Pony Express
NAME: The Pony Express.
NICKNAME/ALIAS:
DATE/PLACE OF INAUGURATION: 3rd April 1860, between St. Joseph, MO and Sacramento, CA.
DATE/PLACE OF TERMINATION: 24th October 1861, in Sacramento, CA
FIELD: Mail delivery.
SPONSORS: Russell, Majors and Waddell, a well-known freight company.
HISTORY: During the 1850s, many pioneers had travelled to the remote Western Frontier and were feeling cut off because news from back East took so long to reach them. This isolation led to a debate about which overland route should be used to carry mail between the Midwest frontier and California.
In 1857, a government contract was given to the Overland Mail Company to carry mail along a complicated route running from Missouri to Fort Smith, Arkansas, then southward through Texas, New Mexico and Arizona into Southern California, then north to San Francisco. The shortest time for mail delivery by this route was twenty-two days, hardly less than it took for the mail to arrive by steamer via the Gulf of Mexico and then across the Isthmus of Panama.
Californians didn’t understand why the much more direct trail that the pioneers had originally taken couldn’t be used. The argument against this route was that it would be cut off by severe weather conditions on the plains and mountain passes during extreme winters and summers.
William Gwin, Senator for California, supported the cause to find a more direct trail and talked to William H. Russell, of the freight company Russell, Majors and Waddell about possible solutions. Russell was interested in the prospect of a profitable mail contract and proposed that deliverymen could travel the route on horseback.
He set up a hundred and ninety way stations over a two thousand mile route, each about ten miles apart and his partner Major found a team of fast, lightweight riders riding Indian ponies. He bought five hundred mounts, and a team of eighty riders joined the payroll.
In addition, two hundred people maintained the stations, to keep horses tackled up ready for fast changes when riders came in. Special saddlery and fodder was provided and the estimated cost of equipping and establishing the line was around $100,000.
This Pony Express would deliver letters at a cost of five dollars a half ounce from Missouri to California, within ten days and the service was inaugurated on 3rd April 1860, between St. Joseph, MO and Sacramento, CA.
The route followed the well-known Oregon to California trail. Beginning at Saint Joseph, it went through Fort Kearny, Scotts Bluff, and Fort Laramie, then it followed the southern end of the Great Salt Lake by Fort Churchill, to Sacramento.
The weekly service was popular and soon began to run twice a week. Mail was wrapped in oiled silk to protect it from the weather, then placed in a mochila: a leather sheet with a hole that fitted over the saddle horn so that it could easily be lifted off onto the next horse. Four cantinas, made of hard leather, with the mail locked inside, were then attached to the swathe of the mochila, so the rider’s legs were between them.
Using this equipment, delay time was kept to a minimum, because when a rider reached one of the way stations, he could transfer his saddle and the mail to a fresh pony in just two minutes. Another advantage was that, if a pony collapsed, the rider could pick up the mochilla and continue on foot. After a certain distance, the rider would pass the mail to another rider. On average, each man covered between seventy-five and a hundred miles a day.
Express riders galloped at top speed day and night, summer and winter over dusty plains and dangerous mountain trails. Blizzards, cloudbursts and attacks by outlaws and Indians added to the rugged conditions but, during the eighteen months of its existence, the Pony Express failed to deliver on only one trip.
The most gruelling schedule that the Pony Express faced was in the winter of 1860. Despite terrible weather conditions, they maintained delivery times of thirteen days between the telegraph termini and seventeen to eighteen days between St. Joseph and San Francisco.
The fastest ever time was recorded when William ‘Billy’ Cates carried the news of President Abraham Lincoln’s election, in November 1860. It took six days to travel from Fort Kearny to Fort Churchill.
Billy Cates was good, but the most renowned rider with the Pony Express was William <a rider was> Cody*, better known as ‘Buffalo Bill.’ Another famous employee was Wild Bill Hickok.
After the outbreak of the Civil War, the Overland Mail Company, which ran a stagecoach service, was forced to abandon its usual overland route and transferred the service to the central route. In 1861, the government gave the company a further contract for a daily overland mail service and a twice weekly Pony Express along the central route.
Russell, Majors and Waddell were subcontracted to carry both pony and stage mail on the line eastward from Salt Lake City, and the Pony Express was then able to claim a government subsidy. Taking on the new contract was a bad move, because the financial arrangement with the Overland Mail Company, along with previous losses, forced Russell, Majors and Waddell into bankruptcy in the following year.
The Pony Express went out of business after the establishment of the telegraph link with California on 24th October 1861, which meant that its services were no longer required.
ASSESSMENT: The organization briefly made an impact on the opening up of the West.
EXTRA CONNECTIONS: The Pony Express finally evolved into <evolved into> American Express*.
ONELINER: Pony Express, short-lived Western mail delivery service
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Arthur Chapman, The Pony Express: the Record of a Romantic Adventure in Business, A L Burt Company, Publishers, New York/Chicago, 1932.