April 4, 2025 • 38 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, The Pony Express is synonymous with speed, endurance, and the American spirit of getting things done. While the name is recognized not just across the United States but around the world, it’s not widely known that the Pony Express was part of a larger corporation—or that it lasted only 18 months—or that it was never meant to last in the first place. Here to tell the story of the Pony Express is Jim DeFelice, author of West Like Lightning: The Brief, Legendary Ride of the Pony Express.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lei Habib, and this is our American stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
The Pony Express is synonymous with speed, endurance, and the
American spirit to just get things done. While the name
is recognizable not just throughout the States but also all
over the world, it is not widely known that the
(00:32):
Pony Express was part of a larger corporation, or that
it only lasted eighteen months, or that it was never
meant to last in the first place. Here to tell
the story of the Pony Express is Jim de Felice,
author of West Like Lightning, The Brief Legendary Ride.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Of the Pony Express.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
And we're telling this story because on this day in history,
in eighteen sixty, the Pony Express began.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Take it away.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
June America in the late eighteen fifties going into eighteen
sixty is an extremely exciting, vibrant place. You have a
lot of innovation, a lot of manufacturing kind of just starting.
But one of the things that's tough is to, especially
(01:26):
for us these days, is to think back about how
huge the country really was. It went from from the
Atlantic coast, from the Atlantic Ocean, all the way out
to the Pacific in California. California, by the way, was
very very important at the time because they were, you know,
was the place where you were digging You're actually literally
(01:47):
digging money out of the ground gold. And the biggest
problem with this huge country is that to communicate to
simply to get from New York City, say, or.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Washington, d c.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
The seat of our government, all the way to where
that to where they were digging out the money in California,
it literally took weeks and often months. As a matter
of fact, something as simple as sending a letter from
Washington to California it couldn't involve.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
As much as six months. It would.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
Typically an important letter would typically go by steamer.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
It would go down.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
To roughly where the to the area of the Panama Canal,
though obviously the Panama Canal wasn't wasn't up and running yet.
It would go overland by coach to meet another steamer
on the other side of.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
The Isthmus.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
And from there would then be taken up north to
California and then you know, on go on its merry way.
There were other ways could send something by stagecoach. People
were dreaming about connecting the entire country with a railroad.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
Which had not yet happened.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
And there was also this new invention called the telegraph,
which showed a lot of promise, but string simply stringing
the lines from one place to another was a massive challenge.
And it's it's in that atmosphere, in that need, that.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
The Pony Express is born.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
To break down the three owners of the Pony Express
and kind of the related companies, you.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Have these really unique and.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
Very interesting individuals. You have Alexander Majors, who the best
way to describe him really is as a teamster. He
ran ox carts, he knew everything about running Ox carts,
he knew everything about Ox trains, he knew he knew
how to get really heavy stuff from one place to another.
(04:10):
Now he had other certainly other qualities. Very devoted Christian
gave out supposedly to every.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
Member of the company, but certainly to many.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
We'll leave it at that, a small bible, and he
also gave them some rules. If you were going to
work for Russell, Majors and Woodell, there were a lot
of different rules that you had to follow, one of
which a very important rule was not to curse or
take the Lord's name in the main. Now, I don't know,
(04:41):
we don't have many ox drivers these days, but it's
but from what I've read about about them, typically, I
think it's it's very, very difficult to believe that they
that every ox driver that worked for these guys followed
that rule. Nonetheless, that was one of his rules.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
He was also very hands on.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
Can't say he knew every employee, but he knew a
lot of them, and he knew he certainly knew the area,
and he was really the hands on, the hands on
the guy.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
Then he had William Waddell. And what ELL's.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
A little bit that there's not a huge amount of
information about Waddell. He's usually looked on, as you know,
as kind of the quieter business type, the guy that's
keeping the books and the behind the scenes manager, and
that does seem that does seem to be, you know,
(05:40):
kind of his pattern.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
And then you have William Russell. Now William Russell.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
Was in some ways the most interesting of them. They're
all entrepreneurs, but he was kind of a master entrepreneur,
and he.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Had the vision.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
He had the vision for the Pony Express portion of
their business, and he always he had the kind of
the aggrandizing imagination that kind of led them, led them
to expand and expand led them to.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
Start the Pony Express.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
He saw the potential, but he saw the publicity was
very important, and ultimately he becomes the fellow who's dealing
with Washington, with the Congressman, with the banks, and he's
ultimately going to be the reason that the Pony Express
and their whole the whole connected enterprise go to hell unfortunately.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
And you're listening to Jim Dave Felice, author of Westlake,
lightning the brief legendary ride of the Pony Express and
giving us a context, which we love to do on
this show, give an historical context to the things we
now know or take for granted. When we come back
more of this remarkable story, the story of the Pony Express,
(07:10):
or that is the story behind the story of the
Pony Express. Here on our American Stories, Lie Hibib here
the host of our American Stories. Every day on this show,
we're bringing inspiring stories from across this great country, stories
(07:32):
from our big cities and small towns. But we truly
can't do the show without you. Our stories are free
to listen to, but they're not free to make. If
you love what you hear, go to Ouramerican Stories dot
com and click the donate button.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
Give a little, give a lot.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
Go to Ouramerican Stories dot com and get and we're
(08:09):
back with our American Stories and the story of the
Pony Express. Jim day Felice, author of Westlke Lightning the
brief legendary Ride of the Pony Express, was just telling
us about the Pony's origin and how three businessmen Alexander Majors,
William Russell, and William Waddell formed it as a subsidiary
(08:30):
of their larger freighting empire. Back to Jim with the story.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
Their goal was to deliver anything that needed to be delivered,
whether it was people, government supplies, ammunition, maybe cattle, money,
especially newspapers, whatever.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
They wanted to be the ones.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
That would get it to you wherever you were west
of the Missouri River. And they thought that they could
basically build an empire and make a lot of money
doing that. And you know, it sounds in some ways,
it sounds like maybe a little bit like a hair
brain scheme, but the reality is that another company had
(09:23):
done exactly the same thing a few years before, based
around or using strategically using the Erie Canal in New York,
and that company became fabulously wealthy, fabulously rich all of
the people involved, and it's still around today. As a
matter of fact, we know it as American Express, and
(09:47):
basically Russell.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Majors and Waddell.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
Wanted to do the same thing with the company that
we know best as the parent company of the Pony Express. Now,
the Pony Express was a very very kind of specific
subset of their enterprise. Its goal was to deliver mail,
which they also had other ways of doing, but to
(10:14):
deliver mail.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Very quickly. They're basically the overnight service, if you will,
of the time.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
Although overnight in their case would be ten days. They
promised to deliver the mail from Saint Joe, Missouri, over
to Sacramento and then down to San Francisco in exactly
ten days. That was an amazing, amazing amount of time.
