Pony Express. The Pony Express was a mail service that carried mail by horse relay from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento,
California—nearly two thousand miles—in an average time of ten days. Despite its legendary status, the Pony Express operated for only eighteen months, from April 1860 to October 1861. The freighting firm of Russell, Majors, and Waddell ran the operation.
The federal government first subsidized overland mail to California in the 1850s, when a southern postmaster general awarded the contract to a company that carried the mail along a southern route from Missouri through Texas into southern California. California Senator William Gwinn convinced businessman William Russell to develop a central route, from St. Joseph (where
telegraph lines from the East ended) to Sacramento. A horse relay, Gwinn believed, would halve the time required to deliver mail and convince Congress that the central route deserved the federal contract.
Russell built 190 stations every 10 to 12 miles over the route, and purchased 500 horses. Each rider rode thirty‐five to seventy miles before passing the mail to the next rider. Pony Express riders set their fastest time at seven days, seventeen hours, carrying the text of Abraham
Lincoln's 1861 inaugural address. Despite his efforts, Russell was at first unable to secure the federal contract necessary to make the Pony Express profitable. But in March 1861, when the
Civil War interrupted the southern mail route, the government transferred its contract to the central route. Only six months later, however, completion of the transcontinental telegraph made the Pony Express obsolete and drove Russell, Majors, and Waddell into bankruptcy.
See also
Postal Service, U.S.;
West, The.
Bibliography
Raymond W. Settle and and Mary L. Settle , Saddle and Spurs: The Pony Express Saga, 1955.
Roy S. Bloss , Pony Express: The Great Gamble, 1959.
James W. Feldman
