How the Post Office Created America

by Winifred Gallagher

  Inside the coaches, men and women were crammed together amid big mailbags and their own valises, bulging with items hard to find in remote places. They jounced and banged against one another and their seats, the walls, even the roof, and the sheer discomfort, combined with sleeplessness, crowding, and constant risk, caused some to succumb to “stage-craziness.” The harsh conditions made it all the more essential to observe the courtesies, albeit of a rough-hewn sort. Rules of etiquette, often traced back to Wells Fargo, included the following:

  Abstinence from liquor is requested, but if you must drink, share the bottle.

  Buffalo robes are provided for your comfort in cold weather. Hogging robes will not be tolerated and the offender will be made to ride with the driver.

  Gents guilty of un-chivalrous behavior toward lady passengers will be put off the stage. It’s a long walk back.

  The only respites from the misery of traveling with the overland mail were brief stops at the relay stations. While the horse teams were changed, passengers stretched their legs, relieved themselves, splashed their hands and faces, and had a bite to eat. However, even Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton, the indefatigable English explorer of Asia and Africa, was appalled by the food and lack of amenities on his stagecoach journey through the West. The New York Herald journalist Waterman Ormsby summed up the experience of traveling with the post this way: “I now know what Hell is like. I’ve just had 24 days of it.”

  By 1860, overland stagecoaches carried more mail across America’s sea of grass than steamships on the rivers and oceans, but not even the postal subsidy and passenger revenue combined could sustain Butterfield’s stupendously costly enterprise. In March of that year, he was forced out of his own firm for failing to cover large debts to Wells Fargo, its major creditor, which took over his entire operation. A year later, just days before the Civil War began, the government awarded the postal contract to the renamed Overland Mail Company, which operated on the more northerly, soon-to-be-safer “Central” route, from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Placerville, California.

  Traveling with the cross-country mail continued to entail problems more serious than physical discomfort, notably attacks by bandits or hostile Indians. Cochise’s Apaches alone killed the passengers and crews of six coaches and destroyed many relay stations. Legendary robbers such as Rattlesnake Dick, who once stole $80,000 from a Wells Fargo coach, paid informants for tips about shipments of gold, payrolls, and even rich passengers. Arguably the most colorful of these celebrated criminals was “Black Bart,” who committed twenty-seven stagecoach robberies in California that involved the U.S. mail. After serving in the Union Army and growing bored with farming and mining, he became a shotgun-toting highwayman who was known for fine manners and a cultivated voice that bespoke his English birth. He sometimes left poems at his crime scenes:

  Here I lay me down to sleep

  To wait the coming morrow,

  Perhaps success, perhaps defeat,

  And everlasting sorrow.

  Let come what will, I’ll try it on,

  My condition can’t be worse;

  And if there’s money in that box

  ’Tis munny in my purse.

  The last stagecoach robbery in America was solved by post office inspectors in 1916.

  9

  THE MAIL MUST GO THROUGH

  THE PONY EXPRESS is so closely linked with the U.S. Post Office that the mounted courier who was the post’s insignia from 1837 until 1970 is mistakenly assumed to be a Pony Express rider, just as “The mail must go through” is thought to be the post’s motto. The private service never belonged to the government and only carried mail for the post during the last few months of its short life, from April 3, 1860, to October 24, 1861. Nevertheless, the dashing endeavor contributed to the evolution of the United States and its communications network in important ways.

  The idea behind the Pony Express, soon affectionately abbreviated to “the Pony,” was not new, even in America. Postmasters general John McLean and Amos Kendall had sent horsemen racing day and night to speed market information between certain cities for several times the price of normal postage. These express services had indeed cut delivery times—between New York City and New Orleans, say, to half the fourteen days required by stagecoaches—but they were soon replaced in the East by the faster, cheaper railroads.

