"Buffalo Bill" from Prairie to Palace: An Authentic History of the Wild West

by John M. Burke

During the Mexican War Congress added two new regiments of mounted volunteers to the regular army under orders to lay out a military road on the route taken by Fremont in 1843 to Oregon. They were to locate posts, and changed old Fort Kearney, then at the mouth of Tabor Creek, where Nebraska City is now located, to the crossing of the Platte River, where Kearney is now situated, and called it New Fort Kearney, one at Laramie on the Platte River, fifty miles north of Laramie City, now a station situated on the Union Pacific Railroad, and one at old Fort Hall, a Hudson Bay trading-post near the present site of Pocatella. This was called the military route, and was the road traveled by most of the emigrants to California in 1849. Passing by Soda Springs and south of Snake River to the headwaters of the Humboldt, or St. Marys River, through Nevada, it passed through the South Pass and struck Bear River, now in Idaho and Utah. The emigration of 1850 diverged southward from Laramie and past Green River at its junction with Hams Fork, through Echo Cañon and Salt Lake Valley westwardly via Reese River, striking the Humboldt lower down, and crossing the Sierra Nevada at the Truckee Pass and by Donner Lake. This was a much more direct trail to California and was used mostly thereafter by emigrants in 1850–51. In 1854 two stage routes were established, one by Texas and El Paso, on the Gila River, to Southern California, and one via Salt Lake, the latter much the shorter, but mountainous. McGraw & Co. had the route on the military road from Independence by Fort Leavenworth under a government subsidy, and in 1859 Russell, Majors & Waddell became the owners of this mail line and operated it successfully for years.

In 1859 Senator Gwinn, then United States Senator from California, and a devoted Union man, appealed to the stage company to expedite travel and communications on the military road, so as to have a central line available to the North and South alike, and to demonstrate the possibilities of operating it in midwinter. Strange to say, this grand Union man and able statesman went into the Rebellion and lost his wonderful prestige and influence in California, as well as a fortune, in his fealty to his native State of Mississippi, and in 1866 was made the Duke of Sonora by Maximilian, in the furtherance of some visionary scheme of Western empire, but soon died. His propositions were duly considered and responded to by that famous firm, representatives of thrift, enterprise, energy, and courage, who well deserve the commendation of history and the gratitude of their countrymen.

Russell was a Green Mountain boy, who before his majority had gone West to grow up with the country; and after teaching a three-months’ school on the frontier of Missouri had hired to old John Aull of Lexington, Mo., at $30 per month, to keep books, and was impressed in lessons of economy by the anecdotes of Aull that a London company engaged in the India trade had saved £80 per annum in ink by omitting to dot the “i’s” and cross the “t’s,” when he was emptying his pen by splashing the office wall with ink. Alexander Majors is still living, venerable with years and honors, a mountain son of Kentucky frontier ancestry, the colleague and friend of Daniel Boone; and William Waddell, an ancestral Virginian of the blue-grass region of Kentucky, bold enough for any enterprise, and able to fill any missing niche in Western wants.

The Pony Express was born from this conference, and the first move was to compass the necessary auxiliaries to assure success. Sixty young, agile, athletic riders were engaged and 420 strong and wiry ponies procured, and on the 9th of April, 1860, the venture was simultaneously commenced from St. Joseph and Sacramento City. The result was a success in cutting down the time more than one half, and it rarely missed making the schedule time in ten days, and in December, 1860, making it in seven days and seventeen hours. The stations were from twelve to fifteen miles apart, and one pony was ridden from one station to another, and one rider made three stations, and a few dare-devil fellows made double duty and rode eighty or eighty-five miles. One of them was Charles Cliff, now a citizen of St. Joseph, who rode from St. Joseph to Seneca and back on alternate days. He was attacked by Indians at Scotts Bluff, and received three balls in his body and twenty-seven in his clothes. Cliff made Seneca and back in eight hours each way.

Another of these daring riders of this flying express was Pony Bob.

But the one of these pony riders who has won greatest fame was William F. Cody (“Buffalo Bill”), who passed through many a gauntlet of death while in his flight from station to station bearing express matter that was of the greatest value.

The express was closed on the completion of a telegraph line by Ed Creighton of Omaha from that point to Sacramento City. The mail-bags were two pouches of leather, impervious to rain and weather, sealed, and strapped to the rider’s saddle before and behind, carrying two ounce letters or dispatches at $5 each.

The keepers of the stations had the ponies already saddled, and the riders merely jumped from the back of one to another; and where the riders were changed the pouches were unbuckled and handed to the already mounted postman, who started at a lope as soon as his hand clutched them. As these express stations were the same as the stage stations, the employes of the stage company were required to take care of the ponies and have them in readiness at the proper moment. The bridles and saddles were light weight, as were the riders, and the pouches were not to contain over twenty pounds of weight. There were two pouches of two pockets each, and secured by oil-silk, then sealed, and the pockets locked and never opened between St. Joseph and Sacramento.