“It has been said again and again that the Pony Express ruined Russell, Majors & Waddell. That is not true. It was a failure as a financial asset from the beginning and made its contribution to the final debacle, but that contribution was both minor and one of many. The Central Overland California & Pike’s Peak Express Company which operated it was a failure as a money-making institution. So were most of the other partnerships which which these men were concerned . . . The freighting business appears to be the only one which paid dividends. Had they confined their efforts to that and been reimbursed for their losses in 1857, the story probably would have been different . . . The day Russell decided to organize the Leavenworth & Pike’s Peak Express Company was a day of doom. That organization and its greater successor did as much to bankrupt the partners as the failure of the government to reimburse them for their losses in 1857.”
