July 31, 2018 • 44 mins
For as long a shadow as it casts across the history of the Old West, the Pony Express was a failed business venture, doomed from the start, that only lasted 18 months. But since the last rider headed out with his bag of mail, its legend has only grown.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should know from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, you welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry over there, and
(00:21):
we're bringing you all the news fast as lightning. In
this episode on Pony Express, Hey, you resurrected that don't
be Dumb Josh for a moment. Then you're also staining
on your head in your chair. This is like the
(00:41):
end of Primal fear Man. That Don't be Dumb Josh
never went away. There's nothing but that Don't Be Dumb.
I hope I didn't ruin that for anybody just now.
I probably did, But come on, it was the eighties. Yeah.
There was a bit of a discussion about on the
movie Crush facebook page about me spoiling things that are
(01:02):
old movies like Jaws, like the Shark dies. Like a
bunch of people came to my defense. They're like, you know,
there's a limit on spoilers, Like if you're talking about
a ten year old an older movie, like come on,
who who was it that chose Jaws? Was it Roman?
He's got great taste, man. I watched that movie twice
(01:23):
in the last two weeks the first time it was
on mute and I was still like engrossed by it.
And then I recently watched it from like start to
finish um for the first time in well over a decade,
and I was like, oh my god, it is basically
perfect everything about it. It's just enjoyable. It's beautifully shot,
(01:44):
the characters are great. It's just wonderful. Here's the swimming
with bow legged women. Yeah. Man, he's he's quite a character.
Was still good in that movie, man, Yeah, all of them.
It's just so great. Yeah, even Royce. Yeah. My favorite
moment in that whole movie, I think, well, gosh, there's
so many, but don't spoil it. When that real moment,
(02:07):
like Spielberg peppers in these moments, it just makes it
such a richer film, Like when he's sitting there with
his kid before Dreyfus comes over for dinner that night.
He just says that moment with his son, we're asked
him for a kiss, and it's just leaven in. Just
little tidbits like that make the movie so much more rich.
YEA love it. That's our Spielberg. I have a question
(02:29):
for you. Has there ever been more attention paid to
a utter failure of a business that was only open
for about nineteen months than the Pony Express. Trying to
think it's really remarkable. Yeah, it's like the new Coke
of mail service. Because when you said this topic, I
(02:49):
was like, oh, hot, diggity dog, this is gonna be
great and it's an interesting story. But it's like, wow,
the Pony Express was a big fat failure. Yeah. Really
this So one of the articles we're working from is
called the Pony Express colon Riders of Destiny in parentheses.
Couldn't resist that, um, Christopher Corbett um. And he basically
(03:12):
makes the case that the most interesting thing about the
Pony expresses the fact that we remember it at all. Yeah,
that that's real, the real story behind it, because it
was a big stinking failure. Business wise, it was as
success as an actual mail service, but as a business
it was terrible. The timing was terrible, The whole structure
(03:35):
of it was just a bad idea. It was just dumb.
But it was as far as the service goes, if
you're looking at the very definition of the word service,
it was invaluable for a lot of people. Yeah, So
just to set the table real quick, if you don't
know what we're talking about. The Pony Express was a
delivery a mail delivery system. Uh. When the the trans
(04:00):
Continental well, I guess pre transcontinental telegram when it only
went how far east did that go at the time? St?
Joe Missouri? Okay? St. Joe Missouri, and then it went
west as far as Sacramento, Sacramento. And the idea was
to join those two lines so you would have a
true transcontinental telegram telegraph service. But before that happened, there
(04:25):
were three entrepreneurs who said, we can close this gap
because it takes weeks or months to get mail from
east to west these days, and we can do that.
We want to be able to do that in like
a week to ten days. Yeah, which was enormously ambitious,
because if you sent mail overland right from you know,
(04:46):
between Missouri and California, you maybe twenty five days was
a good thing to expect for the mail to get there.
It's a Missouri that's one way, Okay, if you wanted
to send it by ship, months a couple of months
before the person ever got the mail, because you gotta
dig a river from Missouri to Sacramento. You gotta flood
(05:08):
it and then you gotta run the ship down that channel,
and then when you get to the other side, you
have to drain it and fill it back in start
over the next time. It was a terrible idea. This
was back when America was full of just complete idiots.
