Rider coming in! Robert Haslam jumped up and ran to get his horse. He had already put on the reigns and saddle. He knew that it was his turn to run the Pony Express mail. Pony Bob, as he was called by his friends, loved the excitement of running the mail as fast as he could. And right now is was more exciting. The Paiutes were on the war path! Read about the longest pony express ride. RL:2.8
In Nevada in 1861, a young Pony Express rider races for his life, pursued by seven Paiute warriors who are determined to drive white settlers out of their territory.
From April 1860 to October 1861, the mail service known as the Pony Express operated between Saint Joseph, Missouri, and Sacramento, California. This title explores the history of the predecessor to modern mail delivery and its importance in keeping communication open from coast to coast.
“Orphans preferred” was the call that went out to the daring of heart when the Pony Express was organized nearly 150 years ago in April 1860. Called “The Greatest Enterprise of Modern Times,” the endeavor—which lasted only nineteenth months—recruited young men willing to risk life and limb in a relay race that crossed the frontier on a route from St. Joseph, Missouri, to San Francisco, California, speeding the delivery of mail to an astonishing ten days. The Pony Express combines the legends and lore of this remarkable mail service with contemporary photography and archival images and documents from the past, and celebrates the sesquicentennial of the start—and end—of those daring rides, which ended with the completion of the transcontinental railroad. It is a befitting tribute to an American icon whose legacy is marked to this day by Pony Express museums all along the route from Missouri to California.
“WANTED. YOUNG, SKINNY, WIRY FELLOWS. NOT OVER 18. MUST BE EXPERT RIDERS. WILLING TO RISK DEATH DAILY. ORPHANS PREFERRED.” —California newspaper help-wanted ad, 1860 The Pony Express is one of the most celebrated and enduring chapters in the history of the United States, a story of the all-American traits of bravery, bravado, and entrepreneurial risk that are part of the very fabric of the Old West. No image of the American West in the mid-1800s is more familiar, more beloved, and more powerful than that of the lone rider galloping the mail across hostile Indian territory. No image is more revered. And none is less understood. Orphans Preferred is both a revisionist history of this magnificent and ill-fated adventure and an entertaining look at the often larger-than-life individuals who created and perpetuated the myth of “the Pony,” as it is known along the Pony Express trail that runs from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, California. The Pony Express is a story that exists in the annals of Americana where fact and fable collide, a story as heroic as the journey of Lewis and Clark, as complex and revealing as the legacy of Custer’s Last Stand, and as muddled and freighted with yarns as Paul Revere’s midnight ride. Orphans Preferred is a fresh and exuberant reexamination of this great American story.
United States, 1860. Delivering the news across the great continent of North America was not easy. To provide a faster mail service, the Central Overland California & Pike's Peak Express Company, or Pony Express, was created. Be a rider on the Pony Express in this impressive graphic novel. Maps, timelines, glossaries, and indexes make these titles an exciting addition to classroom discussion. Graphic Planet is an imprint of Magic Wagon, a division of ABDO Publishing Group. Grades 3-6.
Distributed by the University of Nebraska Press for Caxton Press It operated less than two years. It lost an enormous amount of money. But the Pony Express delivered the mail across a continent at a critical time and captured the imagination of people all over the world like few events in the history of the American West.
Riding 2,000 miles on horseback from Montana to New Mexico sounds like a crazy but thrilling dream or pure hardship and exhaustion. According to Bernice Ende, the trip was all that and more. Since swinging her leg over the saddle for that first long ride in 2005 (at the age of 50), Ende has logged more than 29,000 miles in the saddle, crisscrossing North America on horseback - alone. More than once she has traversed the Great Plains, the Southwest deserts, the Cascade Range, and the Rocky Mountains. Along the way, she discovered a sense of community and love of place that unites people wherever they live. From 2014-2016, she was the first person to ride coast to coast and back again in one trek, winning acclaim from the international Long Riders' Guild and awe from the people she met along the way. Bernice Ende's memoirs are illuminated by accompanying maps of her routes and photos from her journeys, capturing the instant friends she meets along the way, and her ongoing encounters with harsh weather, wildlife, hard work, mosquitoes, tricky route-finding, and the occasional worn out horseshoe. Ende reveals her inner struggles and triumphs - testing the limits of physical and mental stamina, coping with inescapable solitude, and the rewards of living life her own way, as she says, "in her own skin." Saddle up and come along for the journey of a lifetime.
