The Pony Express: St. Joseph to Sacramento

On 3 April 1860, after speeches and a cannon shot, the first mail pouch left St. Joseph at about 7:15 pm. Historians still dispute who carried it, most narrowing it to Johnny Fry or Billy Richardson. A ferry took horse and rider across the Missouri, with 49 letters on board. Mark Twain, who later travelled this road by stagecoach, wrote that riders carried mail "nineteen hundred miles in eight days"; the first run took ten. The brick stable, built in 1858 as Pike's Peak Stable, is now the Pony Express Museum.

Visitor guidance: The Pony Express Museum is at 914 Penn Street, St. Joseph, Missouri.

Gerat Hollenberg built this roadside station in 1858 for travellers on the Oregon and California Trails. When the Pony Express began, it became a home station where riders switched mounts. Riders had to weigh under 125 pounds, and carried the mail in a mochila, a leather cover thrown over the saddle and held down by the rider's own weight. Upstairs, the loft served as a sleeping area for riders and guests. It is the most intact Pony Express station that survives, and the building has never been moved.

Visitor guidance: A state historic site about 2 miles east of Hanover, Kansas, on Highway 243; open between March and October.

Fort Kearny, on the Platte in Nebraska, was a Pony Express station and the end of the eastern telegraph line. On 7 November 1860 a rider left here with the results of the presidential election. The company's partner William Russell used the vote to advertise the service, and California's newspapers learned of Lincoln's victory only 7 days and 17 hours after the East Coast papers. Wagon trains had long stopped here to resupply; Twain's stagecoach also stopped at the fort on its way west.

Visitor guidance: Part of the original site is preserved as Fort Kearny State Historical Park near Kearney, Nebraska.

Twain's coach reached Julesburg, 470 miles from St. Joseph, on the fifth day, and he called it "the strangest, quaintest, funniest frontier town" he had seen. It is also a good place to sort legend from record. William Cody, Buffalo Bill, claimed a 45-mile run from here and a 322-mile ride on 21 horses, but his accounts may be exaggerated and some historians say he never rode for the Pony Express. The "orphans wanted" advertisement is a hoax, and Wild Bill Hickok was only a stocktender.

Location precision: Twain knew the place as the Crossing of the South Platte; the pin marks the modern town of Julesburg.

Twain's coach had long wanted a daylight glimpse of a pony-rider, and every one passed in the night. In Roughing It he describes the rider as "usually a little bit of a man, brimful of spirit and endurance", covering about 250 miles a day against the stagecoach's 100 to 125. Then comes the cry, a speck on the prairie, and the pair "burst past our excited faces", leaving only foam on a mail-sack. Soon the coach rattled through Scott's Bluffs Pass, a landmark on the Pony Express Trail.

Location precision: Twain does not say where he saw the rider; the pin marks Scotts Bluff, the next landmark he names.

Visitor guidance: Scotts Bluff National Monument has a museum and visitor center at the base of the bluff.

The first rider from the east reached Salt Lake City at 6:45 pm on 9 April 1860. South of the city, at Fairfield, the Stagecoach Inn was the first stop on the overland route and a Pony Express stop in 1860 and 1861. The Army's Camp Floyd stood nearby, its garrison duties including protection of the stagecoach and Pony Express routes. From there the mail followed the Central Nevada Route, blazed in 1859 by Captain James H. Simpson, across the Great Basin and the Sierra Nevada.

Visitor guidance: The Stagecoach Inn and the Camp Floyd museum are both in Fairfield, Utah.

In May 1860 the Paiute War cut the line: raiders burned Williams Station and killed five men, seven other stations were attacked and 16 employees died. Fort Churchill was begun that July to protect the mail route. Robert "Pony Bob" Haslam is credited with the longest round trip of the service. When the relief rider at Buckland Station refused to go, he took the mail 190 miles to Smith's Creek, rested nine hours, and rode back to find Cold Springs raided: 380 miles in all.

Visitor guidance: Fort Churchill State Historic Park preserves the fort ruins and, since 1997, the Buckland Station building.

The first westbound mochila reached Sacramento at 1:00 am on 14 April 1860, ten days out of St. Joseph, and the mail went on by steamer down the river to San Francisco. The B. F. Hastings Building in Old Sacramento was the western terminal. In all about 35,000 letters were carried, yet the service grossed $90,000 and lost $200,000. It closed on 26 October 1861, two days after the transcontinental telegraph reached Salt Lake City, and the Pony Express became the lore of the Old West.

Visitor guidance: The building has a branch of the Wells Fargo History Museum; a Pony Express statue also stands in Old Sacramento.