But nowadays we know what we're doing. We've got the
Internet and Twitter and all that stuff, right, So there
(05:29):
there was this idea where if you were in California,
which by this time was a state. And the reason
California was a state before so much of the other
parts of the country is because of the Goldbrush of
eighteen forty nine brought a lot of people out west
and they started to build and and create these cities,
and California was a state. So you had Americans living
(05:49):
in a state that was geographically isolated from the rest
of the country. So they wanted news, they wanted newspapers,
they wanted news of America back east. They wanted all
this tough and again the telegraph lines weren't connected, so
they set up this mail service to run in between
them fastest lightning and fastest lightning was about ten days,
(06:11):
like you said, and the whole route from St. Joseph,
Missouri to Sacramento took them about eighteen hundred miles, which
is a really long way. But the way that they
did a chuck in just ten days was through a
stroke of genius. Is that where I come in. I
just set you up. Yeah, they had about uh, and
(06:31):
they don't have great records, and we'll get into that,
but as far as we can tell, and there's a boy,
there's a lot of misinformation out there from over the
years and legend and lore and tall tales, but they
had about eighty horseback riders, young wiry young men who
they compared to like a modern day jockey. These were
little guys and by all accounts they could haul butt
(06:53):
on horses. Though. Uh. They had about eighty of these dudes.
And they had about four or five horses and several
dozen what they called way stations or these stations in between,
where you would ride ride, ride, ride, ride to a
station either switch riders or switch horses or both and
get you know, get a fresh horse, or if you
(07:14):
were worn out, you would hand the mail off and
we'll get to the how that worked as well. And
then they would go and it was just a point
to point thing where you would just move this mail
as fast as you could ride a horse basically yep.
And so the horses would last for ten to fifteen miles,
depending on how rough the terrain was in between way stations,
and then at the waist the next way station, the
(07:35):
rider would jump from one horse to another horse with
this mail bag called the Mochila, which you could hold
about twenty pounds of mail, and would ride on to
the next way station and switch horses again. And so
the horses would go ten to fifteen miles and the
riders would go about seventy five miles from what I've seen. Yeah,
And this whole operation was from a business called the
(07:57):
Central Overland, California and Pie Speak Express Company that was
run by three gentlemen, Russell's Majors and Waddell, William Hepburn
Russell Alexander Majors and William Bradford Waddell, who had already
been in the freight hauling business for military outposts, which
(08:17):
you think would be a great money making venture. But
apparently when they started the Pony Express, all accounts say
that their business probably wasn't doing very well when they
even started, right, so they said, well, let's see what
is a money pit, we can sink our remaining money
into what makes no sense financially. They said, oh, the
Pony Express. Yeah, because you said, I mean, there's a
(08:38):
lot of reasons why it failed, which we'll get to.
But you said that they held up to twenty pounds
of mail in these uh these saddle bags. Again, by
all accounts, they rarely had that much mail. Sometimes they
would have eight or ten letters, and that's just not
you know, if you're in the shipping business, you're not
maximizing your load. No, I did some a little bit
(09:01):
of math. Wasn't hard, but I'm still proud of it. Um.
So they charged five dollars per half graham at first,
and so the the Mochila could hold twenty pounds. So
twenty pounds times thirty two is sixty or times five
dollars the six hundred forty dollars and in today's money,
that's about sixteen thousand, six hundred forty bucks. It's not
(09:25):
too bad, um. But apparently it was way more to
maintain this line than than that. And like you said,
plenty of these things only had a couple dozen letters
in him at any given time. And the people who
would use the pony Express would write these letters on
tissue paper to cut down on costs, because you know,
(09:46):
they charged by the half Graham. Yeah, and it was
generally not just regular American people like uh, apparently it
was mostly like government and military, and you know, you
couldn't just generally people couldn't afford to send a letter
by pony express, right right, So newspapers would send cables
(10:07):
to other newspapers. Um or yeah, like you said, government
although the government never officially granted a contract to the
Central Overland. Um, they would use them, but there was
no official contract. And it's I get the impression that
had they ever landed a government contract they might have
they might have actually made money, although I don't think
(10:29):
it would ultimately kept them from their their fate. But um,
they they the fact that they didn't have a wide
customer base, they didn't have a government contract, and then
this was just such an expensive venture and they couldn't
possibly make their money back from it. It was I
don't know if we've gotten the point across yet or not.
This is a terrible business venture. Yeah, and what made
(10:50):
matters worse, I mean, they were likely doomed. Uh, maybe
we should hold off the final nail in the coffin
until later, even though it's pretty obvious if you're paying attention.
But one thing that heard him along the way for
sure was the Pyramid Lake War, Yeah, or the Piute War. Yeah.