  The state of transportation and communications was very different in the West, where horses and boats were still the only means of getting around. The new settlers had roots and relatives back in Georgia and New York, Virginia and Massachusetts, and they were desperate for news about the looming Civil War, which would test their own loyalties. California was nominally a free state, but many residents were southerners by ancestry, sympathy, or both and eager to secede. Moreover, they were separated by some two thousand miles from the nearest other free states, which aggravated the sense of isolation caused by their still slow, inadequate stagecoach mail service.

  The federal government was desperate to keep the huge, resource-laden Golden State in the Union. William Russell, the fast-talking money man at Russell, Majors and Waddell, one of America’s major freight and passenger carriers, saw an opportunity. A self-made mogul in America’s burgeoning transportation industry, the dapper, handsome “Napoleon of the West” was a gambler. He bet that if his firm could get the mail to California much faster than the Butterfield Overland Mail Company, it could snatch the post’s huge transportation contract from its rival.

  Russell and his partners knew firsthand that taking on a big federal contract was a risky business. In 1855, he and the sober, businesslike William Waddell had joined forces with the formidable Alexander Majors, a rival expressman, to snag a huge government deal to haul supplies to Army posts in parts of the West and Southwest that had just been won in the Mexican-American War. During the first two years, the ambitious, capable midwesterners made a handsome $300,000 profit. Then, in 1857, when the Mormon War erupted, they went into debt trying to meet the Army’s stepped-up demands while simultaneously contending with the hostile Mormons who burned their wagon trains.

  Roller-coaster finances notwithstanding, Russell talked his partners, and John Jones, another businessman, into mounting a flashy campaign to secure the postal subsidy. They created a new firm, called the Central Overland California and Pike’s Peak Express Company, which would operate a stagecoach line from Leavenworth, Kansas, where Russell, Majors and Waddell was based, through Denver to California. To convince Congress of the superiority of their company and its northerly “Central” path to the Golden State, Russell proposed a flashy mail service that was partly a publicity stunt. The mounted couriers of this Pony Express would streak across the Great Plains, Rockies, and High Sierras carrying urgent letters and press dispatches to California in just ten days, which cut the stagecoach time by an astounding two-thirds.

  Wells Fargo and some other carriers already offered limited local post-rider services in the rugged West, but Russell’s proposal for the 1,966-mile, high-speed Pony was breathtaking in its audacity. The westbound mail would travel by train to St. Joseph, Missouri, where the rail line ended and the new service would be based (just a block from the home of the outlaw Jesse James, who would be shot dead there in 1882). Forty riders would race the mail in relays to Salt Lake City through the wilds of what are now Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah, following established trails when possible. Then they would take a perilous route through Nevada over the Sierras to Sacramento, finally reaching San Francisco by steamship.

  Californians were elated at the prospect of the Pony. Some experienced western hands, however, insisted that the lone riders would be easy prey for hostile Indians and robbers, and others opined that weather alone would render the route’s mountainous stretches impassable in winter. Undaunted, Russell proceeded to purchase four hundred to five hundred fine, high-priced horses, each branded with an XP; buy or build some 165 rela
y stations made of logs, adobe, or sod; hire about eighty riders and hundreds of support workers; and even commission a special Pony Express stamp depicting a mounted courier. The firm’s high rates for carrying a half-ounce letter—initially $5 (perhaps $75 today), later $1—attest to the demand for the service, but its revenues couldn’t begin to cover the $700,000 start-up costs. Everything depended on the Pony’s success in winning the government’s overland mail contract.

  While Russell did the wheeling and dealing, Majors supervised the Pony’s logistics. A born-and-bred frontiersman, he had become an expressman after fathering daughters rather than the sons needed to work the family farm. He made a fortune in the freighting business but continued to travel with his wagon trains, which could include 100 vehicles, 1,200 oxen, and 120 men. (The ten-year-old William Cody, later the world-famous showman “Buffalo Bill,” was one of his messenger boys.) Under Majors’s knowledgeable eye, the Pony’s route was divided into five geographical segments; relay stations were carefully spaced within each, according to the terrain’s difficulty. Most of these pit stops were between ten and fifteen miles apart, which was about the distance a fast horse could travel before tiring. Their crews provided the riders with food and fresh mounts and attended to the horses kept on reserve.