(10:49):
We're talking actually two thousand miles specifically, it's a little
bit closer than nineteen hundred.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
But in order to do that, it just shocked people.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
It would be like going from I guess dial up,
putting phones down into these odd modems which made weird sounds,
and going from that to kind of the high speed
intrement that that we're used to now, So to go
from six months to ten days was just absolutely mind
blowing and it captured the imagination of pretty much everybody
(11:26):
that heard it.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
And to tell you the truth that that whole.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
Idea of capturing people's imagination was probably as important as
any other reason that the company invented the Pony Express.
I should also point out that it wasn't just this
fantastic idea of getting publicity for their company and having
everybody say, yeah, well, we have to we have to
(11:53):
go with Russell Majors and Waddell for the service, because
these guys can if they can get mail from Saint
Joe to Sacramento in ten days, they can get Aunt Louise,
you know, the birthday cake that I want to send her.
They were also after a million dollar contract from the
government to deliver mail. That was very important because in.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
Expanding their empire, and you know, they had they had.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
Ox trains, they had stage coaches, they even had stores,
and believe it or not, they had banks, which, by
the way, included some of their banknotes included portraits of themselves.
Not too egotistical there, right. But in kind of doing
all of this expanding in the late eighteen fifties, they
(12:43):
ran into well they ran and so what we'll call
a cash problem, or I guess my is my Irish
grandmother would have put it. You know, their eyes were
a bit bigger than their stomachs, and so they kind
of bid off more than they could chew, and they
needed money.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
They needed infusions of.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
Cash for various for various reasons. And so they saw
this million dollar contract and the guarantee of delivering the
mail so quickly. It's kind of a way not only
to deliver mail, which they were committed to doing and
getting publicity for their company, but also getting a million dollars.
(13:29):
So the route that they proposed, they already had a
network of stage coaches throughout the West and stagecoach stops
and other infrastructure. So they basically did is they looked
at the infrastructure that they had and they mapped out
a route in order to kind of give up I
(13:50):
mean over the roughly nineteen hundred miles, we're talking about
one hundred and eighty six one hundred and ninety stations,
and there would be places a rider would ride roughly
one hundred miles at a shot, and every ten miles
or so there would be a post where he would
(14:11):
hop off. There'd be a fresh horse waiting. He would
throw his the mail bags or the molechillas which had
the pony mail in it, over the over the fresh horse,
new saddle, and off they'd go for another again roughly
ten miles, and that would happen at the At the
(14:32):
major stations, the riders would actually change and a fresh
rider and fresh horses would you know, would continue the
ride either east or west.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
It would do that generalize a little bit, but it
would do that twice twice a week. Each each way.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
The same rider would go from point A to point
B and then from point B back to point A.
The riders tended to be depending where you were, but
almost always they were from the area. They were very
familiar with. They're very familiar with the route. The routes
were very expeditious.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
There messed up.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
Must have been a few places where there were, you know,
shortcuts that that only the riders knew, but for the
most part.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
They were along.
Speaker 3 (15:25):
Relatively well known trails. The records are for the most part,
the records that the company had. They were destroyed and
so we really we don't even to be honest, we
don't have an actual full ledger of you know, who
(15:50):
exactly was on you know, was a writer. Now, a
lot of great work has been done and in terms
of kind of sussing a lot of that out among
other placess there's a phenomenal museum of the Pony Express
in Saint Joseph and they have a great list.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
They've done more various people have done.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
Detective work on figuring it out.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
On who was in there. But there's still there.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
There's a massive amount of information we don't really have.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
We don't even know. We can't even say who the
first fellow was.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
Who robe you know, in the Pony Express and that
was you know, and that's kind of remarkable because, to
be honest, that was like a really famous it's a
really famous ride.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
And you're listening to Jim day Felice tell the story
of the Pony Express, which started as a subset of
a bigger enterprise. A few guys, Majors Russell and Waddell
were trying to build essentially a modern ups a shipping titan.
When we come back more of the story of the
Pony Express, an American dreamers story in a way par excellence,
(17:48):
an American mythology story as well. Here on our American Stories,
(18:08):
and we returned to our American stories and author Jim
day Felice with the story of the Pony Express. Before
the break, we were hearing about how many of the
records that the Pony Express's parent company had run by
Alexander Majors, William Russell and William Waddell, have been lost
over time. I mean, imagine, we don't know who the
first Pony Express rider was. Remarkable, Let's return to Jim
(18:32):
day Felice, author of Westlake Lightning, the brief legendary ride
of the Pony Express.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
We don't even know.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
We can't even say who the first fellow was, who wrote,
you know, the Pony Express, and that was you know,
and that's kind of remarkable because to be a lotest
that was like a really famous it's a really famous ride.
I kind of like Johnny Fry as the possible, you know,
(19:10):
the possibly the first guy.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
But there are other candidates. Admittedly one of the.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
Reasons there's a lot of stories associated with different riders.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
This one kind of got attached to Fry and like everything.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
Like many things related to the Pony Express, it may.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
Or may not be a park.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
Well, actually, when you hear it, you're gonna tell me
it's definitely apocryphal.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
But I'll tell them, I'll tell it. Anyways. Now, these guys,
what you.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
Have to know about the Pony Express riders. For the
most part, they're they're in their early twenties. Some of
them are are certainly married.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
But on the other hand, a lot of the riders.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
Were, you know, they hadn't quite found the right one yet,
mostly in their their younger twenties. They're certainly athletic. I mean,
to be able to ride a horse for one hundred miles,
eighty miles, one hundred miles, and you know, do it
in all sorts of weather. You have to be fairly
athletic to do that. You're being paid pretty well. Now,
there are a couple of different estimates on how much
(20:17):
a rider was paid. One of the figure that's largely
accepted is one hundred dollars a month. They were certainly
which is a lot of money at that time, and
they certainly were very well paid, and they were kind
of they were also kind of like rock stars of
their time.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
They were.
