Beginning of Pony Express service

News of President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination spread fairly fast, which in the days before the telegraph or any form of quick long-distance communication was not very fast at all. Newspapers to the South and West took days and even a week in a few cases to receive the news. The Wells Fargo coaches, the fastest means of communication of the day, took just under a month to go from Missouri to Sacramento. A faster and more reliable means of communication was needed, and the government turned to a couple of the Wells Fargo stagecoach owners to set up a cross-continental mail service.

On this day, April 3, in 1860, the Pony Express went into service, with riders from San Francisco leaving to meet up with riders from St. Joseph, Missouri. Six hundred broncos chosen for speed and endurance were purchased for the service, along with 75 men selected for their light weight (under 125 lbs.) and the necessary gun skills to fight off Indians.

The route consisted of a series of 150 stations roughly 10 miles apart. Riders took about an hour to gallop from station to station — that being the maximum distance the horse could travel  before tiring — then jumped on a new horse and continued to the next relief station. It was an ingenious, if somewhat logistically complicated, operation, but it would not last long. The transcontinental telegraph made the Pony Express obsolete just a few short years after its founding.