Pony Express to ride again

Legends will come to life Aug. 17 to 27 when 500 horseback riders retrace the Pony Express Trail across seven states. Organized by the National Pony Express Association in 1989, the annual event marks 151 years since the real Pony Express riders carried the mail 1,900 miles in 10 days from St. Joseph, Mo., to Sacramento, Calif.

Riders follow the historic route along more than 400 miles through Nevada from Aug. 23 to 26, racing day and night in shorter relays than the original runs. The trail roughly parallels U.S. Highway 50 across Nevada from the Utah border northeast of Ely to the California-Nevada border at Lake Tahoe, a portion of Nevada now appropriately dubbed "Pony Express Territory."

Organizers postponed this year’s event from June to August because of a spring outbreak of equine herpes virus.

You can watch the relay riders from Utah arrive at a bar off U.S. Highway 93 near old Fort Schellbourne northeast of Ely on Aug. 23. Other easily accessible viewpoints include the Austin cemetery and original Pony Express stations along U.S. 50 at Cold Springs and Sand Springs on Aug. 24.

Racing through the night past Schurz near U.S. Highway 95, the Top Gun Raceway near Fallon, Buckland’s Station at Fort Churchill State Park and old Dayton, the Pony Express re-ride will arrive in Carson City in the early hours of Aug. 25. The relay riders thunder onward through the Carson Valley, past the Genoa Courthouse Museum and up the steep Kingsbury Grade to Lake Tahoe.

The Nevada rider will pass the mail to the California rider at 11:30 a.m. on Aug. 26 just south of Harrah’s Lake Tahoe off U.S. 50. The event concludes the next day in Old Sacramento.

Nevada travelers exploring U.S. 50 can view landscapes little changed since the Pony Express riders galloped past. This is the Silver State’s heartland, far from our glittering urban centers. Drive U.S. 50 to discover broad valleys where the fleet ponies kicked up dust across sage flats and dry lakes and lofty mountain ranges cut by rugged canyons that echoed with the ring of shod hooves on stony ground. U.S. 50 also links a string of picturesque mining towns such as Ely, Eureka and Austin, creations of mining booms that came after the Pony Express.

Except for crude stations with corrals spaced 10 to 15 miles apart, the bold young mail carriers streaking across Nevada Territory faced only empty distances and unknown perils. The Pony Express riders left a colorful legacy of bravery and adventures now part of our Western heritage.

The creation of the Pony Express resulted from intense competition for lucrative mail routes across the western half of the continent. Letters mailed to California from points east took weeks for delivery, if they arrived at all. The freighting firm launching the Pony Express promised delivery of mail in 10 days from Missouri to California. The speedy delivery was costly: $5 an ounce.

Careful planning preceded the inaugural venture on April 3, 1860. The company selected 190 station sites to be staffed with 400 stationmasters and helpers. Construction begun, they stocked corrals with enough sturdy, fleet horses to keep riders leaving twice a day in both directions. They sought 80 relay riders with an advertisement that famously read, "Wanted: Young, skinny, wiry fellows not over eighteen. Must be expert riders willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred. Wages paid $25 per week."

Those hired swore to refrain from profanity, drinking and fighting. They proudly wore the company’s uniform of red shirts and blue trousers. Weighing an average of 120 pounds, riders were part of a streamlined 165-pound load. Equipment including saddle, saddlebags, rifle, revolver, clothing and a small Bible weighed just 25 pounds. Special bags to be passed to the next rider carried 20 pounds of mail wrapped in oil silk.

Only once did the mail fail to come through, when both horse and rider were killed. But, unlike the express riders, those manning the stations could not outrun the dangers they faced, such as deadly attacks in May 1860 during the Pyramid Lake Indian War in Nevada. These incidents resulted in a record 360-mile round-trip ride in 36 hours by "Pony Bob" Haslam, after the rider scheduled to relieve him refused to ride because of the danger.

The Pony Express lasted just 19 months, a financial failure defeated by the completion of the transcontinental telegraph line.

Margo Bartlett Pesek’s column appears Sundays.