Speaker 3 (20:33):
They were very you know, oh there's a pony rider,
and they're very you know, they're very famous.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
Looked up up to.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
For you know, for all the reasons that I guess.
You know, we still admire baseball stars or football stars
these days. But this story about Johnny Johnny Fry is
that being an attractive fellow and getting one hundred dollars
or whatever, he was being paid eight a month, you know,
he was Steve was certainly an eligible bachelor. And it
(21:05):
is said that many many of the young women in
the area right near Saint Joe, well, you know, they
were trying to catch Johnny's eye. And it's reputed that
one of the ways that they were trying to catch.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
His eye was actually through to another bodily asset.
Speaker 3 (21:30):
That happens to be the stomach, because you know, the
way to a man's heart is often through his stomach.
And they would make different, you know, different.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
Things, and you know.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
He would allegedly would grab them as he rode by.
But you know, it's very, very hard to grab a
whole chicken while you're you know, while you're certainly while
you're holding onto the.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
Reins and then eat it, you know, it's.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
It's very difficult. So allegedly this young woman, you know,
history has kind of clouded out her her identity, but
so we were to call her back Age just because
it's a it's a common name at the time. And
it's alleged that Becky got this brilliant idea and knowing
that Johnny kind of was partial to sweets, she went
(22:11):
and she invented a delicious concoction that could be eaten
on horseback and as a matter of fact, could be
speared as he rode by.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
And it is.
Speaker 3 (22:23):
Said that Becky invented for Pony Express rider the first
donut which the Pony Express rider could stick his forefinger
through and then eat.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
At his leisure as he rode on his throat.
Speaker 3 (22:41):
Well, I'll be honest, I don't know how true that
story is, but it does kind of summarize some of
the some of the fun stuff about and some of
the fun legends that were connected with a with a
Pony Express. So as the the the Pony Express itself
(23:02):
was always seen, as you know, as a means to
an end. It was seen as a way to get
publicity to kind of shore up their system of delivering
the mail. And most of all was seen as a
way of getting a million dollars out of the federal government.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
As things turn out.
Speaker 3 (23:22):
They ended up only getting half of that. It's questionable
whether a million dollars, by the way, would would have
kept them going anyway, but half million certainly would.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
Now Russell was back east.
Speaker 3 (23:37):
They had opened an office in one of the fanciest
what was at the time the fanciest building in New
York is one of the first skyscrapers.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
On Wall Street.
Speaker 3 (23:47):
And he was going back and forth between New York
and Washington, d c. Working on the federal contracts, also
trying to get business, you know, various business, I.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
Should say, not just just trying to get five dollars letters.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
And as the company's cash problems grew more and more,
he came up with a solution to solve the to
solve some of those problems by asking the Feds to
advance them money that would be owed under the contract.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
That started out.
Speaker 3 (24:25):
Okay, but you know this, I don't know, second or
third time somebody comes to asking you to pay them
for a job you haven't quite done yet. You know,
you get a little bit, you might get a little
testy and so when the government refused, Russell said, I'll
tell you what. Tell you what, Let's make a deal.
Rather than I don't really need the money from you,
(24:47):
just give me. Just give me a note that says
that I have a contract with you, and once I
fulfill that contract, you'll I'll be paid.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
And you know, no problem with doing that. And so
Russell got his note.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
And Russell then turned around and went to financiers to
bangs to other people with money and said, hey, I
have this, I have this contract. I'm going to make
you know X amount of dollars in March, but right
now I have a little cash shortage, so can you
loan I'll tell you what. Loan me five thousand dollars.
(25:34):
And the figures are a lot more than this. We'll
just use this as an example. Loan me five thousand
dollars on the fact against the note that I have
for ten thousand dollars. And when my note, when I'm
paid from the government, I will give you six thousand
dollars or whatever the actual numbers were. And so they said, great.
(25:59):
They only problem is his time kind of goes on.
You know, he gets one loan based on this note
and then you know, if he can get one loan
based on that note, maybe he can get two or three,
or four or five. But unfortunately, those the cash problems
going to persist.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
And finally Russell has has kind of worked.
Speaker 3 (26:21):
It's kind of worked his advances to the point where
he's basically not going to get any more notes from
the government.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
And you've been listening to Jim day Felice tell a
heck of a story about the Pony Express. I read
a lot of history and these stories I did not know,
and my goodness, here was Russell, knowing his company a
cash full of problems, asking the Post Office for an
advance on the work he was doing that he had
a contract for, and when they finally refused, well, he
sought out what we now know are factors. That is,
(26:54):
he was selling his contracts and getting cash in advance
and paying high intro and of course that generally doesn't
end well. When we come back more of this remarkable
American story and a piece of American mythology, the story
of the Pony Express. Here on our American Stories, and
(27:37):
we're back with our American stories and our final segment
from Jim day Felice on the Pony Express. We had
just heard that the pony and its parent company run
by Alexander Majors, William Russell and William Waddell, had run
into some money troubles. While William Russell couldn't convince the
US government to give them a cash advance, he had
been able to give him a letter ensuring the payment
(27:59):
would be made aid.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
Eventually.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
He then took out loans against that note, but the
cash problems persistent. Let's return to this story.
Speaker 3 (28:11):
And he comes up with another scheme and convinces someone
in the government who has custody of or access to
a number of bonds that actually don't belong to the
government itself but actually belonged to Native American nations. And
kind of a long story short, Russell manages to get
(28:33):
those bonds and to use them as securities against money
that of course he doesn't have, but he's promising to pay,
and the companies using.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
The cash to pay things.
