Of course you’ve heard about the Pony Express riders, those guys were
tough caballeros.
The Pony Express mail service—from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento,
California—was inaugurated on April 3, 1860, just as the Civil War was starting
to get hot.
Those hardy riders, including 14-year-old William Cody (he became
“Buffalo Bill”), accomplished almost unbelievable feats in the saddle to keep
the almost unbelievably expensive mail service in operation for about 18
months.
You may not have heard that the first transcontinental telegraph line
put the Pony Express out of service more or less instantly in October 1861.
Talk about disruptive technology!
The Pony Express was a good idea waiting to happen. The state of
California was admitted to the Union in 1850, but it was essentially out of
touch with the eastern states. Regular mail carried on boats took about a month
to travel from the East Coast to the West Coast. The Butterfield Express
overland stagecoach could carry mail and packages across the western plains in
about three weeks at best, and sometimes the stage didn’t make it through.
The Pony Express riders could take a mail packet (about 20 pounds) from
Missouri to California in 8-10 days. Unbelievable!
The riders made $25 a week (about $722 in current collars) to cover
75-100 miles per shift, jumping on a fresh mount every 10-15 miles. The Pony
Express had about 80 riders on the payroll, and stabled 400-500 horses in more
than 100 relay stations along the route.
Here’s another unbelievable factoid: it cost $5 in 1860 to drop a half-ounce
of mail into the Pony Express packet. That’s about $145 in current dollars—a 20-pound
mail packet was worth about $93,000.
Of course, there were substantial operating costs, but William Russell,
William Waddell and Alexander Majors thought they were going to make a killing
when they put the Pony Express into operation. However, they never nailed down
the juicy government contract they hoped for, and then those pesky pre-Silicon
Valley guys rolled out the telegraph….
Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2015
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