The Pony Express: 1800 Miles in 10 Days
Night or day, wet or dry, it didn't matter. Neither did the Indians.
Growing up shortly after the extinction of the dinosaurs had its attractions. One of these was the lure of the “Old West” which we kids marinated in every Saturday at the Homewood Theater.
There were the heroes and villains of yesteryear, working out the cosmic equations of good and evil in black and white on the big screen and shooting everything in sight, often with two six-shooters instead of just one and robbing banks and trains and stagecoaches and fighting Indians and fighting each other and turning over poker tables in bawdy saloons and generally being everything we wanted to be.
Part of the lore of the Old West were stories about the Pony Express. Brave riders would push their mounts to near exhaustion galloping to the next station. There they would saddle up on a fresh horse, grab their leather mailbag and thunder off toward the next stop, dodging hostile Indians and bandits and barging through dust and mud over rough terrain, in dim moonlight or blistering sun.
Mark Twain, in his delightful book, “Roughing It” describes seeing a Pony Express rider out on a prairie trail during his stagecoach journey westward to Nevada, in July, 1861.
I’ll just let him tell you about it:
“Away across the endless dead level of the prairie a black speck appears against the sky, and it is plain that it moves. Well, I should think so!
In a second or two it becomes a horse and rider, rising and falling, rising and falling—sweeping toward us nearer and nearer—growing more and more distinct, more and more sharply defined—nearer and still nearer, and the flutter of the hoofs comes faintly to the ear—another instant a whoop and a hurrah from our upper deck, a wave of the rider's hand, but no reply, and man and horse burst past our excited faces, and go winging away like a belated fragment of a storm!”
Twain went on to Nevada and then to Colorado, where he failed miserably at silver mining, thence to California, meeting along the way some memorable old west characters and charming the reader with his characteristically humorous style. It’s one of my all-time favorite non-fiction books.
Prior to that time, settlers who had already reached California before the Civil War were cut off from the rest of the world and starved for news and information from back East. The best they could do at the time was wait twenty-three days for a stagecoach mail service named Butterfield Express to make the voyage one-way.
In May, 1860, a raiding party of Paiute Indians in Nevada killed five people at a station then burnt the station down and stole the horses. Such raids continued through June when sixteen employees were killed and 150 horses were taken. Working for the Pony Express became one of the most dangerous occupations in the country. The stations were isolated and had no one to call on for help. And of course the Paiutes considered the riders fair game.
The Pony Express began as a business enterprise when Congress failed to come up with support for an overland mail service. It was a time of turbulence and unrest in the country. Southern states seemed ready to secede as hostilities continued to gain attention in the border states, especially in Kansas, Nebraska and Missouri. These very states were among those that had to be crossed by the riders.
The settling of the western United States was no doubt a rough and tumble business from the start. Therefore it was irresistible to newspaper reporters who saw it as fertile ground for wildly inventive fictional stories loosely based on fact.
These, in turn, inspired some of the earliest motion picture makers in New York City to invent mythological tales of the Wild West which later film makers threaded into those very same movies that we cherished as 10-year olds in the Homewood Theater.
Despite all that, the young riders hired by the Pony Express did face very real dangers and some of their experiences did, in fact, become the source of legendary tales of the “old west.”
Like most mythology around the world, wild west yarns contain strong elements of truth. But also, like mythical stories everywhere, they are subject to interpretation by tale-tellers who can embellish. They do embellish. They love embellishing. They can’t stop themselves from embellishing. Unlike much of the storied past, the Pony Express is revealed in actual logbooks of recorded events.
On October 26, 1861, the Pony Express closed down when the first telegraph became operational between the east and west coasts. Today, a statue stands at St. Joseph, Missouri to commemorate the brave young riders and their horses who rode the plains and the mountain passes from the east to the “Old West”.
I confess that, as a 10-year old who detested school and was embarrassed even to acknowledge that I actually had parents and who had absolutely no idea of what to do with my life, the Pony Express was a much longed-for dream occupation. The theme song of my life at the time was “Back in the Saddle Again” by Gene Autry, who wrote it in 1939.
I would dream through arithmetic or English class that I was a Pony Express rider. I’d be out there on the lone prairie, riding my palomino pal across a moonlit trail, packin’ my trusty .44 and on the lookout for Comanches … Just me and my horse and the wide open spaces with maybe the Rocky Mountains out in the distance and the old familiar constellations in the sky.
Then Mrs. Hale, suddenly hovering over my desk, would interrupt with some asinine question about long division or dangling participles or what is the capitol of Maine.
To my readers: “Eat Your History” is only supported by paid subscriptions. Parts of some issues are free and some issues, like this one, are all free and that will continue to be the case. But paid subscriptions are what make any of it it possible. Please consider being a paid subscriber so that I am able to keep providing you with these little gems of history.
Heartfelt thanks,
Bob
Daydreams continue to be highly underrated, especially if they involve the wild West or spaceships.
Bob's writing and insight is reliably insightful and fun. TK