The Pony Express was an American express mail service that used relays of horse-mounted riders between Missouri and California. On April 3, 1860, a pair of riders took off from their respective starting points of St. Joseph, Missouri, and Sacramento, California, with the goal of delivering a backpack of mail to the other city within 10 days. The route stretched across the Midwestern plains and Western deserts and mountains, the riders stopping for fresh horses every 10 to 15 miles before handing off to another rider after a few stops. Have you heard of the Pony Express?

The Pony Express was founded by businessmen William Russell, William Waddell, and Alexander Majors, who hoped to secure an exclusive mail contract from the federal government with their new service. For a while they succeeded, despite expensive rates and the disruption caused by various conflicts between Indigenous peoples and settlers. Do you know that mail delivery service in the US in the 1800's was a dangerous job which could lead to death?

Despite delivering mails was a tough and dangerous job, the Pony Express riders came to be treated like celebrities. The high point for the service came in November 1860, when the Pony Express relayed the news of Abraham Lincoln's presidential election from Fort Kearny, Nebraska, to Fort Churchill, Nevada, in a whopping five days. Are you surprised that back then, people had to wait days for the news to reach them from one part of the country to another?

But for all the hoopla surrounding the enterprise, the Pony Express had a short existence. The telegraph already stretched from the East Coast to the Mississippi River by the time the first two riders galloped off, and by June of 1860, Congress had authorized the subsidization of a coast-to-coast telegraph system. The completion of the transcontinental telegraph line that October marked the official demise of the Pony Express, ending the service that blazed in and out of existence after a year and a half, yet left an indelible imprint as an emblem of the Old West. Have you ever watched the TV series The Young Riders (1989-1992) about the adventures of the riders of the Pony Express?