Deliver a Perfect Score on This Pony Express Quiz

Sending mail on the Pony Express was not cheap — which is one of the reasons it wasn’t in use for very long. It cost $5 per half-ounce, which, in 2022, equates to about $170 per half-ounce. It was far too expensive for the average person to use.

Contrary to popular belief, Buffalo Bill — whom many consider one of the Pony Express’ most famous riders — never actually rode on the trail. He was in school at the time the Express operated. But Buffalo Bill was one of the trail’s biggest supporters and paid homage by including reenactments of it for his Wild West Show.

The longest and fastest run on the Pony Express was done by “Pony Bob”' Haslam. He started on the southwest shore of Lake Tahoe and traveled 190 miles to the Paiute territory. At that point, he turned around and rode back to where he had started. In total, he rode 360 miles in 40 hours.

Mailbags used on the Pony Express were called mochilas. "Mochila" means "knapsack" in Spanish. They were leather with four pockets and hung over the saddle. The pockets were always kept locked; three of them contained mail and could only be opened at military posts, and the fourth contained a timecard. That pocket could only be opened by station masters at the stops.

In order to get the mail where it needed to go as fast as possible, everything needed to be lightweight — including the riders. The total allowed weight on the horses was 165 pounds. So with the mail, equipment, a rifle, and a revolver, that meant the rider could weigh no more than 120 pounds.

When Missouri businessman William H. Russell decided in the mid-1850s to seek out a mail contract with the U.S. government, he had to find a political ally. So in 1859, he met with California Senator William Gwin to discuss his idea: the Pony Express. With Gwin on his side, the route came to life.

Pony Express owner Alexander Majors was a religious and disciplined man and made all the riders take an oath when they started their job. They had to agree not to swear, drink, or fight — but smoking was not included in the oath.

The Pony Express had an ambitious goal: to get mail from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, California, in just 10 days. That’s more than 1,800 miles of riding. And for the 18 months the service operated, from April 1860 to October 1861, it worked. Riders changed horses every 10 miles to make sure they’d be able to deliver the mail on time.

In October 1861, the first transcontinental telegraph system was finished and became officially operational. It was a death knell for the Pony Express because messages no longer needed to be carried by the mail. They could reach across the country in moments through Morse code.

Though many of them were not official states at the time, the Pony Express traveled through eight modern-day states in the American West: Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, and California. Eastern states such as Connecticut were not part of the trail.