The Old West

The Pony Express Rides Again

by DIANA LAMBDIN MEYER

In this day of FedEx, Blackberrys, and cell phones, the idea of a message from Washington, D.C., to Sacramento, California, taking a month or more by boat via the tip of South America is hardly fathomable. It was an unacceptable situation in the 1850s as well, which is why the U.S. government contracted with a company out of St. Joseph, Missouri, to change the way the country communicated.

The best solution of the day was the horse and rider, and William H. Russell, William B. Waddell, and Alexander Majors knew it. The three entrepreneurs were pros in the supply and freight business, provisioning the Army, Mormons on their way to Utah, and later, hopefuls on their way to the gold fields. In 1860, they added to their freight-hauling empire, creating the Central Overland California & Pike’s Peak Express‚ otherwise known as the Pony Express. With the persuasive Russell acting as frontman, the three embarked on a historic undertaking to deliver mail by relaying lone riders cross-country‚ a method they believed would significantly reduce the more time-intensive and cumbersome stagecoach delivery.

For 18 months, the Pony Express was the fastest, most innovative and exciting form of communication in North America. Hardy young riders risked life and limb in the name of transporting a padlocked pouch of mail from where the rail line ended at the Missouri-Kansas border in northwest Missouri. They rode literally day and night, in segments up to 100 miles, covering the nearly 2,000 miles to Sacramento in an unequaled time of 10 days.

“We had orders on that first ride to do our level best,” rider George Washington Perkins reported. “My run on that record-breaking ride was 57 miles. I had to make it with just one horse and I made the run in mighty good time considering the distance, but I killed the poor horse in doing it.”

April 3, 2010, marks the 150th anniversary of the moment the first Pony Express rider left the stables in St. Joseph, crossing the Missouri River heading west and beginning what has become a legendary tale of American enterprise, courage, and fortitude. Johnny Fry (sometimes spelled Frey or Freye) is often said to have been that first rider; it might also have been Billy Richardson, Alex Carlyle, or Henry Wallace. The train delivering the mail was three hours late, so by the time that first rider, whoever he was, left St. Joe, it was 7:15 p.m. The sun had set at 6:46. The cheering crowds that had lined the streets for much of the day had dwindled, and the band had long since gone home.

When the rider had been loaded up with 49 letters and five personal telegrams, it was John Landis, designer of the special Pony Express mail pouch known by the Spanish word mochila, who gave the horse a slap on the hindquarters. Former mayor M. Jeff Thompson‚ he would later become a Civil War hero‚ fired the cannon to alert the ferry to be on the east side of the river. And so began that historic first ride to California from Missouri. The 10 days it took easily eclipsed the closest competition, the Butterfield Stage Company of St. Louis, which took an average of 25 days.

It’s been 150 years since the first relay riders saddled up to take mail from St. Joseph the rest of the way west. To celebrate the sesquicentennial of that first ride, mail carriers on horseback will depart as they did a century and a half ago as St. Joseph and all of Missouri celebrate their role in this legendary era of American history.

In March of 1860, ads appeared announcing the new mail service and looking for prospective riders. It wasn’t a job many could do. There was the weight issue: Riders had to be on the small side. There was the stamina issue: The riding was all out in all weather. And there was the danger issue: Riders had to be courageous‚ or maybe a little crazy. No one knows how those original ads read, but journalist John L. Considine improvised in the October 1923 issue of Sunset magazine in his article “Eleven Days to St. Joe”: “Wanted. Young, skinny, wiry fellows. Not over 18. Must be expert riders. Willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred.” Though the ad was a fabrication, the historical embellishment took hold, and the Pony Express became even more mythic in the American imagination.

Whatever attributes they possessed, for a year and a half, at any time of the day or night, as many as five Pony Express riders of the 80 on the company’s rolls were on horseback somewhere along the long trail. Located at 10-mile intervals were roughly 190 relay stations. Arriving with a spent horse at a station, a rider would procure a fresh one. Taking only the mail pouch, his revolver, and a replenished water sack with him, the rider sped off, leaving the station keeper and stock tender alone, stuck in the middle of nowhere. In fact, it was the station keepers and stock tenders who bore the brunt of the danger. Both Indians and white men knew that they had provisions and top-notch horses; isolated in their remote locations, they were sitting ducks. Unsurprisingly, a number were murdered, among them Ralph Lozier and John Applegate, who were killed by Indians at Dry Creek Station shortly after the Pony Express began service‚ a largely unsung ultimate sacrifice in the name of speed and security of the U.S. mail.