Speaker 3 (28:45):
And unfortunately for Russell and his partners and the Pony
Express in general, somebody went to look at those bonds
or to use those bonds and they weren't there, and
kind of the whole unfortunately, the whole house of cards,
financial cards that have been constructed around the pony and
(29:06):
the other businesses collapsed.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
Russell goes to jail.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
The pony is and the larger companies the assets are
sold and their main competitor ends up kind of taking
over most of the assets. That main competitor, by the way,
is still with us, and we know today as well
as Fargo. By far and away, the most famous person
(29:41):
connected with the Pony Express and in some ways with
the entire West is Buffalo Bill. Buffalo Bill Cody.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
Now, before I say anything.
Speaker 3 (29:57):
Else about Buffalo Bill, I have to say that the guy.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
Was a legitimate Western hero.
Speaker 3 (30:06):
He was an Indian scout, He got a Congressional medal,
He showed courage in battle, He was larger than life.
At some point, though, you kind of came in contact
with some people who said, hey, you know, you do
(30:27):
you already have a whole bunch of you know, fame,
and you have the bona fides of I mean, been
a hero.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
We'd like to do a little something with that.
Speaker 3 (30:35):
How about if we wrote a book about your life
and then used that book as the basis for like
a stage play. He said, show me the money, and
they did. They brought him out east and they put
(30:58):
on what essense was a stage play, but a stage
play that included horses on stage and guns being fired,
and bandits and hero cowboys running around and Native Americans
who sometimes were actual Native Americans and other times were
(31:19):
you know, or whoever you could get off the street
for a few bucks. And they did these shows that
become the Wild West Show.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
And you know, they don't just go to New York
City there, or Chicago or the big London, the big cities.
Speaker 3 (31:34):
But they also go to, you know, kind of to
smaller places around it. And when they came to your town,
if you were so lucky, or maybe the town next
next to you or twenty miles away, it was like
the super Bowl came to you, and you know, you
would just have there'd be several days and all these
other events and these extravagant shows, but kind of the
(31:58):
centerpiece the way that almost every show would start and
would be with a vignette of the Pony Express. Now
how close to actual the actual real Pony Express experience,
It was.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
Not so much, but it was a lot of fun
as you.
Speaker 3 (32:19):
Had a rider riding through and you had people shooting
off guns and you know, other people trying to steal
the mail, and you know, just made for a lot
of drama and a lot of adventure. And because of that,
everybody knew the wild West Show, and everybody knew about
the Pony Express. Buffalo Bill made a point of claiming
(32:40):
to have been part.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
Of the Pony Express when he was younger.
Speaker 3 (32:46):
Now, his historians and a lot of people doing the
research have pointed out that there is no way that
Bill Cody, who would have been a young, very young
at best teenager at the time, could have been an actual.
Speaker 2 (33:05):
Rider for the Pony Express.
Speaker 3 (33:07):
But at the time, his claims to have been a
rider were you know, were enough, and they were accepted
by you know, the newspapers. When they would, you know,
they would come to town or they do an advanced
story about Buffalo Bill, and Bill would tell all of
these tales about supposed tales about having ridden for the
(33:28):
pony He made a point of befriending and often was
looked you know, Pony Express riders or former riders, usually genuine,
sometimes not so much, but usually genuine would you know,
kind of seek him out, and you know, and he
would pose for photos and you know, all these publicity
things at the time, and he would just kind of
(33:51):
bask in that reflecting glory. He also do his credit
was said to have supported Alexander Majors when Majors was very,
very very old. And really, even though it's pretty clear
that it's pretty clear that Bill Cody did not really
(34:11):
ride for the Pony Express.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
I mean, maybe he cleaned a stable somewhere.
Speaker 3 (34:15):
Who knows, but he certainly wasn't a regular rider, but
he was the most. It's because of him, because of
the popularity of his Wild West shows that really that
we know, so you know that we still have the
Pony Express in our popular imaginations. The Pony Express, as
(34:38):
you know, as a business, really lasts a very very
brief time. The first ride is April third, eighteen sixty
and really the last ride is October eighteen sixty one,
so we're talking roughly eighteen months or so that it
really exists. And yet today just about everybody knows what
(34:58):
the Pony Express was. I think that the reason that
we remember it obviously the things that Buffalo Bill did.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
All of those.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
Things that they're kind of the romantic nature of the
West and you know, kind of the American spirit really
the pioneer spirit kind of becomes attached to the Pony
Express and those stories, those popular entertaining stories, and some
of the a lot of the legends that we tell
which are just you know, they're just kind of fun.
(35:32):
Maybe they contain a grain of truth, or maybe they
just kind of have a deeper grain of truth that
they're attached to.
Speaker 2 (35:39):
They kind of get all bundled up with the Pony Express.
Speaker 3 (35:45):
And so, you know, we have the Wild West Show,
and then we have movies and television shows, we have
you know, nonfiction books certainly, but we also have we
also have novels about Pony Express, and it just has
those those kind of facets that still speak to you know,
(36:07):
still speak to Americans, I think, and and really all
the world because pony you can often say Pony Express
in Europe. Say, if you say Pony Express, a lot
of people understand.
Speaker 2 (36:18):
What you're talking about, which is amazing.
Speaker 3 (36:20):
But you know, again, there's a there's a certain romance
attached to, you know, to the West, and the story
of the Pony Express by and large is a you
know as a positive story, and I think it speaks
to it speaks to a lot of the things that
(36:42):
that we still kind of as Americans, as human beings really,
you know, value we value endurance, we value speed, We
value being able to overcome whatever nature can throw with us,
whether it's whether it's sandstorms or tornadoes or ten feet
(37:07):
of snow. And you know, and these guys did that.
And yeah, listen, let's face it, this horses. I mean,
you know, you throw horses into any story and it's
guaranteed to be a success.
Speaker 1 (37:23):
And a terrific job on the production and storytelling by
Robbie Davis. And a special thanks to Jim Dave Felice
his book West Like Lightning, the brief legendary ride of
the Pony Express, and my goodness, we may not know
the story but for Buffalo Bill and what Jim said
is so true. The pioneer story is embodied by the
(37:44):
Pony Express, and the pioneer ethic and ethos is embedded
in the Pony Express, and the Pony Express is embedded
in our understanding of ourselves because we do value endurance
and speed and our ability to overcome obstacles of all kinds.
