Quick Facts

Historic Examples of Pony Express

The idea of a courier carrying messages on horseback over long distances was old when Columbus pointed the prows of his tiny vessels toward the Wes tern Hemisphere. In the 12th century Genghis Khan, Mongolian conquerer of Northern China and Central Asia, organized a vast, empire-wide network of military communication lines over which relays of fast riding horsemen sped messages to the capital. The idea was not new, even with him, for horses in the West and camels in the East had been employed in travel and communication since time immemorial.

Post roads were common is England and on the Continent long before the Pilgrims exiled themselves in Holland in 1608. At Scrooby, where the band of expatriates originated, William Brewster, like his father before him, was keeper of the inn, and supplied horses for both stage coaches and post riders on the London-York road. Postmen with relays of horses were known in America as early as 1692, when Thomas Neale was authorized to take charge of the colonial postal business. During the Revolution, military expresses rode continually between the various armies in the field and Congress in Philadelphia. As the frontier moved westward, postmen on horseback rode the wilderness trails farther and farther west.

In 1825, David Hale, a New York newspaper editor, used fast horsemen to carry news from various parts of the state, and five years later Richard Haughton, of the New York Journal of Commerce, used them to collect election returns. James Watson Webb, of the New York Courier and Enquirer, in 1832, established a pony express between Washington and New York.

During the War with Mexico, expresses regularly traveled the nine hun· dred miles along the Santa Fe Trail between Fort Leavenworth and Santa Fe, and Colonel Alexander W. Doniphan sent at least one back from Chi· huahua. He also sent another from that city to General Zachary Taylor at Monterey seven hundred miles to the south. In 1848 Francis X. Aubry made the first of his four famous rides from Santa Fe to Independence, Missouri. On the last of these he covered the distance in five days and sixteen hours, using relays of horses. Alexander Majors, who saw him on o.ne of these rides, said those long journeys greatly influenced him and his partners in founding the Pony Express. In 1853, when an important Presidential message reached San Francisco by steamer, the Adams and Wells Fargo Express Companies agreed to make a race of delivering it to Oregon by relays of fast riding horsemen. The Adams Company won the race.

During the Mormon War in Utah, express men carrying reports by General A. S. Johnston regularly rode the twelve hundred miles between Camp Scott and Camp Floyd, and Fort Leavenworth. As previously shown, Morehead and Rupe made the trip in midwinter of 1857-58, and Majors himself rode to Utah and back in the latter year, arriving at Nebraska early in January, 1859. Travel over the Central Route was so common there was not the slightest doubt in Russell’s mind or the minds of his partners that a pony express could be successfully operated the year round. Majors and Waddell never questioned the possibility of that. They did, however, doubt that it would be a money-making enterprise.

The experiment of carrying the mail from the Pacific Coast to Salt Lake City by muleback was made by George Chorpenning with his “Jackass Mail” in 1851-58. Throughout the venture he simply loaded the pouches onto the backs of mules and made the trips without relays. In 1858 he arranged for swift riders, perhaps also mounted upon mules, to carry President Buchanan’s annual message to Congress in as short a time as possible. This was done in midwinter, and the document was delivered in California in seventeen days, eight and one half hours. It should be observed that this feat, which at that time was regarded as amazing, was accomplished at about the time that Morehead and Rupe were bucking the snow on their way to Fort Leavenworth, and more than a year and a half before Colonel Bee went to Washington. Both Russell and his Salt Lake City associates no doubt heard about it.

Whose Idea Was the Pony Express

It is the purpose of this article to discuss one of these questions, with the hope of shedding a little light upon it and of giving credit where credit is due.

That question is with whom the idea originated. The first attempt to answer it appears to have been made by William Lightfoot Visscher in 1908, when he wrote The Pony Express, the first book on that institution. In the fall of 1854, he said, Senator William M. Gwin, United States Senator from California, was riding horseback from San Francisco to the Missouri River, on his way to take up his legislative duties in Washington. On that journey, for a long distance and many days, he had for a traveling companion Benjamin F. Ficklin, general superintendent of the freighting firm of Russell, Majors & Waddell. Between them they evolved the idea of a Pony Express. . . . That story cannot be true for several reasons, the first and most conclusive of which is that Russell, Majors & Waddell did not exist in the fall of 1854. . . .

Another story of recent vintage, told by Herbert Hamlin, editor of the Pony Express, credits Colonel Frederick A. Bee, president and builder of the Placerville & St. Joseph Overland Telegraph Line, with being the “Father of the Pony Express.” The sole basis for the author’s sweeping assumptions seems to be the mere fact that Colonel Bee and William H. Russell were probably in Washington at the same time during the winter of 1859-60. . . .

