The Pony Express

In 1849, W.M. Gwin, a senator from the new state of California, and his companion B.F. Ficklin of the Kansas City freight firm Russell, Majors and Waddell discussed the poor communication between the government and its growing union while traveling on horseback from San Francisco to Washington City, and on that trip conceived a weekly mail express between St. Louis and San Francisco that would take ten days. After returning to Washington City, Gwin introduced a bill in Congress proposing the idea, but it was set aside. At high noon on April 3, 1860, with private funding from Ficklin’s Kansas City employer, Colonel Alexander Majors, the first Pony Express rider left the station in St. Joseph bound for the West Coast. Covering the nearly 2,000-mile route required relay teams to travel 250 miles each day, with ponies riding up to 20 miles each at around 12 miles per hour between relay stations, where new riders and ponies waited and the two-sided saddle pouch filled with mail was transferred in only a second or two. Along the way, riders faced perils including Indian attacks and snowstorms that hid the road signs riders relied on to guide the way. The service carried mail across the country for 15 years before being replaced by the telegraph, and during that era the riders and their ponies never once failed to complete the treacherous transcontinental trip in ten days.

Kansas City, Missouri · United States