Pony Express Christmas Card Ride

Between April 1860 and October 1861, the Pony Express carried 35,000 pieces of mail by horseback between St. Joseph, Missouri and Sacramento, California.  The service halved the time it took for mail to be carried between those cities by stagecoach at that time.  I didn’t know until this holiday season that mail is still carried on the Pony Express route each year.  I learned about the Pony Express Christmas Card Ride when friends received a Christmas card stamped with that information.

The National Pony Express Association (NPEA) organizes a re-ride annually, alternating westbound and eastbound.  The envelope my friends received was carried from Douglas to Glendo in Wyoming.  An acquaintance of theirs is a devoted member of the NPEA and participated in this year’s re-ride and sent the card.

I had always assumed that the ‘pony’ in Pony Express was more colloquial than accurate, but I was wrong.  The height of the 400 horses purchased for the original service averaged 14.2h in height.  On the eastern end of the route Morgans and Thoroughbreds were commonly stocked, while on the western end mustangs were more typical.

Riders had to weigh 125 pounds or less.  Each rider traveled about 75 miles, with horses averaging 15 miles each.  Riders switched horses at stations along the route at distances depending on terrain.  The service was terminated when telegraph service made it obsolete.

Despite being relatively short-lived, the Pony Express has an out-sized place in American western lore.  As one example, the newsletter of the Fell Pony Society of North America is called the Fell Pony Express.  And I have named my own trips to the mailbox similarly.  I admire the horsemen and women who support the NPEA and make re-rides happen so that I get to see an envelope carried on the historic route!

© Jenifer Morrissey, 2019