PONY EXPRESS

Pony Express was a short-lived but emblematic mail and small package carrier service that operated during the mid-1800s. It still remains a symbol of American westward expansion. The service began in 1860 as a means to move messages and parcels from St. Joseph, Missouri (then the western terminus of the nation's rail system), to Sacramento, California, and all points between. The Pony Express trail was 2,000 miles (just over 3,200 kilometers) long and could be traveled in eight to 10 days by a series of riders.

The service was backed by businessman William Hepburn Russell (1812–72), who hired 80 riders and kept 400 horses and ponies to make the relay journey around the clock. Each rider traveled about 75 miles (120 kilometers) per day. Riders followed a trail that ran along Nebraska's Platte River to present day Wyoming, then turned south toward Great Salt Lake (in present day Utah), and south of there turned west to cross the Great Salt Lake Desert to the Sierra Nevada Mountains (in present-day western Nevada), which were crossed into California. Along the route, there were nearly 200 Pony Express stations where riders would change horses or end their day's journey, handing off the specially designed leather mailbag to the next rider. These changes usually took less than two minutes.

Pony Express service was the fastest way to get messages across the frontier at the time; the only alternatives were transport by stagecoach or boat. But when the first transcontinental telegraph line was completed on October 24, 1861, the Pony Express folded only two days later. Its fastest run had been made in March of that year when a transcript of President Abraham Lincoln's (1809–65) first address to Congress arrived in Sacramento in seven days and 17 hours.