Who invented pony express

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The Pony Express was more than twice as fast as its competitors. It was a financial flop. There was a weight limit for Pony Express riders. Orphans preferred. In the s, a remnant of what had been the U. Frankly, in the 21st century we do not have horsemen or women who can ride like that any longer. Men are not born in the saddle now, and even the most accomplished modern equestrian could not take the mochila from Fort Churchill to Robbers Roost.

The annual reenactment is a wonderful thing to witness. To stand on the edge of a rain-soaked field in central Nebraska and see the lone figure of a man on a galloping horse appear on the distant horizon is still a stirring sight. It is the sight that inspired Mark Twain so long ago. It is the memory that Buffalo Bill Cody loved. Hollywood has always been especially kind to the memory of the Pony Express.

As might be expected, just about all references to it in film and there were silent films as early as the turn of the last century featuring the Pony Express are wrong. There is not a shard of fact in the entire film. Hickok actually worked for the firm but merely as a stock tender in Nebraska. Several years ago, the film Hidalgo featured a wild tale of Frank Hopkins, a self-proclaimed equestrian who said that he rode for the Pony Express. The memory of the Pony Express remains sweet.

In the years in which I attempted to follow its trail, I met dozens, perhaps hundreds of Americans, who believe that their great-great-grandpas rode for the Pony, as the old-timers in the West still affectionately call it. Joseph to Sacramento. A cursory examination of early 20th-century newspapers in the American West will amply illustrate that they regularly reported the death of the last Pony Express rider.

This time he was Jack Lynch. The Reno Evening Gazette frequently dusted off the story, one of the best being the news of the death of James Cummings, the last of the Pony Express riders, dead at age 76 on March 3, Miller was a delightful end piece to the story of the Pony Express. He claimed to have been born on a buffalo robe in a Conestoga wagon going west in His claims to have ridden for the Pony — a run that would have taken him up from Sacramento over the Sierra Nevada and down into Carson City, Nev.

He would have been 10 or But America forgave him. Pony Express purists and doubters regularly challenged the old boy, but they never laid a glove on him. He refused to even acknowledge that there were purists and doubters of his tales. America loved Broncho Charlie Miller, whether he was telling the truth or not.

When Miller was an old man — 82 if we believe his birth date — he rode an old horse named Polestar from New York City to San Francisco to remind America, lest it forget, that the Pony Express had once brought the mail. People stood in the streets and cheered to see the old man loping along. He took a crazy, circuitous route that did not follow the route of the Pony Express and rode hundreds of miles into the Southwest. Go figure. Despite all the rascals and scamps associated with the story of the Pony Express, admirers of the bold venture will be cheered to learn that there were actual heroes.

An Englishman who came to Utah as a teenager at the time of the Mormon migration, Haslam rode for the Pony in Nevada at the time of the Paiute War, making a fabled ride of nearly miles without relief.

Haslam was the real deal. We have a vivid eyewitness account in the Territorial Enterprise , the newspaper where Mark Twain cut his teeth, of a race on the Fourth of July in This account leaves no doubt that Haslam was a fabled Pony Express rider in his day and that he was a great horseman.

Another of those Americans who helped to save the true story of the Pony Express, or at least as true as it could be, was Mabel Loving. Loving was an amateur poetess in St. She was a terrible poet but a prolific one, as bad poets often are Colonel Visscher was a prolific bad poet, too. She sat down and began to write to the few surviving members of the Pony Express. Her correspondence with those riders provides us with some of the richest detail we have about that mail service.

This article was written by Christopher Corbett and originally appeared in the April issue of Wild West. For more great articles be sure to subscribe to Wild West magazine today! Jackson listed the names and locations of relay stations along the nearly 2,mile Pony Express route in an illustrated map marking the Pony centennial. Pony Express Museum, St. Young Robert Haslam started as a simple laborer, building way stations for the fledgling Pony Express, but he was soon offered an opening as an express rider—an offer he eagerly accepted and a job at which he quickly excelled.

