Shorter Route for Telegraph
While the [telegraph] lines were under construction the Pony Express operated as usual. Letters and newspapers were carried the entire length of the line from St. Joseph to Sacramento, but telegrams only…
Telegraph Batteries
See how the towns are about fifty miles apart? Doug points out. When the Pony Express was replaced by the telegraph, that was the distance a battery could send a charge.
Death of the Pony Express
I take the twisted wires and they're as valuable to me as gold. It fills me with excitement and mystery that in my hands I hold a piece of this country's history.…
Telegraph Meets at Fort Bridger
Crews were spread out along the entire route of the telegraph, stringing wire simultaneously in several places. The wires were finally joined at Fort Bridger in what was then Utah on October…
End of the Pony Express
But Indian resistance and financial woes, serious as they were, did not bury the Pony Express. Technology did. About two months after the first mochila left St. Joseph, Congress authorized…
The “Wire-Rope Express”
"James Street, Pacific Telegraph agent, . . . had held several "confabs" with Shokup, chief of the Shoshones, and believed there was nothing to fear from the Indians in that vicinity. The…
Bill Dictating the End of the Pony Express
"On June 16 [1860], Congress passed a bill authorizing bids to establish a telegraph to be completed no later than July 1, 1862. It also provided for the end of…
The End of the Pony Express
The Pony Express, its route drastically shortened and its purpose now virtually eliminated by the telegraph, was quietly discontinued, with none of the fanfare that had launched it, following the…