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01/25/05 |
     
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The Beginning The 1800s were a time of westward expansion. The Gold Rush as well as land opportunities on the west coast lured people from America as well as from the rest of the world. This westward movement, however, left westerners starved for news from back east. The Pony Express was started in order to create the fastest mail delivery between the east and west coast. It was also well known and respected because in ran day and night; winter and summer. This proved that the westward route could be traveled in harsh winter conditions. Beginning on April 3, 1860, the Pony Express began delivering messages, which were written on very thin tissue paper. The average message would cost about $5. The message would be carried from St. Louis, Missouri to San Francisco, California.
The Delivery The route for the Pony Express ran from St. Louis, Missouri to San Francisco, California. The fathers of the Pony Express took on the task of finding 600 Broncos that would be used as delivery horses. These horses were chooses for their speed, toughness, and endurance levels. They also chose about 75 men; most of whom were in their early twenties. The youngest rider was eleven years old and the oldest rider was in his forties. Advertisements stated that riders must be light weight, most were about 120 pounds. They were also chosen for their shooting ability, bravery, deprivation capacity, and horsemanship. Each rider received $100 a month and was required to ride a sixty mile stretch to be completed in six hours; this involved changing ponies six times. First Rider of the Pony Express The first rider out of St. Joseph on April 3, 1860, was Johnny Fry -- a well known rider in local horse races. Though small in stature, weighing less than 120 pounds, he was every inch a man. Fry's division ran from St. Joseph to Seneca, Kansas, a distance of eighty miles, which he covered at an average speed of twelve and a half miles per hour, including all stops. The story is told that young women would watch for him to make his Pony Express run past their homes and would hand him cakes and cookies, thus donuts were invented. An equally charming one concerns the making of a "Log Cabin" quilt. Frye wore a red necktie which the young lady seamstress wished very much to sew into the article. Frye, however, liked the tie himself and would not give it up. Consequently she resorted to a bit of strategy. Next time he was due to come along, she mounted a horse and rode down the trail to meet him. When he came by she fell in beside him and again asked for the tie. In a spirit of mischief Frye put spurs to his horse and dashed ahead. Not to be outdone she applied the quirt to her horse and soon overtook him. She made a grab for the tie, missed it, and got hold of his shirt tail. A piece of it tore off. With great glee she carried it home and sewed it into the quilt where she had planned to put the tie. Fry was little more than a boy when he entered the pony service. Born in Kentucky, his family moved to Missouri in 1849.His father John Fry and his mother Mary Fry. He had three brothers: Richard, Reason, and Joseph , and a sister Sarah Eliza. By 1856 John Fry must have died since Mary Fry was married to Benjamin Wells. The family then lived near Rushville, Missouri. End of the Pony Express The Pony Express riders were in constant danger. Because they were always carrying money, which they collected whenever people wanted mail delivered, they were very often robbed along the route. Riders were warned that each day their lives would be in danger; it is said that one rider died while on the route. Quicker methods of communications were also being established in order to satisfy the general public that was becoming, and continues to become, impatient for news. One such replacement was the telegraph. Where it took ten days for a message to reach the opposite coast with the Pony Express, it took only minutes so the same message to travel the same distance with the telegraph. The Pony Express officially ended on October 24, 1861, when the telegraph entered the mainstream of the media. Another replacement was the railroad. As the Pony Express traveled westward, so did the iron rails. The railroad system brought with it the United States Postal Service. The railroad was faster, safer, and more reliable then the pony express. The Pony Express, a Dead Media? Although the Pony Express is no longer used as a method of communication, it is by no means a dead media. It has, in reality, media morphed. Concepts created by the fathers of the Pony Express can be seen in modern media such as the United States Postal Service. Of course, it has been modernized with the invention of airplanes and other such methods of transportation, but their are many similarities between the modern postal service and that of the Pony Express. The only major difference is that now, people pay for postage before it is sent, whereas with the Pony Express people paid for the mail when they received it and the riders were forced to carry large sums of money, which put them in immediate danger of being robbed. The Pony Express can be considered an old medium, but really it has merely been reinvented and improved upon. Without the Pony Express, the United States Postal Service may have never been formed. The Pony Express also encouraged more westward movement because it proved that the we st. ward route could be traveled successfully in the winter months, which were previously believed to be unbearable. |
This site was last updated 01/24/05