St Joseph, Missouri, USA
1860 - April 3 – The Pony Express begins its first run from Saint Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento, California.

April 3, 1860: The first rider was to leave St. Joseph at 5:00 pm. However, the mail had been slowed up in Chicago for transfer to Hannibal, Missouri. A train was stripped down with no passenger cars at Hannibal. Once the mail arrived there, the train rolled across the state at a record speed to St. Joseph. It finally arrived around 7:00 pm and the mail was rushed to the stables where the first rider, Johnny Fry awaited. The mail was placed into the specially made mochilla saddle and at 7:15 pm a cannon was fired alerting everyone Fry was on his way to the river. Cheering crowds waived at Fry as he made his way through streets of St. Joseph. Once at the river, Fry boarded a ferry which took him and his horse Sylph across the river to Kansas where he rode at breakneck speeds for 90 miles before another rider took over. In Sacramento, at noon, the first rider, Harry Roff, took off with the eastbound mail.
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The PONY EXPRESS AND HOW IT WAS FIRST STARTED


St. Joe in 1860 became the starting point of the famous pony express, a daring enterprise, which no one but an American would have deemed possible. There was a Wall street scheme at that time for obtaining a subsidy of ten millions of dollars from the government for carrying the mails overland from New York to San Francisco for a year. William H. Russell, backed by Secretary of War Floyd, thought the scheme was not warranted in the interests of economy. He also offered to bet $200,000, that being all he had with him at the time, that he could put on a mail line that would cover the 1,950 miles between St. Joe and San Francisco in ten days.

The Wall street boys took the bet, and the big go-as-you-please race against time began. Mr. Russell bought 300 of the toughest and fleetest ponies he could find, and hired 125 men who could ride on horseback without painful regrets on the following day. The relays were made at ten to twenty miles apart. Each rider had to cover sixty miles, and allow himself two minutes to skip from one horse to the other with his saddlebags of mail.

April 6, 1860, the pony express started. A gun fired on the steamer Sacramento, in the bay at San Francisco, was the signal. Billy Baker, mounted on the restless little hornet Border Ruffian, made a little cloud of dust, and, as the echo of the big gun died away, swift as the telegram raising the salary of the operators along the line, he sped toward the Sierras.

All went well. The first rider made twenty miles in forty-nine minutes. Everything ran smoothly, notwithstanding the Indians and the deserts, till the courier reached the Platte. It was a case of Damon and Pythias, so far as high water went, and the treacherous river was more than a bank full of icy water rushing over its uneasy bed of quicksand. He only thought of his employers, however, and plunged in. The steed went down like a shot and was never more seen, but the brave rider, with his bag, battled with the roaring, icy torrent till he stepped, panting and dripping, on the muddy shore, and with chattering teeth and a staggering gait started for the station ten miles away.

Sixty miles out from St. Joe, Johnny Fry awaiting the arrival of the courier till it seemed to him it was too late to possibly make it. When he got his packet he had four hours to make up. It looked impossible. At St. Joseph thousands were gathered on the bluffs to see the last rider come in. People hardly breathed as the time drew near, and yet no signs of his approach.

It was getting to be a torture to wait. No one spoke. As the time was almost up a little cloud of dust rose on the western horizon, then soon after the measured beat of a pony's hoofs came pulsating on the breeze, and, lathered from head to heels, the panting pony, with wild eye and fluttering breath, came stumbling to the spot, making the last mile in one minute and fifty seconds.

Aurora Daily Express
Aurora, Illinois
April 19, 1892

April 3, 1860

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