150 years ago today (April 4th 1860), at about at about 7:15 p.m. Missouri time, Kentuckian Johnny Fry rode out from the stables in St. Joseph, Missouri. He carried with him a pouch containing 49 letters, five private telegrams, and a copy of the St. Joseph Gazette within a mochila (from the Spanish for pouch). That mochila was then ridden across the prairies, plains, deserts, and mountains of the states of Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and Nevada, before finally finishing the one thousand, nine hundred and sixty-six mile trip at the the San Francisco Alta telegraph office, California, at 1:00 a.m, April 14th. It was the first ride of the Pony Express.

This incredible venture is largely the story of one man, Alexander Majors, and brought to us through history by the self-promotion of another: Billy Cody. It was also the last hurrah of natural horsepower against the inexorable advance of technology in the West.

Majors was a businessman, through and through, and a hard worker. By the age of twenty, he had married and bought his own farm. In 1848, he formed his own wagon freighting company hauling merchandise to Santa Fe. In 1853, he was hauling military supplies to Fort Union – often personally. Majors developed a reputation for the being the best freighter in the West. He was ever the field man, overseeing the actual running of the wagons on the trail. He was responsible for the establishment of the Kansas City stockyards, and hence largely to be thanked for the growth and prosperity of Kansas City’s commercial fortunes. Within ten years Majors was employing some 4,000 men, running a meat-packing plant, operating his wagon trains, and supplying those same trains with the cured pork, soap and candles needed for the trip. He was, needless to say, hugely successful.

On July 9, 1857, a somewhat less-heralded (and yet, momentous) achievement occurred, one that would doubtless have been keenly watched by the entrepreneurial Majors. The ‘San Antonio-San Diego Mail Line’ began a bi-monthly service from San Antonio, Texas over the distance of fifteen hundred miles all the way to San Diego, California. The reason most modern readers will not have heard of this noble venture is probably due to the fact that it became known under the very ignoble name of the “Jackass Mail” – due to the last 180 miles (between Fort Yuma and San Diego) being covered on mule-back rather than stagecoach. The Jackass Mail would nevertheless run for over a year until December 1858.

In that year, a rival organisation – the Butterfield Overland Stage – began rolling from St. Louis on September 15. Their destination, twice-weekly, was to get their passengers and mail all the way to San Francisco (and all the way by stage). Each run, however, encompassed 2,812 miles and yet had to be completed in 25 days or less in order to qualify for the $600,000 government grant for mail service. Their chosen route also crossed states that were in the early rumblings of rebellion. It was now that Majors (in partnership with two other men, Russell and Waddell, as the ‘Central Overland California and Pikes Peak Express Company’) entered the trans-continental race.

Proposing a direct route west, straight accross the heart of the country, and using mounted riders rather than stagecoaches, the three men hoped to establish their service as a faster and more reliable conduit for the mail and win that exclusive and valuable government mail contract. Majors had acquired more than 500 horses for the project (averageing about 14½ hands high; thus, the title of ‘Pony’ Express was appropriate), and hired over 200 men to stock relay stations every twelve miles along the route. This was roughly the maximum distance a horse could travel at full gallop. The rider changed to a fresh horse at each station, taking only the mochila with him. It was often remarked that the horse and rider should perish before the mochila was lost.

Each pony was being asked to carry the 20 pounds of mail in the mochila, along with a further 20 pounds consisting of a water sack, a Bible, a horn for alerting the relay station master to prepare the next horse, a revolver, and a choice of a rifle or another revolver. Eventually, everything except one revolver and a water sack was removed, allowing for a theoretical total of 165 pounds on the pony’s back. Riders, who could not weigh over 125 pounds, changed about every 75–100 miles (120–160 km), and rode day and night. In emergencies, a given rider might ride two stages back to back – that’s over 20 hours galloping ponies over wilderness. We do not know how long those worthy ponies lasted in this career, but we do know that the Express wanted riders that were preferably under the age of 25, and orphans. Some riders were as young as fourteen. The express route was extremely hazardous, but only one mail delivery was ever lost. The full distance was travelled in ten days.