Still another story is related by Charles R. Morehead, nephew of Russell’s wife, who was appointed assistant to James Rupe, general agent for Russell, Majors & Waddell, to supervise the wagon trains which were transporting supplies for Johnston’s Army to Utah in 1857. . . “With Mr. Floyd,” said Morehead, “the question of the feasibility of a pony express across the continent was presented by Mr. Russell, and fully discussed. Captain Rupe’s views were called for, and he expressed the opinion that it was entirely practicable at all seasons on this route, all the way to California.” . . . Morehead’s Narrative, written at the request of William E. Connelley, secretary of the Kansas Historical Society, is included in the Appendix to his Doniphan’s Expedition, which was published in 1913. . . .

In 1879, Joseph S. Roberson, who was a member of the Pony Express staff at St. Joseph, wrote a story of its founding and operation. According to his report, “the fertile brains of Wm. H. Russell and B. F. Ficklin conceived the idea of a Pony Express, to be run under the patronage of the Central Overland California & Pike’s Peak Express Company.” . . .

John Scudder, an employee of Russell, Majors & Waddell, stationed at Salt Lake City in the fall and winter of 1859, told how he and others discussed the possibility of a fast letter-mail from St. Joseph to San Francisco in twelve days. Among the group was A. B. Miller, partner of Russell and Waddell in the firm of Miller, Russell & Company, which operated stores in Salt Lake City and Camp Scott at Bridger’s Fort. . . . Quite a number of communications passed between Mr. Russell and his agent (A. B. Miller) at Salt Lake City, and the upshot of it was that the former [Scudder probably meant Miller] agreed to test the matter by stringing out a lot of horses and riders between the Missouri River and the Pacific Coast. . . .

It appears the scheme originated with

The Alta California of San Francisco, on March 23, 1860, in a dispatch from its Washington correspondent, tells another story. . . “Mr. Butterfield himself in this city about three months ago. At that time Charles M. Stebbins and his Great Overland Mail chief were in consultation on the subject of a regular Horse Express to California, running from the terminus of the telegraph line on this end to the commencement of the Street line on the other, in ten days, carrying important dispatches and paages at the rate of about $50 per pound, and news dispatches at a high figure. . . .

Alexander Majors said in his book (1893) that Gwin asked him and his partners “to test the practicability of crossing the Sierra Nevadas, as well as the Rocky Mountains with a daily line of comminications.” Whether he meant a daily coach service, which he probably did, or a pony express, is not known. If Gwin suggested or sought a government subsidy to carry out this experiment there is no record of it. . . .

Regardless of who conceived the idea for a Pony Express, William H. Russell was the man with sufficient vision, ability, courage, and capital to organize it. That fact cannot be questioned. Others had dreamed about it, but he alone made it a reality. The “Father of the Pony Express,” therefore, was no other than William H. Russell himself.

First Mention of Orphans

Then in 1945, the Burlington Lines railroad company published a small souvenir booklet, “Westward the Course of Empire,” subtitled “The Story of the Pony Express, Forerunner of the Burlington Zephyrs.” This booklet mentions a preference for orphans. It reproduces the fabled newspaper notice. An expensively produced monograph of only fifty-seven pages, the booklet was illustrated with elaborate linecut drawings. It was written by Gene Morgan, about whom nothing is known. Where he got the orphans information is a mystery. The publisher in Chicago-Lakeside Press, a division of the printing giant J. R. R. Donnelley-has no record of the book. It may possibly date from what is the oldest known and perhaps the first mention of a preference for orphans by the organizers of the Pony Express. That mention appears in the October 1923 issue of Sunset magazine, a popular western periodical founded in 1898 by the Southern Pacific Railroad, which variously published works by Mark Twain, Jack London, Bret Harte, Zane Grey, Dashiell Hammett, and Sinclair Lewis. In an article written by John L. Considine titled “Eleven Days to Saint Joe!” Considine attributes (as did Mabel Loving) the origin of the Pony Express ad to Bolivar Roberts.

1960 Anniversary

Americans love anniversaries, and as 1960 approached, the country rediscovered the legacy of the Pony Express. A century made it possible for a whole new level of enthusiasm. By the time the centennial was planned, there was no one alive who had been there, and the celebrants were relying on memories and a very odd collection of books. Previous celebrations to honor the memory of the Pony Express—1935 was the seventy-fifth birthday—had been odd affairs. In 1954, a group of riders at the behest of the National Junior Chamber of Commerce reenacted the days of the Pony Express by racing day and night from Ogden, Utah, to Colorado Springs, nowhere near the actual route.

