A Date with the Pony Express
“These young fellows, expert horse riders by the way, galloped their near thoroughbred horses, sixty to one hundred miles a day – just to insure the mail got through”. This is how n 1870’s Nebraska newspaper described the Pony Express Riders of the day.
The founders of this fast horse mail system understood the potential of being able to move mail and communications quickly across the rapidly developing range and farm land of Americas new west. What they didn’t foresee was the invention of the telegraph and the expansiveness of the railroad. Alas, the great Pony Express Company went belly-up but in just a few short years it became a symbol of the development of the American west.
As I walk by the refurnished Pony Express station in Lexington, Nebraska I close my eyes ever so briefly and see myself blazing across to lonesome prairie urging my mount to go even faster to help me ward off this oppressive heat. A Mercedes blows its horn startling me back into the twenty first century.