The story of the Pony Express, which began on this
day in history in eighteen sixty here on our American stories,
This is Lei Habib, and this is our American stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
The Pony Express is synonymous with speed, endurance, and the
American spirit to just get things done. While the name
is recognizable not just throughout the States but also all
over the world, it is not widely known that the
(00:32):
Pony Express was part of a larger corporation, or that
it only lasted eighteen months, or that it was never
meant to last in the first place. Here to tell
the story of the Pony Express is Jim de Felice,
author of West Like Lightning, The Brief Legendary Ride.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Of the Pony Express.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
And we're telling this story because on this day in history,
in eighteen sixty, the Pony Express began.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Take it away.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
June America in the late eighteen fifties going into eighteen
sixty is an extremely exciting, vibrant place. You have a
lot of innovation, a lot of manufacturing kind of just starting.
But one of the things that's tough is to, especially
(01:26):
for us these days, is to think back about how
huge the country really was. It went from from the
Atlantic coast, from the Atlantic Ocean, all the way out
to the Pacific in California. California, by the way, was
very very important at the time because they were, you know,
was the place where you were digging You're actually literally
(01:47):
digging money out of the ground gold. And the biggest
problem with this huge country is that to communicate to
simply to get from New York City, say, or.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Washington, d c.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
The seat of our government, all the way to where
that to where they were digging out the money in California,
it literally took weeks and often months. As a matter
of fact, something as simple as sending a letter from
Washington to California it couldn't involve.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
As much as six months. It would.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
Typically an important letter would typically go by steamer.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
It would go down.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
To roughly where the to the area of the Panama Canal,
though obviously the Panama Canal wasn't wasn't up and running yet.
It would go overland by coach to meet another steamer
on the other side of.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
The Isthmus.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
And from there would then be taken up north to
California and then you know, on go on its merry way.
There were other ways could send something by stagecoach. People
were dreaming about connecting the entire country with a railroad.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
Which had not yet happened.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
And there was also this new invention called the telegraph,
which showed a lot of promise, but string simply stringing
the lines from one place to another was a massive challenge.
And it's it's in that atmosphere, in that need, that.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
The Pony Express is born.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
To break down the three owners of the Pony Express
and kind of the related companies, you.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Have these really unique and.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
Very interesting individuals. You have Alexander Majors, who the best
way to describe him really is as a teamster. He
ran ox carts, he knew everything about running Ox carts,
he knew everything about Ox trains, he knew he knew
how to get really heavy stuff from one place to another.
(04:10):
Now he had other certainly other qualities. Very devoted Christian
gave out supposedly to every.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
Member of the company, but certainly to many.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
We'll leave it at that, a small bible, and he
also gave them some rules. If you were going to
work for Russell, Majors and Woodell, there were a lot
of different rules that you had to follow, one of
which a very important rule was not to curse or
take the Lord's name in the main. Now, I don't know,
(04:41):
we don't have many ox drivers these days, but it's
but from what I've read about about them, typically, I
think it's it's very, very difficult to believe that they
that every ox driver that worked for these guys followed
that rule. Nonetheless, that was one of his rules.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
He was also very hands on.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
Can't say he knew every employee, but he knew a
lot of them, and he knew he certainly knew the area,
and he was really the hands on, the hands on
the guy.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
Then he had William Waddell. And what ELL's.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
A little bit that there's not a huge amount of
information about Waddell. He's usually looked on, as you know,
as kind of the quieter business type, the guy that's
keeping the books and the behind the scenes manager, and
that does seem that does seem to be, you know,
(05:40):
kind of his pattern.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
And then you have William Russell. Now William Russell.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
Was in some ways the most interesting of them. They're
all entrepreneurs, but he was kind of a master entrepreneur,
and he.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Had the vision.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
He had the vision for the Pony Express portion of
their business, and he always he had the kind of
the aggrandizing imagination that kind of led them, led them
to expand and expand led them to.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
Start the Pony Express.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
He saw the potential, but he saw the publicity was
very important, and ultimately he becomes the fellow who's dealing
with Washington, with the Congressman, with the banks, and he's
ultimately going to be the reason that the Pony Express
and their whole the whole connected enterprise go to hell unfortunately.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
And you're listening to Jim Dave Felice, author of Westlake,
lightning the brief legendary ride of the Pony Express and
giving us a context, which we love to do on
this show, give an historical context to the things we
now know or take for granted. When we come back
more of this remarkable story, the story of the Pony Express,
(07:10):
or that is the story behind the story of the
Pony Express. Here on our American Stories, Lie Hibib here
the host of our American Stories. Every day on this show,
we're bringing inspiring stories from across this great country, stories
(07:32):
from our big cities and small towns. But we truly
can't do the show without you. Our stories are free
to listen to, but they're not free to make. If
you love what you hear, go to Ouramerican Stories dot
com and click the donate button.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
Give a little, give a lot.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
Go to Ouramerican Stories dot com and get and we're
(08:09):
back with our American Stories and the story of the
Pony Express. Jim day Felice, author of Westlke Lightning the
brief legendary Ride of the Pony Express, was just telling
us about the Pony's origin and how three businessmen Alexander Majors,
William Russell, and William Waddell formed it as a subsidiary
(08:30):
of their larger freighting empire. Back to Jim with the story.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
Their goal was to deliver anything that needed to be delivered,
whether it was people, government supplies, ammunition, maybe cattle, money,
especially newspapers, whatever.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
They wanted to be the ones.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
That would get it to you wherever you were west
of the Missouri River. And they thought that they could
basically build an empire and make a lot of money
doing that. And you know, it sounds in some ways,
it sounds like maybe a little bit like a hair
brain scheme, but the reality is that another company had
(09:23):
done exactly the same thing a few years before, based
around or using strategically using the Erie Canal in New York,
and that company became fabulously wealthy, fabulously rich all of
the people involved, and it's still around today. As a
matter of fact, we know it as American Express, and
(09:47):
basically Russell.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Majors and Waddell.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
Wanted to do the same thing with the company that
we know best as the parent company of the Pony Express. Now,
the Pony Express was a very very kind of specific
subset of their enterprise. Its goal was to deliver mail,
which they also had other ways of doing, but to
(10:14):
deliver mail.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Very quickly. They're basically the overnight service, if you will,
of the time.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
Although overnight in their case would be ten days. They
promised to deliver the mail from Saint Joe, Missouri, over
to Sacramento and then down to San Francisco in exactly
ten days. That was an amazing, amazing amount of time.
