Missouri: St. Jo, where the Pony Express began
Gary Chilcote, director of the Patee House Museum in St. Joseph, Missouri, holds a mochila, a lightweight saddlebag that the Pony Express riders used when they carried the mail. The house was the office of the Pony Express.
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Mitchell Smyth
Meridian Writers’ Group –
ST. JOSEPH, Missouri – The sign on the wall, in old-fashioned script, reads, in part: “Wanted. Young skinny, wiry fellows, not over eighteen... Orphans preferred.”
The wording, in a museum here, is taken from an advertisement that appeared in newspapers in early March 1860. Entrepreneurs were seeking riders for a new mail route called the Pony Express.
The name conjures up the excitement of the time when the U.S. west was truly wild, of men like Buffalo Bill Cody and Wild Bill Hickok, of fast horses and savage Indians and six-guns thundering.
And it all began here in “St. Jo.”
“In 1859 the railroad west reached St. Jo,” says Gary Chilcote, director of the Patee House Museum, situated in the old Pony Express office. “From here to California was wilderness. Mail from east to west, or vice versa, took a month or more. But the men who dreamed up the Pony Express said they’d do it in 10 days.”
And they did. On April 3, 1860, riders left St. Joseph and San Francisco amid a huge fanfare. Ten days later the mail was delivered.
And for the next 18 months, across 3,150 kilometres [1,950 miles] of plains, salt flats, deserts and mountains the Pony Express men rode at full gallop, changing horses every 25 kilometres [15 miles] or so. After about 160 kilometres [100 miles] they’d rest and wait to take over from a rider and head back the way they’d come.
In so doing they captured the attention of the country and, eventually, the world.
The office here in the Patee House has been reconstructed to look as it did in the days of the Pony Express. There are manikins of riders, log books, guns, saddles and other artifacts. Chilcote shows a visitor a mochila, a specially designed saddlebag in which the mail was carried.
“Most of the mail was government documents and material for newspapers,” he says. “It was written on tissue paper, for weight was all-important. Even at that, the average person couldn’t afford the cost ($5 an ounce, later lowered to $1).
“In the 18 months that the Pony Express ran, it carried about 650,000 pieces of mail. Sometimes a kid would ride his horse right into the Patee House and up to the counter here where I’m standing, to pick up the mochila.”
Was a mochila ever carried by Buffalo Bill or Wild Bill Hickok? They both boasted later of Pony Express exploits, but “there’s no proof they were riders,” says Chilcote.
The grand adventure ended November 20, 1861, killed by the transcontinental telegraph line, which was completed October 24.
The stables, two blocks west of the Patee House, are now the Pony Express National Museum, with dioramas, artifacts, pictures and markers telling the story.
Each June, members of the National Pony Express Association recreate the Pony Express, carrying letters over the original trail. The 3,200-kilometre [2,000-mile], eight-state event runs 24 hours a day as the riders travel between San Francisco and St. Jo’s Patee House. “Ten days, just like it was back then,” says Chilcote.
Explore More:
For more information on the Patee House Museum visit its website at www.stjoseph.net/ponyexpress.
For more information on the Pony Express National Museum visit its website at www.ponyexpress.org.
For information on St. Joseph visit the St. Joseph Convention & Visitors Bureau website at www.stjomo.com.
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