Telegraph

Pony Express News Delivery

The Bulletin and Union had no sooner put their new system into working order than a further improvement in communication with the East made it more or less obsolete. This was the…

News in 17 Days

The two papers combined their resources to maintain correspondents in the more important cities of the East who were to wire important news to the telegraph point farthest west on the overland…

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…

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…