Early in 1860 advertisements like the one above appeared in St. Jo. Missouri, Salt Lake City and Sacramento seeking horsemen for the Pony Express, a service to carry mail by a relay of riders across the western USA from the railhead in Missouri to the booming settlements of California in the then unheard of time of ten days.

Nearly all the route was still wild and unsettled, dominated by unsubdued Indian tribes, the exception being the Mormon enclave of Salt Lake. In the East the proposed path had been used by emigrants with wagons, but the western half was unmapped., across some of the most in hospitable deserts and mountains on the continent.

To see a map of the Pony Express Trail click here or click in the Contents list.

In the space of just two months the company of Russel, Waddell and Majors, the biggest freighting firm in the west, built, supplied and manned a chain of more than 150 stations so that horses could be changed every 12 or so miles (20km) and riders relieved at 60 or 70 miles (96 – 112 km) to keep up the tight schedule demanded. Between St. Joseph in Missouri and Salt Lake City the system could be built around existing stage coach facilities, but to the west of Salt Lake everything had to be hauled in and set up from scratch, a mammoth task entailing great effort and hardship. In the notorious Carson Sink of Nevada, a road of willow logs had to be built across the swamps. The men often had to carry timbers in their arms for hundreds of yards while the mosquitoes swarmed so thickly on their faces and hands as to “make their real color and identity hard to determine”. A fort was built here of adobe mud tramped by foot. However, the soil was soaked with alkali and their feet became “so swollen as to resemble hams”.

The choice of horses was most important and top prices were paid as the success of the venture and the lives of the riders would depend on them. In the East, fast thoroughbreds were used, but in the rough, desert country of the West native mustangs were favoured.

The riders were also carefully screened not only for riding ability, courage and toughness, but also for “high moral quality”. They promised not to drink, use profanity or fight and were given a company Bible. Observers who travelled the route noticed that they did not always live up to their pledges.

Why was such an expensive and hazardous venture attempted? It is hard to imagine now in the days of email and faxes how isolated the people of the West were at a time when their nation was in turmoil, the rivalry between the Northern and Southern states intensifying and civil war about to break out. Whether California would declare itself for the Union or the Confederacy was still in the balance. There was an unreliable sage coach service through the southern part of the territory taking at best 3 ½ weeks, but the most dependable way to send mail was by steamship and railway across the isthmus of Panama taking six weeks. So the Pony Express was born even though many predicted the combination of hostile Indians, horrendous weather, logistic nightmares and sheer bad luck would ensure its failure and on 3rd April 1860 riders set off simultaneously from the Western and Eastern ends.