The riders’ sacrifices, on the other hand, are better-known. To reduce weight and increase speed, a Bible, a second gun of choice, and a horn originally used by the rider to alert the relay station of his approach went by the wayside. It came down to horse, rider, and the mail carried in the mochila. Thrown over the saddle, the mochila had four pouches‚ the two holding mail were padlocked‚ and was held in place by the rider’s weight.

As for the “ponies,” Majors had acquired more than 400 horses, paying upwards of $200 per horse, roughly $4,000 today. Although their pedigree is disputed, they were the best and fastest horses around, capable of outrunning almost any threat. Most were half-wild, and “native” horses were preferred. Averaging about 14¬Ω hands and less than 1,000 pounds, they carried about 165 pounds: 125 pounds of rider, 20 of mail, and 20 more of other material.

Horse and rider went at full gallop. Night and day‚ crossing mountains, rivers, and desert, through hostile Indian territory and without regard to blizzards, tornadoes, or brutal sun‚ they rode into the Wild West and into American history. For their effort, riders made $25 a week (the going rate for unskilled labor for a 12-hour-day week was $1).

There were more than a few remarkable rides and riders, among them “Pony Bob” Haslam, a tough young Englishman who would go on to work in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show. When Haslam found his replacement unwilling to hazard a ride with Paiute, Bannock, and Shoshone warriors rampaging in the area during the Pyramid Lake Indian War, he undertook what would become one of the longest and most harrowing Pony Express rides. After riding 190 miles without rest from Friday’s Station (present-day Lake Tahoe), Haslam grabbed eight-hours’ rest at Smith Creek Station then took the westbound mochila back along the same route, riding 380 miles in 36 hours. He missed an Indian attack by hours, warning one station tender and helping him get to safety.

Because the Pony Express operated only 18 months and because no one at the time thought what they were doing was all that remarkable or noteworthy, very few records were kept. The lack of documentation combined with embellished stories over the years‚ not to mention a few extra “facts” for good measure courtesy of Hollywood‚ makes for a lot of gray area when it comes to the Pony Express. Much of what is known and what can be seen of the Pony Express can be found in St. Joseph. A rough frontier town of nearly 9,000 in 1860, it was the last supply jumping-off point over the Missouri River toward the Wild West.

Now a busy, modern town of about 80,000, St. Joseph still has echoes of the bustling outpost it was when the last rider of a bankrupt Pony Express delivered mail on October 26, 1861. Though the company failed, historians and the people of St. Joseph hope to clarify the myth that the Pony Express was a failed enterprise. Against all odds‚ weather, accident, Indian raids‚ it did what it set out to do. But it did so at a cost that never could have been sustained.

Russell, Majors, and Waddell were nothing if not optimists. Going in to their Pony Express venture, their parent company had already lost nearly a half-million dollars ($9.2 million today) freighting supplies to the Army in Utah, where it was stationed to discipline the Mormons. Debt-strapped and hemorrhaging money from the outset, the Pony Express encountered financial losses throughout its operation, including a costly shutdown during the Paiute uprising and problems caused by the outbreak of the Civil War. Majors had plowed $100,000 ($2 million by today’s standards) in gold coin into outfitting the 78-week endeavor. Even the staggering cost of sending a letter‚ after Californians complained about what would now amount to $100 in postage, the price was cut to one-fifth of that amount‚ could not defray the company’s operating expenses. It had risked so much in the hopes that it would secure the support of the government once the company had proven itself‚ a gamble it lost.

Ultimately, the Pony Express was beaten not by finances but by technology. In 1860, the government got behind the building of the transcontinental telegraph. Two days after the line reached Carson City, Nevada, the Pony Express shut down.

The editors would like to thank Christopher Corbett for generously sharing his knowledge and helping to fact-check this story.

Issue: April 2010