The Pony Express is a legendary service ... that only lasted for 18 months.
The first mail delivered via the Pony Express was sent on April 3, 1860 when it left St. Joseph, Missouri. Near midnight on April 14, 1860, the mail reached its destination in San Francisco. It was 155 years ago, but that first journey remains memorable today, even though the service only operated until October 1861 — closing just 81 weeks after it began, killed off by the telegraph and other factors.
"IN THE AMERICAN MEMORY, THAT MAN IS STILL RIDING..."
Oddly enough, though, most of us don't think of the Pony Express as a flash in the pan. "In the American memory, that man is still riding across the country," says Christopher Corbett, author of Orphans Preferred: The Twisted Truth and Lasting Legend of the Pony Express.
So why do we remember the Pony Express at all? Partly because it was a genuine breakthrough in mail delivery. But also because it fits with our romantic ideas about the Old West.
Before the Pony Express, moving information was a huge pain
The 1850s saw a population explosion in California, as settlers from the Oregon Trail and California gold rush flooded into the West. But getting mail across the continent took about three weeks. In The Pony Express, author Tim McNeese describes the arduous delivery process for a typical letter: down a river, on a stagecoach to Arkansas, and then along poor roads on a stagecoach to El Paso and all the way across the desert.
The only other option was even more indirect: shipping from New York to Panama, then across Panama via train, and then onto another boat to San Francisco