Across the West are remnants of historic trails, wagon roads, emigrant routes and what’s left of dreams in dry places. In the 19th century, Americans traversed our country on horseback and in wagons, but their plodding pace never caught the public’s attention like the fast-moving riders of the Pony Express.
Most of the trails lasted a few decades, some a few years. The Pony Express only made it eighteen months before it was replaced by a national telegraph system, but in those few short months between April 1860 and October 1861, young, hard-riding men helped knit the country together as we suffered through the Civil War.
As the nation catapulted westward, there was a critical need to send newspapers, letters and business and personal communications overland to California. William B. Waddell, Alexander Majors and William H. Russell started the Leavenworth & Pikes Peak Express Company just after the 1859 Colorado gold rush. But how to get letters quickly across almost 2,000 miles from St. Joseph, Missouri to bustling Sacramento? What evolved was the Pony Express with its slim young riders, remote stage stations with extra horses, hay, grain, water and a few flea-infested bunks. The route came across northeast Colorado at Julesburg, sped west to Salt Lake City with wages of “$50 per month and found,” and then skirting more mountains, entered the formidable Great Basin of Nevada before passing through the Sierras and on to the California capital.