(10:49):
We're talking actually two thousand miles specifically, it's a little
bit closer than nineteen hundred.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
But in order to do that, it just shocked people.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
It would be like going from I guess dial up,
putting phones down into these odd modems which made weird sounds,
and going from that to kind of the high speed
intrement that that we're used to now, So to go
from six months to ten days was just absolutely mind
blowing and it captured the imagination of pretty much everybody
(11:26):
that heard it.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
And to tell you the truth that that whole.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
Idea of capturing people's imagination was probably as important as
any other reason that the company invented the Pony Express.
I should also point out that it wasn't just this
fantastic idea of getting publicity for their company and having
everybody say, yeah, well, we have to we have to
(11:53):
go with Russell Majors and Waddell for the service, because
these guys can if they can get mail from Saint
Joe to Sacramento in ten days, they can get Aunt Louise,
you know, the birthday cake that I want to send her.
They were also after a million dollar contract from the
government to deliver mail. That was very important because in.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
Expanding their empire, and you know, they had they had.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
Ox trains, they had stage coaches, they even had stores,
and believe it or not, they had banks, which, by
the way, included some of their banknotes included portraits of themselves.
Not too egotistical there, right. But in kind of doing
all of this expanding in the late eighteen fifties, they
(12:43):
ran into well they ran and so what we'll call
a cash problem, or I guess my is my Irish
grandmother would have put it. You know, their eyes were
a bit bigger than their stomachs, and so they kind
of bid off more than they could chew, and they
needed money.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
They needed infusions of.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
Cash for various for various reasons. And so they saw
this million dollar contract and the guarantee of delivering the
mail so quickly. It's kind of a way not only
to deliver mail, which they were committed to doing and
getting publicity for their company, but also getting a million dollars.
(13:29):
So the route that they proposed, they already had a
network of stage coaches throughout the West and stagecoach stops
and other infrastructure. So they basically did is they looked
at the infrastructure that they had and they mapped out
a route in order to kind of give up I
(13:50):
mean over the roughly nineteen hundred miles, we're talking about
one hundred and eighty six one hundred and ninety stations,
and there would be places a rider would ride roughly
one hundred miles at a shot, and every ten miles
or so there would be a post where he would
(14:11):
hop off. There'd be a fresh horse waiting. He would
throw his the mail bags or the molechillas which had
the pony mail in it, over the over the fresh horse,
new saddle, and off they'd go for another again roughly
ten miles, and that would happen at the At the
(14:32):
major stations, the riders would actually change and a fresh
rider and fresh horses would you know, would continue the
ride either east or west.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
It would do that generalize a little bit, but it
would do that twice twice a week. Each each way.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
The same rider would go from point A to point
B and then from point B back to point A.
The riders tended to be depending where you were, but
almost always they were from the area. They were very
familiar with. They're very familiar with the route. The routes
were very expeditious.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
There messed up.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
Must have been a few places where there were, you know,
shortcuts that that only the riders knew, but for the
most part.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
They were along.
Speaker 3 (15:25):
Relatively well known trails. The records are for the most part,
the records that the company had. They were destroyed and
so we really we don't even to be honest, we
don't have an actual full ledger of you know, who
(15:50):
exactly was on you know, was a writer. Now, a
lot of great work has been done and in terms
of kind of sussing a lot of that out among
other placess there's a phenomenal museum of the Pony Express
in Saint Joseph and they have a great list.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
They've done more various people have done.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
Detective work on figuring it out.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
On who was in there. But there's still there.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
There's a massive amount of information we don't really have.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
We don't even know. We can't even say who the
first fellow was.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
Who robe you know, in the Pony Express and that
was you know, and that's kind of remarkable because, to
be honest, that was like a really famous it's a
really famous ride.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
And you're listening to Jim day Felice tell the story
of the Pony Express, which started as a subset of
a bigger enterprise. A few guys, Majors Russell and Waddell
were trying to build essentially a modern ups a shipping titan.
When we come back more of the story of the
Pony Express, an American dreamers story in a way par excellence,
(17:48):
an American mythology story as well. Here on our American Stories,
(18:08):
and we returned to our American stories and author Jim
day Felice with the story of the Pony Express. Before
the break, we were hearing about how many of the
records that the Pony Express's parent company had run by
Alexander Majors, William Russell and William Waddell, have been lost
over time. I mean, imagine, we don't know who the
first Pony Express rider was. Remarkable, Let's return to Jim
(18:32):
day Felice, author of Westlake Lightning, the brief legendary ride
of the Pony Express.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
We don't even know.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
We can't even say who the first fellow was, who wrote,
you know, the Pony Express, and that was you know,
and that's kind of remarkable because to be a lotest
that was like a really famous it's a really famous ride.
I kind of like Johnny Fry as the possible, you know,
(19:10):
the possibly the first guy.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
But there are other candidates. Admittedly one of the.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
Reasons there's a lot of stories associated with different riders.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
This one kind of got attached to Fry and like everything.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
Like many things related to the Pony Express, it may.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
Or may not be a park.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
Well, actually, when you hear it, you're gonna tell me
it's definitely apocryphal.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
But I'll tell them, I'll tell it. Anyways. Now, these guys,
what you.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
Have to know about the Pony Express riders. For the
most part, they're they're in their early twenties. Some of
them are are certainly married.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
But on the other hand, a lot of the riders.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
Were, you know, they hadn't quite found the right one yet,
mostly in their their younger twenties. They're certainly athletic. I mean,
to be able to ride a horse for one hundred miles,
eighty miles, one hundred miles, and you know, do it
in all sorts of weather. You have to be fairly
athletic to do that. You're being paid pretty well. Now,
there are a couple of different estimates on how much
(20:17):
a rider was paid. One of the figure that's largely
accepted is one hundred dollars a month. They were certainly
which is a lot of money at that time, and
they certainly were very well paid, and they were kind
of they were also kind of like rock stars of
their time.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
They were.
