pony express

Discusses the origins of the Pony Express, a group of young riders hired to carry mail on horseback as quickly as possible from St. Joseph, Missouri through the unsettled frontier to Sacramento, California, in the mid-nineteenth century, explains how the system worked, and describes the dangers riders faced along the way.

Documents the history of the Pony Express, which expanded to employ eighty riders who carried mail from Saint Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, California; and details the dangers faced by the riders and their eventual disbandment due to the popularity and efficiency of the telegraph. Includes a time line and chronology.

Relates how, in 1861, a boy named Charlie Miller became the youngest rider for the Pony Express, a mail service that linked the east and west coasts of the United States.

Traces the history of the Pony Express, a mail delivery service that operated only one and a half years, bringing mail to California along the northern-central route in 1860-61.

Examines the establishment of this innovative but short-lived mail delivery system and recounts anecdotes about it.

Describes the disadvantages to being a Pony Express rider, including riding in all weather, natural disasters, and disease.

Having returned from living with his friends the Shoshoni, seventeen-year-old Jimmy Spoon grows restless again and seeks adventure by taking a job with the Pony Express.

Twelve-year-old Colton, son of an African-American mother and a white father, takes a job with the Pony Express in 1860 after his father abandons the family on their California-bound wagon train, and risks his life to deliver an important letter that may affect the growing conflict between the North and South.

A history of the first ride of the "horse express" mail service across the United States in 1860. Also gives some information on transcontinental mail service before and after the Pony Express.

A portrait of the first Pony Express run as it gallops through the Old West.