Our adventures on the Pony Express trail, done a number of years ago for our 25th wedding anniversary, were great fun and very enlightening.
What else would you do to celebrate 25 years of marriage but try to trace some of the history and historic sites of the Old West? In our case, the year was 1992, we had just bought a new-to-us station wagon, and we had some vacation time to combine with a long weekend. At the time, I had been reading about Buffalo Bill Cody (William F. Cody, that is) and happened to read about his early years as one of the original Pony Express riders. Mrs. Hoppy and I immediately knew we had a fun trip to organize for our anniversary celebration.
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The Pony Express has been the source of legend and lore since it's brief history in 1860-61. For those of us growing up in the heyday of television and movie Westerns back in the 1940s-50s, the Pony Express seemed magical. In reality, it was short-lived because telegraph lines spanned the continent and put it out of business. In fact, some historians suggest it was mostly an overblown publicity stunt organized by the Russell, Majors & Waddell freight company in an effort to land a lucrative government mail contract. (If so, it worked.)
Realizing that times and places change constantly in the land, and realizing that we lived not so far away from the starting point of the Pony Express in St. Joseph, Missouri, we decided to trace as much of the route as we could find in the time available. We ended up traveling what was the First Administrative Division of the route, from St. Joseph's starting point to the Kearny Station, near present-day Kearney, Nebraska. (Yes, the station name was spelled differently than the present-day Nebraska town.)
Had we been able, we would have loved to travel the entire route to its terminus in Sacramento, California.
As it was, we had great fun using three or four books written about the Pony Express, and we were delighted to contact the Nebraska State Historical Society, which proved very helpful. We were delighted that the society photocopied and sent us some terrific, specialized maps that were a great help, "1938 sectional maps of the Pony Express route and stations across Nebraska."
Books, maps, and snacks in hand, we mounted up Old Blue (our new-to-us, blue 1989 Ford Crown Victoria Station Wagon -- it's gone now) and headed west. Okay, we actually headed more north than west, leaving our home in Springfield, Missouri, but we ultimately headed west, once we got to the starting point at the Patee House Hotel and Pony Express Stables, in St. Joseph.
The riders left St. Joseph along present-day U.S. Highway 36, which has been designated "The Pony Express Highway" between St. Joseph and Hanover, Kansas. That's the route we took, too. Granted, we made the trip in the late spring of 1992, almost 18 years ago. I'm sure many details along the route and the historically designated sites have changed since then.
But with that in mind, I thought we could have some fun as I write articles here detailing the trip, some scenes along the present-day route, and the history of the Pony Express. This is only the first of several articles I'll be writing during the next few weeks -- I hope you'll hang around and ride along with us!