On May 10, , he left his home base at Fridays Station—on the present-day border between California and Nevada—and had little difficulty on his mile run east to Bucklands Station. But by the time the wiry year-old completed his assigned run, the situation had changed. Must be expert pony riders willing to risk death daily. The Northern Paiutes were on the warpath, just one month after the Pony Express began service, and the next rider scheduled refused to get in the saddle. Haslam, however, remained undeterred by the Indian scare.

Riding over alkali flats and parched desert, he pushed through to Smith Creek, where, after miles, he slid off of his pony for a brief rest before making the even more harrowing return run. Arriving at Cold Springs, Haslam found that the Paiutes had burned the station, killed the keeper and run off the relief horses.

His dedication was exceptional, but he was not alone. Many Pony riders were willing to risk their backsides to deliver the mail in a timely fashion.

It has been years since one of the most remarkable enterprises in American history carried the mail and the day. Yet, most of us can easily imagine these lone young riders racing the wind across the open plains, fleeing Indian pursuers.

Yes, the Pony Express still stirs the imagination, conjuring a romantic but gritty picture. Look a little closer, though, and something else becomes clear: The Pony Express was, despite the Herculean efforts of Pony Bob and his fellows, also a terrible flop.

It is not difficult to find a failed business whose name lives on long after its collapse. What is remarkable is for a failed business to be remembered not for its disappointing performance but for its determination and grit. For such a venture to be romanticized, commemorated and held in awe by the public is high praise indeed. That is the legacy of the Pony Express. On the sesquicentennial of the first ride and, on that of the last ride, less than 19 months off , much of the nation is celebrating and singing the praises of a small group of men—many of them mere boys—who set out to provide a service that ultimately proved an economic failure.

The Pony Express started out as a very good idea. Founders William Russell, Alexander Majors and William Waddell, despite popular myths to the contrary, were not rough drovers or confidence men. Uncle Nick , as he was called in later life, was from a Mormon family, who as a young boy then went to live with a Shoshone Indian family in the Utah area.

He then ends up as a teenager coming back home where he meets someone who is recruiting for the Pony Express, and he gets a job. He also worked as a stagecoach driver and a trapper. He was also said to have had a good way with breaking horses, like a horse whisperer. It almost certainly started when some whites raped, or wanted to rape, some Indian girls. Naturally, their families took exception and the end result was that a number of whites were killed and several Pony Express stations were burned down.

As a result, the service was stopped because it was too dangerous to proceed. Remarkably, the people of eastern California, who were served by the Pony Express, raised money to rebuild some of the stations and supplied volunteers to help. The work force went from West to East, rebuilding the stations, and the service got back up and running shortly thereafter. Interestingly, that happened while there was a census being taken. Because of that, riders who were part of the work force to rebuild the stations are recorded at certain locations where the census was taking place.

That enabled me to see how they are being listed in the census and get a picture of their ages and work conditions. And because of that, people can relate to it. But the Pony Express was always intended as a short-term venture to raise public awareness—like a huge PR stunt—to get a big mail contract. The mail contract they were counting on came much too late to help them, and when it did come, it was far too small. But it is financial stuff that sinks Russell.

He is so desperate for money that he goes to the War Department and tries to get an advance on some other contracts they had. But Russell uses them as collateral to get cash advances. Unfortunately, the whole scheme quickly collapsed. Simon Worrall curates Book Talk. Follow him on Twitter or at simonworrallauthor. All rights reserved. Share Tweet Email. But when postmaster general Joseph Holt scaled back overland mail service to California and the central region of the country in , an even greater need for mail arose.

Russell, Alexander Majors and William B. Waddell became the answer. It was later known as the Pony Express. On June 16, , about ten weeks after the Pony Express began operations, Congress authorized the a bill instructing the Secretary of the Treasury to subsidize the building of a transcontinental telegraph line to connect the Missouri River and the Pacific Coast.

While the 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 were carried only between the rapidly advancing wire ends. On that day the Pony Express was officially terminated, but it was not until November that the last letters completed their journey over the route. Most of the original trail has been obliterated either by time or human activities.