The Pony Express

The Pony Express
By Maggie

Today you probably get mail that has traveled on an airplane, train, or truck. Mail today usually takes only about two to three days to be delivered. E-mail only takes minutes. But in the past, the mail system was very different.

Imagine you live in New York, and you want to send a letter to your friend in California. Years ago, it would take at least three weeks for your friend to get that letter. That's why people started something in the United States called the Pony Express.

The Wells Fargo Company started the Pony Express in 1859. The idea behind the Pony Express was that they would use fast horses to deliver mail across the United States. But they had a lot to do before it would work. They bought 600 of the fastest, toughest horses they could find. They also had to find people to ride the horses that would carry the mail. They looked for riders who were skinny, not over 110 pounds (50 kilograms), so the horses wouldn't get tired of carrying them. These riders were chosen for their bravery, shooting ability, horsemanship, and knowledge of Indian attacks. They also preferred orphans because riding on the Pony Express was a dangerous job, so they didn't want riders with families. Most of the men hired to ride were around 20 years old, but the youngest rider was eleven and the oldest rider was in his mid-40s. These riders were paid $100 a month.

This is how it worked. The length of the Pony Express trail was almost 2,000 miles (3,219 kilometers). It ran from St. Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento, California. There were about 165 stations along the way. The mail would leave from both of these places once a week with one rider heading east and another rider heading from the west. The service ran all year around, through good weather and bad. It took them ten days to deliver the mail from one end of the trail to the other in the summer and twelve to sixteen days in the winter. At the beginning, it cost $5.00 per 1/2 ounce of mail, but the price dropped to only $1.00 per 1/2 ounce by the time the pony express went out of business.

The riders took turns riding the horses at top speeds, averaging 10 miles per hour (16 kilometers per hour). They would switch to a new horse every 15 miles (24 kilometers) or so when the horse got tired. Every 75-100 miles (121-161 kilometers) a new rider would take his turn and the old rider would pass his mailbag onto the new rider, and then they were done for that day. A rider named Bob Haslam who rode 370 miles (595 kilometers) without stopping made the longest Pony Express ride on record.

The first Pony Express mail run happened on April 3, 1860. The riders carried a letter from President Buchanan to the Governor of California. It took exactly ten days to deliver, right on time. Business people were very happy with this new mail service and thought that mail delivered within only ten days was really great.

Although the Pony Express was a big hit, it only lasted for two years. The Pony Express ended on October 24, 1861. This is when the telegraph lines finally ran all the way out to California and the telegraph became the fastest way to communicate. Now you could send a message within hours and ten days didn't seem that fast anymore.

So even though the Pony Express didn't last very long, it was a very popular way of delivering the mail in the United States. Even today, people like to hear stories about how mail was delivered by fast horses and the dangers the riders faced along the way.

Citations

Online Resources

"Pony Express Information." The American West. December 2004
<http://www.americanwest.com/trails/pages/ponyexp1.htm>.

"When the Pony Express Was in Vogue." The Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco. December 2004
<http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist1/pxpress.html>.

Images

Copyrighted images of horses and telegraph from "Microsoft Office Online" <http://office.microsoft.com/clipart/default.aspx?lc=en-us&cag=1> February 2005. Clip art only available to licensed users for non-commercial purposes.