Speaker 3 (20:33):
They were very you know, oh there's a pony rider,
and they're very you know, they're very famous.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
Looked up up to.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
For you know, for all the reasons that I guess.
You know, we still admire baseball stars or football stars
these days. But this story about Johnny Johnny Fry is
that being an attractive fellow and getting one hundred dollars
or whatever, he was being paid eight a month, you know,
he was Steve was certainly an eligible bachelor. And it
(21:05):
is said that many many of the young women in
the area right near Saint Joe, well, you know, they
were trying to catch Johnny's eye. And it's reputed that
one of the ways that they were trying to catch.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
His eye was actually through to another bodily asset.
Speaker 3 (21:30):
That happens to be the stomach, because you know, the
way to a man's heart is often through his stomach.
And they would make different, you know, different.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
Things, and you know.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
He would allegedly would grab them as he rode by.
But you know, it's very, very hard to grab a
whole chicken while you're you know, while you're certainly while
you're holding onto the.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
Reins and then eat it, you know, it's.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
It's very difficult. So allegedly this young woman, you know,
history has kind of clouded out her her identity, but
so we were to call her back Age just because
it's a it's a common name at the time. And
it's alleged that Becky got this brilliant idea and knowing
that Johnny kind of was partial to sweets, she went
(22:11):
and she invented a delicious concoction that could be eaten
on horseback and as a matter of fact, could be
speared as he rode by.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
And it is.
Speaker 3 (22:23):
Said that Becky invented for Pony Express rider the first
donut which the Pony Express rider could stick his forefinger
through and then eat.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
At his leisure as he rode on his throat.
Speaker 3 (22:41):
Well, I'll be honest, I don't know how true that
story is, but it does kind of summarize some of
the some of the fun stuff about and some of
the fun legends that were connected with a with a
Pony Express. So as the the the Pony Express itself
(23:02):
was always seen, as you know, as a means to
an end. It was seen as a way to get
publicity to kind of shore up their system of delivering
the mail. And most of all was seen as a
way of getting a million dollars out of the federal government.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
As things turn out.
Speaker 3 (23:22):
They ended up only getting half of that. It's questionable
whether a million dollars, by the way, would would have
kept them going anyway, but half million certainly would.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
Now Russell was back east.
Speaker 3 (23:37):
They had opened an office in one of the fanciest
what was at the time the fanciest building in New
York is one of the first skyscrapers.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
On Wall Street.
Speaker 3 (23:47):
And he was going back and forth between New York
and Washington, d c. Working on the federal contracts, also
trying to get business, you know, various business, I.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
Should say, not just just trying to get five dollars letters.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
And as the company's cash problems grew more and more,
he came up with a solution to solve the to
solve some of those problems by asking the Feds to
advance them money that would be owed under the contract.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
That started out.
Speaker 3 (24:25):
Okay, but you know this, I don't know, second or
third time somebody comes to asking you to pay them
for a job you haven't quite done yet. You know,
you get a little bit, you might get a little
testy and so when the government refused, Russell said, I'll
tell you what. Tell you what, Let's make a deal.
Rather than I don't really need the money from you,
(24:47):
just give me. Just give me a note that says
that I have a contract with you, and once I
fulfill that contract, you'll I'll be paid.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
And you know, no problem with doing that. And so
Russell got his note.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
And Russell then turned around and went to financiers to
bangs to other people with money and said, hey, I
have this, I have this contract. I'm going to make
you know X amount of dollars in March, but right
now I have a little cash shortage, so can you
loan I'll tell you what. Loan me five thousand dollars.
(25:34):
And the figures are a lot more than this. We'll
just use this as an example. Loan me five thousand
dollars on the fact against the note that I have
for ten thousand dollars. And when my note, when I'm
paid from the government, I will give you six thousand
dollars or whatever the actual numbers were. And so they said, great.
(25:59):
They only problem is his time kind of goes on.
You know, he gets one loan based on this note
and then you know, if he can get one loan
based on that note, maybe he can get two or three,
or four or five. But unfortunately, those the cash problems
going to persist.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
And finally Russell has has kind of worked.
Speaker 3 (26:21):
It's kind of worked his advances to the point where
he's basically not going to get any more notes from
the government.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
And you've been listening to Jim day Felice tell a
heck of a story about the Pony Express. I read
a lot of history and these stories I did not know,
and my goodness, here was Russell, knowing his company a
cash full of problems, asking the Post Office for an
advance on the work he was doing that he had
a contract for, and when they finally refused, well, he
sought out what we now know are factors. That is,
(26:54):
he was selling his contracts and getting cash in advance
and paying high intro and of course that generally doesn't
end well. When we come back more of this remarkable
American story and a piece of American mythology, the story
of the Pony Express. Here on our American Stories, and
(27:37):
we're back with our American stories and our final segment
from Jim day Felice on the Pony Express. We had
just heard that the pony and its parent company run
by Alexander Majors, William Russell and William Waddell, had run
into some money troubles. While William Russell couldn't convince the
US government to give them a cash advance, he had
been able to give him a letter ensuring the payment
(27:59):
would be made aid.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
Eventually.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
He then took out loans against that note, but the
cash problems persistent. Let's return to this story.
Speaker 3 (28:11):
And he comes up with another scheme and convinces someone
in the government who has custody of or access to
a number of bonds that actually don't belong to the
government itself but actually belonged to Native American nations. And
kind of a long story short, Russell manages to get
(28:33):
those bonds and to use them as securities against money
that of course he doesn't have, but he's promising to pay,
and the companies using.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
The cash to pay things.
Speaker 3 (28:45):
And unfortunately for Russell and his partners and the Pony
Express in general, somebody went to look at those bonds
or to use those bonds and they weren't there, and
kind of the whole unfortunately, the whole house of cards,
financial cards that have been constructed around the pony and
(29:06):
the other businesses collapsed.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
Russell goes to jail.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
The pony is and the larger companies the assets are
sold and their main competitor ends up kind of taking
over most of the assets. That main competitor, by the way,
is still with us, and we know today as well
as Fargo. By far and away, the most famous person
(29:41):
connected with the Pony Express and in some ways with
the entire West is Buffalo Bill. Buffalo Bill Cody.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
Now, before I say anything.