As the centennial approached, Waddell F. Smith, grandson of William Bradford Waddell, and the greatest professional Pony Express promoter of modern times, made himself known. Smith operated the Russell, Majors & Waddell Pony Express Foundation and Pony Express History and Art Gallery out of his home in San Rafael, California. In 1960, he produced The Story of the Pony Express: Official 1960 Centennial Edition. He called himself the editor, but the book is none other than Glenn Danford Bradley’s little tome reissued- and annotated-with an index by Smith. . . .

The actual observation of the centennial was as comic as the debate in California. One of the reriders staging the cross-country mail run accidentally shot another. The low point occurred when the reriders were unable to bring the mail overland on time and their tired horses had to be put on a truck. When they finally showed up in Old Sac, the mail pouch had been accidentally left behind.

Mabel Loving and the Pony Express Riders

The year after Pony Bob died in a cold-water flat in Chicago, a St. Joseph, Missouri, housewife with little formal education began one of the most enterprising efforts on behalf of the memory of the Pony Express. Her name was Mabel Loving and she was an amateur poet. She was an amateur historian, too, who in the end unearthed some of the most valuable information about the Pony Express. Mrs. Loving started tracking down the surviving riders. No one had actually thought to do this.

Legacy of the Pony Epress

Today William B. Waddell, William H. Russell, and Alexander Majors are best known, not for their great fleets of lumbering prairie schooners drawn by thousands of oxen across the vast Great Plains to military posts in New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah, or for the swift Concord stage coaches plying between the Missouri river and Denver, Salt Lake City, and the West Coast, but for having conceived, organized, financed, and operated the incredible Pony Express. Waddell and Majors did not want it, and Russell himself apologized to them for having inaugurated it. It cost Russell, Majors & Waddell at least $500,000, ran only about 18 months and failed to achieve the purpose for which it was organized. And yet despite these somber facts the thrilling story of that fabulous organization long ago became one of the most treasured items in American folklore. Almost every public, college, and university library has at least one book on it, and it is included in the approved reading lists for public schools. More than a dozen  volumes devoted exclusively to it have been issued since the first one appeared in 1908. Two of these were released late in 1959, and others have appeared in 1960. In addition it has appeared in pamphlet form, as chapters in books on other subjects, and in magazines and newspapers hundreds of times. As the story is told and retold by historians and writers public interest in it continues to mount. . . .

The 2,000-mile, nonstop relay line of men and horses founded and operated by Russell, Majors & Waddell was unique in the history of communication. In detail of organization, method and efficiency of operation, and speed of transmission it had no pred-ecessor and no successor. Not even the famed messenger service inaugurated by Genghis Khan is to be compared with it.

Sources of Pony Express History

In 1912, the year Pony Bob died in Chicago, Professor Glenn Danford Bradley published The Story of the Pony Express: An Account of the Most Remarkable Mail Service Ever in Existence, and Its Place in History. Unlike Colonel Visscher, Professor Bradley was a historian with a doctorate from the University of Michigan, but unlike Mrs. Loving, Professor Bradley did not bother to interview anyone associated with the Pony Express. Bradley fully mined the few existing sources: Majors’s memoirs, Root and Connelley’s The Overland Stage to California, Inman and Cody’s The Great Salt Lake Trail, and “the file of Century Magazine,” which includes W. F. Bailey’s 1898 article on the Pony Express. Virtually all information about the Pony Express descends from these works.

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The year before the centennial, Roy S. Bloss, a California historian, published Pony Express-the Great Gamble, a 159-page book billed as “a fresh, unbiased approach to an emotion-packed historical episode.” The editors of the Union must not have read its preface. “Probably the final, complete and authentic word on the Pony Express will never be written. For all of the notable episodes in United States history, few have been so scantily annotated as the horseback mail, the trail of which has been indelibly—but only grossly—etched in the panorama of American pioneering. Even the parade of Caesars, or the Gallic Wars, or our own Revolution—all in the days when historical narration lacked the incentive of the common man’s literacy even these events have been better documented and more accurately interpreted than the relatively recent Pony Express.”

Noting that there were few records of the mail service, Bloss added, “In several instances, the inexorable wear and tear of time caused buncombe to be offered as gospel.”

