississippi that connected to this nation’s capital by miles of sparsely-inhabited territories. The Civil War loomed on the horizon, many residents in both California and Oregon had come from the South and advocated for slavery, and, although the big placer gold strikes in California were all but over, there was a lot of wealth in that state that the Union did not want to fall to Southern interests. The Union (with its military forts) needed a speedy means of communication to keep tabs on what was happening on both sides of the continent.

  Based on the advertisement for riders, Russell, Majors & Waddell understood this was a high-risk job. Still, it attracted 80 riders including fifteen year-old William “Buffalo Bill” Cody. 

 

At the time they were hired, each rider was given a Bible and required to sign a pledge promising not to swear, drink alcohol, or fight with other employees.

      

The riders carried the mail in a four-pocket pack called a mochilla. It fit over the saddle and was quickly transferred to one horse to the next. The letters inside were wrapped in oil silk to protect them from moisture.

The route started in St. Joseph, Missouri and roughly followed the California/Oregon trail traveled by the freighting operation until it arrived in Sacramento. From there, mail was sent by steamer to San Francisco. Each rider rode approximately 75 miles per day between 184 stations set up into five districts. The mail was able to travel this entire route in ten days.

 

Robyn Echols writes using the pen name, Zina Abbott. Visit the Zina Abbott's Amazon Author Page HERE.

Big Meadows Valentine, the first novella in the Eastern Sierra Brides 1884 series is available on Amazon Kindle HERE and on Nook HERE . The second novella in the Eastern Sierra Brides 1884 series, A Resurrected Heart, is available on Amazon Kindle HERE and on Nook HERE.