  The Pony’s technicians were obsessed with gear. To function at top speed, the horses could carry no more than 165 pounds, counting the courier, his equipment, and up to 20 pounds of mail. (The number of letters carried per trip eventually averaged about 90 westbound and 350 eastbound.) To lighten the load, the service adopted a stripped-down McClellan military saddle fitted with a detachable leather mochila, or cover, that held the padlocked mail pouches. Thus, the precious cargo could be handed off from rider to rider inside of the two minutes allowed for a relay stop. The men themselves, usually dressed in a deerskin shirt, pants tucked into high boots, and a slouch hat, traveled light, perhaps carrying only a knife and a revolver.

  The Pony’s most important tools were its horses. (The equine distinction is fuzzy and often based on height, but larger animals are generally designated as horses and smaller ones ponies.) They had to be able to run at ten to twelve miles per hour over varied terrain to qualify, although their average working speed was about seven to ten miles per hour, and they needed extraordinary endurance as well as speed. Rangy racehorses from Kentucky stock were best suited to flying across the easier terrain east of the Rockies, particularly the flat plains of Nebraska and Kansas; they were expected to cover more miles per day than their cousins in the much rougher terrain of the West. Mountains and deserts called for smart, tough, sure-footed little mustangs that could cling to narrow mountain trails like goats and hustle down slick, steep inclines in a semisquat. The Pony’s celebrated ponies attracted their own admirers, who plucked keepsake hairs from their manes and tails.

  The standards for riders were no less exacting than those for the mounts. A satirical ad later put the job’s requirements this way: “Wanted: Young, skinny fellows not over 18. Must be expert riders willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred.” Hundreds of men and boys responded to such spunky rhetoric and the promise of good pay plus room and board and were soon winnowed down to a select crew of outstanding equestrians, each weighing no more than 125 pounds. Tough as nails and slim as a jockey, the Pony rider was, as Twain put it, “a little bit of a man, brimful of spirit.”

  The riders certainly needed plenty of mettle. They had to promise to protect the mail with their very lives and to complete their seventy-five-mile legs as fast as possible, day or night and regardless of conditions, stopping only to change horses. They continually monitored their mounts’ condition, measuring the heartbeat in the neck and watching for the nervous twitches and rasping breath that preceded fatigue and breakdown. If an exhausted horse collapsed on the trail, the rider had to snatch the mochila and hotfoot it to the next relay. Speed was their best defense against bandits or Indians. Some routes and relay stations enjoyed relative peace, but others, farther to the west, were menaced by hostile tribes, particularly the Paiutes of Utah and Nevada. Native Americans robbed the mail several times, but usually the Pony riders on their grain-fed mounts simply crouched low in the saddle to make smaller targets and raced away from the slower grass-fed Indian ponies. On the only occasion when they captured both horse and rider, the Indians killed the man, but his mount managed to escape with the mochila. The horse was later caught, and the recipients duly received their letters.

  The prairies and mountains abounded with fearless roughnecks who could ride, but the Pony’s elite corps was at least officially held to a higher standard by a formidable oath demanded by the Bible-reading, abstemious Majors:

  I . . . do hereby swear, before the Great and Living God, that during my engagement, and while I am an employee of Russell, Majors and Waddell, I will, under no circumstances, use profane language, that I will drink no intoxicating liquors, that I will not quarrel or fight with any other employee of the firm, and that in every respect I will conduct myself honestly, be faithful to my duties, and so direct all my acts as to win the confidence of my employers, so help me God.

  Stagecoaches and the Pony sometimes traveled on the same route, and some travelers questioned the oath’s efficacy, to say nothing of the riders’ quality of life. After closely observing them, Richard Burton wrote that “setting aside the chance of death . . . the work [is] severe; the diet is sometimes reduced to wolf-mutton, or a little boiled wheat and rye, and the drink to brackish water; a pound of tea comes occasionally, but the droughty souls are always out of whisky and tobacco.” He acknowledged that Majors forbade his drivers and employees to “drink, gamble, curse, and travel on Sundays” and “desired them to peruse Bibles,” but that he personally “scarcely ever saw a sober rider; as for the profanity . . . they are not to be deterred from evil talking even by the dread presence of a ‘lady.’”

