“WANTED: young, skinny, wiry fellows, not over eighteen. Must be expert riders, willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred. Wages $25 a week. Apply, Central Overland Express, Alta Bldg., Montgomery St.” This ad was placed in a San Francisco newspaper in March 1860 when the Pony Express was first hiring riders. Despite the risks involved, hundreds of young men applied to deliver mail on the Pony Express.
Since the Gold Rush of the mid-1800s, more people moved out west to California. The problem: there was no fast way for them to get mail from other parts of the country. William Russell, a partner in one of the largest freighting companies that sent supplies to the West, had an idea. He would generate publicity for the company by starting a “horse express” that promised to deliver mail in ten days from St. Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento, California. He planned to have a chain of riders relaying mail from one station to the next with one rider coming from each direction. Russell set up home stations where riders could rest and relay stations where they changed horses. He sent supplies to each station along the route, bought horses and paid riders with company money.