Speaker 3 (29:57):
Else about Buffalo Bill, I have to say that the guy.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
Was a legitimate Western hero.
Speaker 3 (30:06):
He was an Indian scout, He got a Congressional medal,
He showed courage in battle, He was larger than life.
At some point, though, you kind of came in contact
with some people who said, hey, you know, you do
(30:27):
you already have a whole bunch of you know, fame,
and you have the bona fides of I mean, been
a hero.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
We'd like to do a little something with that.
Speaker 3 (30:35):
How about if we wrote a book about your life
and then used that book as the basis for like
a stage play. He said, show me the money, and
they did. They brought him out east and they put
(30:58):
on what essense was a stage play, but a stage
play that included horses on stage and guns being fired,
and bandits and hero cowboys running around and Native Americans
who sometimes were actual Native Americans and other times were
(31:19):
you know, or whoever you could get off the street
for a few bucks. And they did these shows that
become the Wild West Show.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
And you know, they don't just go to New York
City there, or Chicago or the big London, the big cities.
Speaker 3 (31:34):
But they also go to, you know, kind of to
smaller places around it. And when they came to your town,
if you were so lucky, or maybe the town next
next to you or twenty miles away, it was like
the super Bowl came to you, and you know, you
would just have there'd be several days and all these
other events and these extravagant shows, but kind of the
(31:58):
centerpiece the way that almost every show would start and
would be with a vignette of the Pony Express. Now
how close to actual the actual real Pony Express experience,
It was.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
Not so much, but it was a lot of fun
as you.
Speaker 3 (32:19):
Had a rider riding through and you had people shooting
off guns and you know, other people trying to steal
the mail, and you know, just made for a lot
of drama and a lot of adventure. And because of that,
everybody knew the wild West Show, and everybody knew about
the Pony Express. Buffalo Bill made a point of claiming
(32:40):
to have been part.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
Of the Pony Express when he was younger.
Speaker 3 (32:46):
Now, his historians and a lot of people doing the
research have pointed out that there is no way that
Bill Cody, who would have been a young, very young
at best teenager at the time, could have been an actual.
Speaker 2 (33:05):
Rider for the Pony Express.
Speaker 3 (33:07):
But at the time, his claims to have been a
rider were you know, were enough, and they were accepted
by you know, the newspapers. When they would, you know,
they would come to town or they do an advanced
story about Buffalo Bill, and Bill would tell all of
these tales about supposed tales about having ridden for the
(33:28):
pony He made a point of befriending and often was
looked you know, Pony Express riders or former riders, usually genuine,
sometimes not so much, but usually genuine would you know,
kind of seek him out, and you know, and he
would pose for photos and you know, all these publicity
things at the time, and he would just kind of
(33:51):
bask in that reflecting glory. He also do his credit
was said to have supported Alexander Majors when Majors was very,
very very old. And really, even though it's pretty clear
that it's pretty clear that Bill Cody did not really
(34:11):
ride for the Pony Express.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
I mean, maybe he cleaned a stable somewhere.
Speaker 3 (34:15):
Who knows, but he certainly wasn't a regular rider, but
he was the most. It's because of him, because of
the popularity of his Wild West shows that really that
we know, so you know that we still have the
Pony Express in our popular imaginations. The Pony Express, as
(34:38):
you know, as a business, really lasts a very very
brief time. The first ride is April third, eighteen sixty
and really the last ride is October eighteen sixty one,
so we're talking roughly eighteen months or so that it
really exists. And yet today just about everybody knows what
(34:58):
the Pony Express was. I think that the reason that
we remember it obviously the things that Buffalo Bill did.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
All of those.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
Things that they're kind of the romantic nature of the
West and you know, kind of the American spirit really
the pioneer spirit kind of becomes attached to the Pony
Express and those stories, those popular entertaining stories, and some
of the a lot of the legends that we tell
which are just you know, they're just kind of fun.
(35:32):
Maybe they contain a grain of truth, or maybe they
just kind of have a deeper grain of truth that
they're attached to.
Speaker 2 (35:39):
They kind of get all bundled up with the Pony Express.
Speaker 3 (35:45):
And so, you know, we have the Wild West Show,
and then we have movies and television shows, we have
you know, nonfiction books certainly, but we also have we
also have novels about Pony Express, and it just has
those those kind of facets that still speak to you know,
(36:07):
still speak to Americans, I think, and and really all
the world because pony you can often say Pony Express
in Europe. Say, if you say Pony Express, a lot
of people understand.
Speaker 2 (36:18):
What you're talking about, which is amazing.
Speaker 3 (36:20):
But you know, again, there's a there's a certain romance
attached to, you know, to the West, and the story
of the Pony Express by and large is a you
know as a positive story, and I think it speaks
to it speaks to a lot of the things that
(36:42):
that we still kind of as Americans, as human beings really,
you know, value we value endurance, we value speed, We
value being able to overcome whatever nature can throw with us,
whether it's whether it's sandstorms or tornadoes or ten feet
(37:07):
of snow. And you know, and these guys did that.
And yeah, listen, let's face it, this horses. I mean,
you know, you throw horses into any story and it's
guaranteed to be a success.
Speaker 1 (37:23):
And a terrific job on the production and storytelling by
Robbie Davis. And a special thanks to Jim Dave Felice
his book West Like Lightning, the brief legendary ride of
the Pony Express, and my goodness, we may not know
the story but for Buffalo Bill and what Jim said
is so true. The pioneer story is embodied by the
(37:44):
Pony Express, and the pioneer ethic and ethos is embedded
in the Pony Express, and the Pony Express is embedded
in our understanding of ourselves because we do value endurance
and speed and our ability to overcome obstacles of all kinds.
The story of the Pony Express, which began on this
day in history in eighteen sixty here on our American stories,
Host
Lee Habeeb
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