)
In the year 1859, three gentlemen — William H Russell, Alexander Majors and William B Waddell — all notable names in freighting business back then, decided to hasten the delivery of letters and parcels, and founded a company that would use ponies for the purpose. And hence was born ‘the Pony Express’, a service to carry messages, parcels, newspapers and mails, besides other things, on horseback.
The service, initially operating under the name ‘Leavenworth and Pike’s Peak Express Company’, delivered its first mail on April 3, 1860, and ran under this name until October 1861, from its headquarters in St Joseph, Missouri, US.
In 1860, it had 157 stations, about 16 km apart from each other. At each station, the express rider would stop for a change of horse, taking only the mail ‘pouch’ or backpack with him.
Until the birth of the Pony Express, the conventional mail delivery system of the day was a rather cumbersome exercise; it took at least 10 days for a message to be delivered to different parts of the US from Atlantic and Pacific coasts.
The communication revolution of sorts that the world is experiencing today — where emails or instant messages are easily delivered to far-off places in a jiffy — has a lot to thank the Pony Express for. After all, it was a gradual progress started with humble horses that led up to the age of emails, internet and horsepower.