  • • •

  AN ENORMOUS AMOUNT OF trouble and expense had gone into what was partly a public-relations scheme to snag the overland mail contract, but no one could be sure that the untried Pony would work. On April 3, 1860, big crowds gathered at its eastern and western terminals to watch the debut of what had been promoted as “The Greatest Enterprise of Modern Times.” Thousands of spectators in San Francisco thrilled to the sight of Jim Randall, dressed in showy Western regalia, tearing off on a flashy golden palomino. In St. Joseph, Mayor Jeff Thompson sought to calm a rowdy mob of hard-drinking frontiersmen with some purple prose: “The mail must go through! Hurled by flesh and blood across two thousand miles of desolate space . . . neither storms, fatigue, darkness, mountains or Indians, burning sand or snow must stop the precious bags. The mail must go!”

  A few highlights from the Pony’s more difficult eastbound maiden voyage suggest the challenges. After his elaborate show in San Francisco, Randall boarded the steamer Antelope for Sacramento, where the real race would begin. The boat was more than two hours late, and Mother Nature was not cooperating. Two days of hard rain had turned Sacramento’s mud roads into glue, and a huge blizzard racked the Sierra Nevada Mountains above. According to Majors’s account, despite the terrible conditions, Harry Roff grabbed the mochila from Randall, plunged into rainy darkness, and slogged through twenty miles of sludge in a mere fifty-nine minutes. Then, as the trail ascended and the weather worsened, he raced fifty-five miles more, to end his round at the foot of the High Sierras.

  Completing the next relay over the icy summit through the accelerating blizzard was a nearly impossible task. Bolivar Roberts, the Pony’s clever western superintendent, assigned it to Warren “Boston” Upson, the adventurous twenty-year-old son of a wealthy publisher. Roberts had sent teams of sure-footed pack mules high into the peaks, where they tramped through the deep snow in an effort to keep the sketchy trail open. The muleteers had subdued the worst drifts, but others forced Upson to make treacherous detours from what little trail there was. He sometimes dismounted to walk behind his h
orse, allowing it to pick their way. His mount collapsed under him just short of the summit, so he staggered to the relay station on foot and took off on his next horse, making the easier descent in better weather conditions. Somehow Upson reached his destination, Friday’s Station, near Lake Tahoe, in the eight hours scheduled for the leg in summer. By the time William “Sam” Hamilton completed the next leg, to Fort Churchill, at what’s now Silver Springs, Nevada, the riders had covered 185 mountainous miles in a freakish spring blizzard in fifteen hours and twenty minutes—nine hours faster than planned.

  The next man to race off with the mochila was “Pony Bob” Haslam, a twenty-year-old welterweight who later earned the distinction of completing the service’s longest and most dangerous ride. Born in London, he made his way to America, traveled west with the Mormon migration, and arrived in Salt Lake City at the age of fourteen. Roberts first hired the teenager to help build relay stations but soon sensed his spunk and made him a rider. Haslam leapt onto one of the barely broken desert mustangs he preferred—this one had been shod for the first time just the day before—and tore through hostile Indian country in a third of the scheduled time.

  The high-spirited eastern and western riders raced against time and also, encouraged by Russell, against one another. The Californians and Mormons even competed among themselves for the title of the West’s best horsemen. (One contender was Major Howard Egan, an Irish immigrant, former bodyguard of Joseph Smith, and the superintendent of the Pony’s Mormon division, who blazed trails and rode relays while in his forties.) The outcome of the Pony’s first intramural contest was clear on the night of April 9, when the resilient little mustangs crossed tracks with the hot-blooded Thoroughbreds. The eastbound mail was fourteen hours ahead of schedule, while the westbound was almost twenty hours late, so the westerners had won.