Pony Express

Pony Express, system of U.S. mail delivery by continuous horse-and-rider relays between St. Joseph, Missouri, and Sacramento, California, and from Sacramento to San Francisco, California, by steamer (April 1860–October 1861). Although a financially disastrous brief enterprise, the Pony Express and its most famous riders, such as William (“Buffalo Bill”) Cody and Robert (“Pony Bob”) Haslam, captured the national imagination as one of the most daring and colourful episodes in the history of the American West.

Expanding Western settlement in the mid-19th century prompted the need for a reliable means of mail delivery, which was initially met by overland stagecoach companies on one of several routes and by steamship routes that either went around South America or included an overland transfer across the Isthmus of Panama or the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Mexico. However, as national tensions simmered in advance of the Civil War (1861–65), rapid transmission of news became imperative, and the standard 24-day schedule for overland delivery from Missouri to the West Coast thus proved no longer sufficient. The origin of the idea for a speedier system is most often attributed to California Sen. William M. Gwin, who is usually credited with having suggested the idea to the private freighting firm Russell, Majors and Waddell.

The Pony Express route was nearly 2,000 miles (3,200 km) long overland, had about 190 stations (mostly in Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah, and Nevada), and required about 10 days to cover. Each rider generally rode 75 to 100 miles (120 to 160 km) and changed horses every 10 to 15 miles (16 to 24 km). The service (used mainly by newspapers and businesses) was remarkably efficient—during its 18 months, only one bag of mail was reported lost—but it was ultimately an expensive stopgap. It ceased with the completion of the transcontinental telegraph system.

Early mail delivery

By the 1840s the influx of pioneers to the Northwest via the Oregon Trail, the Mormon migration to Utah, and the flood of settlers (and prospectors after the gold strikes of 1848) to California had created an increasing demand for mail delivery to and from the East. Sending mail from the East Coast to San Francisco via steamship was one solution, but the long, hazardous journey involved sailing either around the southern tip of South America and up the West Coast of the Americas or down to malaria-ridden Panama, where the isthmus to the Pacific would be crossed by mule and canoe and then the final leg of the trip to California completed by another steamer. Either way, the trip took months. It was also expensive, costing the government more than $700,000 annually while returning little more than $200,000 in postage. Even after a railroad had been completed across the Isthmus of Panama in January 1855, steamship delivery remained inadequately slow.

The alternative—overland travel across the desolate terrain west of the Missouri River—was dangerous and unreliable. The first attempt at overland mail service to the West Coast came in 1851, when George Chorpenning and Absalom Woodward contracted with the U.S. government for monthly delivery of mail between Sacramento, California, and Salt Lake City, Utah, by way of the Carson Valley. To facilitate delivery, they arranged for some crude stations to be erected along the route. That service, combined with stagecoach-delivered service from Salt Lake City east to Independence, Missouri (which had already been initiated, on July 1, 1850, by Samuel H. Woodson), effectively established regular overland transcontinental mail delivery. Overall, this mail service was satisfactory, although it was sometimes late because of bad weather (especially during the winter) or fell victim to attacks by Native Americans.

While Chorpenning and Woodward’s operations ultimately foundered, John Butterfield established a new southern mail route. (Woodward died on a failed Sacramento to Salt Lake City journey in May 1851; W.M.F. Magraw and John M. Hockaday took over the Salt Lake to Independence route in 1854.) The Butterfield Overland Mail Company—a consortium of four express companies: Adams, American, National, and Wells, Fargo & Company—signed a six-year contract with the U.S. government on September 15, 1857. The Butterfield (or Oxbow) Route went from St. Louis, Missouri, south to Little Rock, Arkansas, through El Paso, Texas, then west to Yuma, Arizona, on to Los Angeles, and north to San Francisco, for a total distance of some 2,700 miles (4,350 km) over a 25-day schedule. The Butterfield service, however, was susceptible to attacks by the Apache, Comanche, and Kiowa peoples. (Moreover, with the beginning of the Civil War in 1861, most of the Butterfield Overland Mail line would be disrupted and destroyed by Confederate troops.) In the late 1850s other routes were attempted with varying degrees of success, including one that ran from Kansas City, Missouri, to Stockton, California, another with San Diego, California, and San Antonio, Texas, as its terminus points, and still another ocean-overland route from New Orleans by steamship to Mexico, across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, and then by sea again to San Francisco.

With war seemingly imminent and the Butterfield route jeopardized by growing North-South tension, there was an urgent demand for fast central-route mail service despite the widespread belief that dependable service along a central route was impossible. It was this demand that gave rise to the idea of the Pony Express.