Happy Birthday Pony Express!
By Nancy Pope, NPM Historian
Under the headline “The New California Express,” an April 1860 article in the Chicago Times & Tribune announced the latest innovation in speedy communication. The paper cheered the new service, noting that “whatever increases the communication between the Atlantic and Pacific States, and makes the transmission of intelligence more rapid, is a public benefit. It tends to bind these distant sections of the Union together, and to make us in every essential element one great & happy people.”
While such a lofty goal may have been asking too much of any service in the year preceding the American Civil War, there were good reasons for enthusiasm. When the Pony Express began, 150 years ago today, there were only two ways to move mail between the US east and west coasts, by ship or by stagecoach. Steamships carried mail down to Central America and across either the Nicaraguan or Panamanian Isthmus, where it was placed on board a second steamer for the journey north (five week minimum). Stagecoaches operated by the Butterfield Overland Mail began operations on September 15, 1858, carrying mail and passengers across the continent’s “southern route,” through Texas (24 days minimum).
William Russell, Alexander Majors, and William Waddell, owners of a profitable western freighting outfit, decided to make a play for a profitable mail contract by proving the nation’s “central route” across the American prairie was useable year-round. In three short months Majors organized the creation of the Pony Express. Riders, station masters and stock tenders were hired. Station houses and horses bought. The service was widely publicized as the fastest way to move information across the country – 10 days between San Francisco, CA and St. Joseph, MO.
The Pony Express succeeded in demonstrating the year-round viability of the central route, but failed as a business enterprise. Even at the extraordinary rate of $5 per half ounce for mail, Russell, Majors, and Waddell could not make enough money to offset the cost of the service. Without the help of a mail contract, the trio had no choice but to declare bankruptcy. The service ended up in the hands of another freighting company, Wells Fargo & Co.
Although a financial failure, the Pony Express demonstrated not only the usefulness of a central route across the west, but established that route for the future transcontinental telegraph (which made the Pony Express obsolete in October 1861) and encouraged additional public support for the transcontinental railroad, which was completed in 1869. And last, but by no means least, the Pony Express provided such lively fodder for western fiction writers that its name continues to evoke colorful images of riders speeding across the landscape to this day.
About the Author
The late Nancy A. Pope, a Smithsonian Institution curator and founding historian of the National Postal Museum, worked with the items in this collection since joining the Smithsonian Institution in 1984. In 1993 she curated the opening exhibitions for the National Postal Museum. Since then, she has curated several additional exhibitions. Nancy led the project team that built the National Postal Museum's first website in 2002. She also created the museum's earliest social media presence in 2007.