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Bloss argued that the Civil War eclipsed the memory of the Pony Express and noted that nearly half a century passed before the first history of the fast-mail service was written. “But by then most of the principals, the riders and station keepers had passed from the scene. That raised a problem for the early historians. Seemingly, few records of the nineteen-month mail service were then (or now) extant. The living participants, pressed for their recollections, occasionally resorted to colorful embellishment or a self-serving memory.”

Bloss acknowledged that what he set out to do—sort out the story of the Pony Express—was not going to make him popular. “Whenever sympathetic legend or nostalgic romance has threatened to collide with objective deduction (a recurring hazard in this lore-laden subject) objectiveness deliberately has been given the right-of-way. Admittedly, such arbitrariness may find disfavor among some devoted followers of the Pony; if so, their displeasure is risked with apologies.”

Bloss was not the first to make these observations. It had been a theme for half a century—although it had made not the slightest impression on the American public or Pony Express devotees.

Writing in 1932, Arthur Chapman, journalist-turned-historian, offered his assessment in The Pony Express: The Record of a Romantic Adventure in Business. “The records of the Pony Express, as kept by the Central Overland California & Pike’s Peak Express Company were long ago either lost or destroyed. The fact that the Pony Express was not a Government institution, but was privately owned and controlled, absolved postmasters from the duty of making official records of arrivals and departures. Old letters and diaries, which have been submitted, have only tended to make the confusion greater, as they too have been conflicting in the names of riders.”

Even Raymond Settle and his wife, Mary, in whom the Union placed such faith, had doubts, noting in Empire on Wheels, their history of Russell, Majors, and Waddell’s freighting empire:

“The Pony Express was a romantic, glorious yet brief incident, which although it proved nothing except that it could be done, is eminently worthy of remembrance. Even though the amount of mail it carried was relatively insignificant and out of proportion to the fame it achieved, nobody begrudges it the spotlight. The tattoo or me nymg noorbeats, awakenmg the echoes by day and mght along the two-thousand-mile stretch of boundless prairie, lonely canyon, and mountain slope, wrote into the body of strictly American folklore such a romantic tale of youthful grit as is given few peoples to possess. It has been the source of a thousand tales of daredevil courage and will continue to make its contribution to that thrilling body of literature which concerns itself with stark courage and dauntless enterprise.”

In 1958, William H. Floyd, yet another amateur historian in St. Joe, produced Phantom Riders of the Pony Express to sort out this “web of fancy,” as he called it. Floyd pronounced the whole Pony Express story part of “a dim bob-tailed era in which fact and fiction can be hopelessly scrambled.” He deemed the saga “fragmentary and often conflicting.” Floyd’s exasperated conclusion: “This was the Pony Express. Fact and fiction. Truth, half-truth, and no truth at all. These have become so thoroughly blended that, after nearly a century … legend has largely replaced and superseded a clear and unclouded record, if indeed such a chronicle ever existed.”

Purpose of the Pony Express

Forty-five years later Alexander Majors said that Russell, Majors & Waddell took over the Express Company to protect its own and Russell’s credit. While this was true, there was far more to it than that. First of all, they had to take it over or write off their claim of $190,269, which they were not disposed to do.  By taking over the bankrupt concern, which would bring them $198,750 in mail pay alone to November 15, 1860, they thought they saw a chance to come out whole. They also held a monopoly on the stage coach, commercial and military freight, passenger, express, and mail business on the Central Route. The possibilities involved in these things were sufficiently great to justify whatever efforts were necessary to realize them.

That the foregoing measures were taken to place them in a position to compete with the Butterfield Overland Mail Company for the great $600,000 mail contract, which would be up for renewal in 1862, is plain. That was the end for which the Central Overland California & Pike’s Peak Express Company was organized. Encouraged by politics and the continual barrage of complaints against the Overland Mail Company, especially in California, Russell, Majors & Waddell felt they had a good chance of success, which they did have under ordinary circumstances. In the normal course of things, it was inevitable that the principal mail line would run over the Central Route. Nature had made that the shortest and best route, and sectional politics could not long prevent its adoption.

1935 Pony Reride

Yeah, son, says David, this old shack is where Mark Twain and Sir Richard Burton stayed as well as the Pony riders. Back in 1935 it became an important part of my own history. I was to ride in the Pony Express Association Race when my horse got kicked in the knee. I got discouraged. My sister offered to let me ride her horse, but I didn’t want to take a girl’s animal into the race. I did, though, and I set a record. I galloped ten miles in thirty-five minutes and one second. I can’t even get on a horse today and this old shed is just filled with junk.