Manifest Destiny - Pony Express

The Pony Express

When the United States was consolidated east of the Mississippi, communications between the states were fairly swift. But after the California gold rush drew many thousands of Americans westward, helping California become a state in 1850, it became extremely difficult to exchange mail and information with business associates, friends, and relatives who lived on the other side of the continent. There was simply no efficient way to get mail from one side of the country to the other. The railroads reached no farther than the Missouri River, and the telegraph lines stretched only to St. Joseph, Missouri. Ships that traveled around the tip of South America took six months to reach their destinations, though travelers who took the shortcut across the Isthmus of Panama might shorten the journey by a month. Overland travelers took nearly as long. Most people entrusted their mail to strangers, who promised that they would pass the mail on when they reached the other coast. By 1857, the Butterfield Overland Mail Company won a contract to carry U.S. mail on its stagecoaches traveling the overland trails, but the trip still took about twenty-five days. A better solution was needed.

By 1860, the country bubbled with the turmoil of the coming civil war. To keep the growing population of California abreast of the news, the country needed an express mail service. After a conversation with California senator William M. Gwin, William Russell persuaded his partners, Alexander Majors and William Waddell, to start a delivery service they called the Pony Express. Russell's ambitious plan was to deliver mail between Sacramento, California, and St. Joseph, Missouri, in ten days. Russell's partners were reluctant because they could see no way to make a profit from such an enterprise. Nevertheless, they agreed and quickly established a plan for the service to succeed.

In order for the Pony Express to deliver mail in ten days, it needed the fastest horses and the most committed riders. To beat the clock, riders would have to run their horses at top speed. But the horses tired quickly and had to be changed frequently. To supply fresh horses, the company built relay stations every 10 to 20 miles along the nearly 2,000-mile route. The riders would spend about two minutes at a station, just long enough to throw the mochila (the leather saddlebag that held the mail) over the back of a fresh horse and ride off again.

Willing to risk death daily

The route was difficult and dangerous. The riders spent long hours in the saddle and were sometimes threatened by hostile Indians, horse thieves, or unbearable heat or cold. Russell, Majors, and Waddell knew the kind of men they needed. Their help-wanted announcements read: "Wanted—young, skinny, wiry fellows not over eighteen. Must be expert riders, willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred. Wages $25 per week." From the hundreds who applied, eighty were hired. William F. Cody (1846–1917) was the most famous of the riders. Cody joined the Pony Express when he was fourteen and holds the record for the longest ride without a break for sleep (384 miles). Cody later became famous as Buffalo Bill Cody, the leader of a traveling Wild West show.

Pony Express riders were admired for their skill and bravery. Many became local heroes when they reached towns. But even those who never saw a Pony Express rider were enthralled by the idea of men who would risk everything to speed the mail across the country. Writer Mark Twain (1835–1910) captured the public's fascination with the riders in Roughing It, which he wrote while traveling west by stagecoach:

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 any moment, and would see him in broad daylight. Presently the driver exclaims:

"Here he comes!"

... [T]he flutter of hoofs comes faintly to the ear

another instant and 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 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.

The End of the Pony Express

After just eighteen months (18) of faithful service, the Pony Express became obsolete. With the transcontinental telegraph line completed on October 24, 1861, messages could reach the West Coast in minutes. But the Pony Express had captured the hearts of Americans and lives on today in the legends of the men who would brave any perils to deliver the mail. Through harsh conditions, the Pony Express completed 308 runs and delivered 34,753 letters, losing one rider and one mochila along the way. An article at the time in the Sacramento Daily Bee summed up the public sentiment toward the orders to discontinue the service:

Farewell and forever, thou staunch, wilderness-overcoming, swift-footed messenger.

For the good thou hast done we praise thee; and, having run thy race, and accomplished all that was hoped for

and expected, we can part with thy services without regret, because, and only because, in the progress

of thy age, in the advance of science and by the enterprise of capital, thou hast been superseded by a more ::subtle, active, but no more faithful, public servant.

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