The Pony Express Begins

In mid-1860s America, everyone longed for a faster mail service over its entire continental distance, San Francisco to New York. The idea that this faster mail service might be accomplished by a lone horseman dashing across America’s arid plains, fired wild enthusiasm and high hopes.

The new express service, dubbed the Pony Express as a shortened version of its actual name--the Central Overland California & Pike's Peak Express Company--launched on April 3, 1860, when the first rider galloped out of St. Joseph, Missouri, headed west, carrying mail gathered from points farther east. However, any horseman that left San Francisco going east to cross the Sierra would waste much time and many miles, just having to skirt around the waters of the Bay itself. It was far more sensible for the San Francisco mail to ride a steamboat up the Sacramento River to Sacramento, a city within sight of the mountains.  

Therefore, also on April 3, 1860, a symbolic rider started out from the Alta Telegraph Company offices on Montgomery Street in San Francisco. Just before four o’clock in the afternoon, James Randall steered his mount toward the docks where the Sacramento boat was waiting. (No one voiced criticism of his horsemanship, though he had been seen to mount his horse, which was festooned with miniature flags, from the wrong side.) Amid cheers from the assembled crowd of several hundred, he placed San Francisco’s outgoing mailbag aboard.   

The ship docked at Sacramento in the wee hours of April 4, 1860. On that dark, rain-drenched morning, anyone awake in town at 2:45 a.m. might have heard the clatter of hooves galloping down J Street as a young, superb horseman named William Hamilton, known as Sam to his friends, sped east; the first true Pony Express rider in California.

Sam carried 56 letters from San Francisco and 13 from Sacramento; later picking up one more at Placerville—a total of 70 tissue-thin letters, pre-paid at $5.00 per half-ounce. Hamilton arrived in Placerville at 6:40 a.m., covering the distance of forty-five miles in just under four hours. Riding on to Sportsman’s Hall, twelve miles beyond Placerville, he turned over his specially-made saddle bag to Warren Upson, who took the Express over the summit in a blizzard.

According to the Sacramento Daily Union, which published a table of times and distances the following day, the Express reached Carson City, Nevada—a distance of 144 uphill miles from Sacramento—at 8:30 p.m. on April 4.  

Somewhere east of Salt Lake City, east- and westbound riders passed one another on Sunday, April 8. On Tuesday, April 10—and every Tuesday thereafter, in keeping with the plans published by company agents—another two young, expert horsemen galloped away from St. Joe and Sacramento, to create the events and enduring legends of the Pony Express, a service that only lasted eighteen months.