To compensate riders for the dangers they faced from miscreants, Native Americans, and from the land itself, the company was forced to offer exorbitantly high wages of $25 a week, twenty five times the average for unskilled labour. As a result, postage rates for the Express stood at $5 per half-ounce. At those rates – the equivalent of a $100 today – only the most important letters and telegrams were transported in this fashion. Letters were written on the thinnest paper and rates such as $2.50 the quarter-ounce were introduced to encourage more lightweight letter writers. Even so, the Pony Express was a huge leap forward in communication with California. One San Fransiscan news editor remarked:

“One by one, the chains of darkness and desert are broken, and we are brought nearer and nearer to our brethern on the other side of the continent… Wherever men think, and books are read, there the Pony Express to California will be heard of, and the news welcomed.”

By the end of 1860, both the Butterfield stage company and the partnership of Russell, Majors, and Waddell were in serious financial difficulty. The Government contract was yet to be awarded, and both companies had been operating at a loss for some time. In March of that year, John Butterfield was forced out of his firm due to debt. The eastern end of the route was taken over by Ben Holladay. At the western end, Denver to San Francisco, the stage company was taken over by Wells Fargo. Although the Pony Express riders such as Johnny Fry proved that the central/northern mail route was viable and much faster, Russell, Majors and Waddell did not get the contract to deliver mail over the route. The contract was instead awarded to the more southerly, Congressionally favored, Butterfield Overland Stage in March 1861. The ‘Central Overland California and Pikes Peak Express’ was becoming known as the ‘Clean Out of Cash and Poor Pay Express’.

It was only the outbreak of civil war that saved the Pony Express from immediate dissolution. With the south now inaccessible to the stage coaches, the Pony Express was now a strategically crucial link between the Union’s west and east coasts. It was by pony that California heard of the election of Lincoln, the seccession of South Carolina, and the firing on Fort Sumter. Daring young riders like Billy Cody were now the lifeblood of information and knowledge of what was happening in the wider world as events raced forward.

It did not change the fact, however, that the Pony Express was in deep financial trouble; its fees did not cover its costs and, without government subsidies and lucrative mail contracts, it could not make up the difference. Wells Fargo took over the western portion of the Pony Express route from Salt Lake City to San Francisco. Russell, Majors & Waddell continued to operate the eastern leg from Salt Lake City to St. Joseph, Missouri, under subcontract. But by then, technology was already threatening. Telegraphs and railroads were a reality. The telegraph spelled the final doom of the incredible Pony Express when it went bankrupt in October 1861 after the opening of the Transcontinental Telegraph, and the extension in train services killed off Majors’ freighting and stage coach operations at the same time.

In 1867, he moved his family to Salt Lake City where he was engaged in grading roadbeds and furnishing ties and telegraph poles to the Union Pacific Railway. When the transcontinental railway was completed, Majors was present at the ceremonial driving of the Gold Spike on May 20, 1869. He spent some time prospecting in Utah, and in then in 1880 was a “mining broker” in Helena, Montana. In 1887, just as he was turning 73 years old, he was in Omaha trying to scratch a living making soap.

It was after a final move to Denver Colorado, old, ill, penniless, and trying to write his memoirs, that former young wagonmaster and Pony Express rider, William F. Cody, found him. In the almost 30 intervening years (after serving as a civilian scout and being awarded the Medal of Honour), Cody had fallen in with dime novelist Ned Buntline. Through his novels, Buntline would transform the reality of Cody into the mythical figure of ‘Buffalo Bill’. Ever the showman and self-promoter, Cody went on to enhance and promote the legend of the Pony Express. He produced and starred in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show, travelling the world with one of the most successful and largest exhibitions of its day. It included Annie Oakley, Sitting Bull, and – of course – a highly popular Pony Express segment. Cody helped Majors, taking him along as part of the show. Majors even lived at Cody’s 4,000 acre ‘Scouts Rest Ranch’ in North Platte, Nebraska for a time. Majors returned there to die at 86, thirteen days into a new century – the story of his remarkable young men and their ponies surviving him into the modern age.

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