The famous midnight ride of Paul
Revere and the Pony Express have something in common. Over the years both have been embellished with a great deal
of exaggeration. One historian
summed up the Pony Express’s history this way, “It’s a tale of truth, half-truth
and no truth at all.” Famed
showman Buffalo Bill Cody, who had served as a rider, made a Pony Express
enactment a part of his Wild West show, which greatly helped in making the mail
service a bigger-than-life legend.
But it is true that being a rider wasn’t easy work; it was lonely,
arduous, and above all dangerous. The
Pony Express’s famous advertisement pretty much summed it up; it read,
“Wanted:
Young, skinny, wiry fellows not over eighteen. Must be expert riders, willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred.”
During the 1800s thousands of people
left their homes behind in the East and headed out West. Pioneers hungry for new lands left
their roots and crossed the continent, thousands of future sourdoughs in search
of riches raced to various mining sites throughout the new frontier and
opportunists ready to provide services to all these people migrated along with
them.
The only way these displaced people could communicate with those left
back East was a very slow mail delivery by boat, which went from New York to
Panama across Panama by canoe and mule, and then by boat again to San
Francisco. Or the somewhat faster method,
but still slow overland mail service, which took three to four weeks. In 1860 three men, William H. Russell,
Alexander Majors and William B. Waddell, who were well-established freighters
delivering supplies to military outposts came up with a fast mail service over
land. They claimed they would
deliver the same mail in just ten days or less. In the beginning the business was given the impossible name:
Central Overland California and Pike’s Peak Express Company. Very quickly it was shortened to simply
the Pony Express.
The
route went through a whole lot of Indian land from St. Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento,
California, a total of nearly 2000 miles and those Indians were already
warring against the occupation of their land, so there was always the possibility
that a rider would be attacked. Being
an expert rider and having a fast horse therefore were essential.
Robert Haslam raised his right hand and took the following oath as did
all the other riders:
“I, ___, DO HEREBY SWEAR, BEFORE THE GREAT AND LIVING GOD, THAT DURING
MY ENGAGEMENT, AND WHILE I AM AN EMPLOYEE OF RUSSELL, MAJORS AND WADDELL, I
WILL, UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES, USE PROFANE LANGUAGE, THAT I WILL DRINK NO
INTOXICATING LIQUORS, THAT I WILL NOT QUARREL OR FIGHT WITH ANY OTHER EMPLOYEE
OF THE FIRM, AND THAT IN EVERY RESPECT I WILL CONDUCT MYSELF HONESTLY, BE
FAITHFUL TO MY DUTIES, AND SO DIRECT ALL MY ACTS AS TO WIN THE CONFIDENCE OF MY
EMPLOYERS. SO HELP ME GOD."
That’s a pretty remarkable, all encompassing oath if you
ask me. It seemed like a lot to
expect from young adventure seeking youth. But apparently it worked and they chose the right people,
because in the eighteen months the service was in operation 34,753 pieces of
mail were sent and delivered with only one mail delivery lost. The service employed 183 riders and
paid them as much as $150 a month, which is equivalent to about $2700 in
today’s money. And those riders
survived pretty well considering all the hazards; Indians killed only one
rider. The completion of
transcontinental telegraph service was the reason the Pony Express had to come
to an end. Obviously it wouldn’t
be able to compete. But it would
have had to end as a business any way, because during the eighteen months it
never ever showed a profit.
And what became of Pony Bob?
He continued to work as a rider for Wells Fargo and later scouted for
the U.S. Army. He was with his
good friend Buffalo Bill Cody, when Cody was sent to negotiate the surrender of
Sitting Bull. He died poor in
Chicago in 1912.
