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Go west young man
In early 1860 an advert appeared in a California newspaper: "Wanted. Young, skinny, wiry fellows. Not over 18. Must be expert riders. Willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred".
For nineteen months only, William Hepburn Russell, Alexander Majors and William B Waddell ran the most romantic network messaging service of all time. The Pony Express. It was planned to operate between St Joseph, Missouri and Sacramento, California, but only ever carried mail commercially between Salt Lake City and Sacramento.
The Pony Express, formally called The Central Overland California and Pike's Peak Express, was run from Patee House, a luxury hotel in St Joseph, Missouri, just down the road from Jesse James' house. The first two journeys, one westward from St Joseph and one East from Sacramento, were made on 3rd April, 1860. They delivered mail in a record time of just over ten days, using a network of around 157 relay stations, with an average of sixteen kilometres between stations, where the ponies were changed, and some one hundred and forty kilometres between rider changes. It employed lightweight riders, armed only with a revolver and carrying nothing but a water sack and around 10 kilos of mail in a padlocked pouch called a mochila (Spanish for pouch).
The company founders were already in the freight business, with a number of government contracts and the Pony Express was, in essence, a proof of concept to try to win the overland mail contact, it delivered mail in a record time, but lost the contract to Alexander Butterfield's stagecoach company. and after just a year and a half disappeared forever. This painting shows the real long distance comms network being erected behind the pony rider, Sam Morse's telegraph.
The youngest Pony Express rider was a guy called Broncho Charlie, who was 11 when he set out from Sacremento on his first ride in 1861. He rode regularly until the operation closed down some five months later.
During its operation, the company took $90,141 in revenue and paid out some $300,000 in operating cost, including the considerable sum of $25 a week to its riders. Since then, stories of the Pony Express have grossed many millions of dollars, worldwide.
Currently, the Pony Express logo is a trademark of the U.S. postal service.
Of course, there was another long distance messaging system in use in North America at this time, smoke signals. Here is a Fredrick Remington painting of a hunting party sending a message saying that they have just burnt lunch. There is no evidence that any sort of code was used in this system and it is difficult to see how different messages could be distinguished in something as susceptible to the vagaries of air currents as smoke but, fortunately for us kids at the Saturday morning picture show, that never stopped Hollywood from creating the Apache version of "England expects" .
Last updated 25 January 2009