I even looked it up. That's what Emma Saying says.
(11:12):
It was. Uh, that was in Nevada and Utah mainly,
and that was a war that took a great toll
on especially these way stations. Uh. And if you are
a way station, dude, you've fared much worse than Pony
Express writers as far as activity an attack from Native
Americans because you were sitting duck basically in a station
(11:33):
that that seems to be no more than just like
four walls and a dirt floor and maybe a horse
corral and a thing to put water in. Yeah, on
the open prairie. Yeah, you were sitting out there. Yeah.
And during the Pyramid Lake warm hostilities between the Piute
and Shoshonees who had banded together with the Pyramid Lake tribe,
(11:53):
those um, those three groups rose up together against um.
The settler is the euro the Euro American settlers who
have been um coming out there and just basically encroaching
on their land. The thing that the straw that broke
the camel's back was Um. A pair of Um brothers,
Euro American brothers kidnapped a couple of Piute I think
(12:17):
twelve year old girls and raped them and kept them
hidden at one of these little towns, these little frontier towns,
and the Piute Indians got wind of this and went
and found him, killed a couple of the people, burned
the town down and then started going from like towntown
or um town totown, but also a way station to
(12:39):
way station, just like Um, massacring people there, burning down
way stations, just basically like torching all these places right Um.
And at first the the cavalry was called in and
grossly underestimated what the Piute and Shoshonian pyramid Um group
was capable of UH and just got got whooped basically.
(13:02):
And then the they further reinforcements that got called in.
We're basically able to bring it to a standoff. But
this this whole thing just raised tensions from simmering below
you know, the surface, to out and out right what
you would call a war between these tribes and the
Americans who were pressing into their land. So from that
(13:25):
moment on, it got way more difficult and scarier to
be a Pony Express rider. And as per Pony Express history,
this happened like ten weeks after the first rider disembarked. Yeah,
so they I mean, not only did it cost them,
uh men, but it costs them about seventy five grand,
(13:45):
and this is an eighteen sixty it's like to something
million today. Yeah, I mean that was a huge loss.
So they started they ramped up their operation to try
and make up for that, and all of a sudden
they were delivering twice a week instead of once a week. Uh.
And they eventually tried to lower their prices too, but
it just none of it worked, and financially it was
a mess. Uh. Like I said earlier, they didn't really
(14:07):
keep a lot of records. They either didn't keep them
or they may have destroyed them. That's what I think,
to avoid creditors. Because these guys were not the greatest
well I don't know if they weren't the greatest businessman,
but they surely didn't farewell in this case. Well, one
of them was supposedly an outright calm man Russell. Oh yeah,
yeah he was. He was supposedly he was the spokesperson
(14:29):
for this this business venture. And he was good at that,
but he was not, um, not a great stand up
guy as far as business is concerned. So the image
that you get in your head of Pony Express or
these guys riding full bore on these horses being chased
by Native Americans and desperados and uh, apparently all the
(14:50):
you know, many of the books over the years, even
ones that sound uh super official, a lot of times
were just made up stories when and we'll talk a
little bit about who finally got in touch with a
lot of these riders. But apparently when they were um
officially on record, they didn't talk a lot about fighting
(15:11):
the Native Americans or anyone. They talked about the weather,
stinking about being ripped off and not being paid, uh,
sort of like normal business complaints. And it wasn't like
the thing that you see at the Wells Fargo Bank, like, yeah,
we rode horses fast, but it kind of sucked, right.
But the thing is is like this, this was a
(15:33):
uh a legend in its own time, is how I've
seen it. Put Um, well, we'll talk about that after
a break. How about that. Yeah, let's do it, okay. Um,
(16:11):
So Chuck. We said that, like the Pony Express was
the legend in sometime, and that's absolutely true. Like there
was again in part of William Russell's superior spokesperson ship.
I think is a word. Um they like newspapers wrote
about it in Sacramento. They called it there our friend
(16:31):
the pony Um. I think they were referring to drugs.
I think they were talking about the Pony Express. But um,
like people love the Pony Express. It was it was
just hugely innovative and the idea that like these guys
were out there writing as fast as they can for
scores of miles with bandits on their tails, just to
bring us the mail. People fell in love with this thing.
(16:54):
Even though at the end of the day the thing
lasted like eighteen months, like the Only Express, it was
huge legend that we think of. It was an eighteen
month business venture that ultimately failed, right, but it was
a legend, um. And one of the reasons that was
a legends because there there were a um, I mean,
there were real deal exploits going on on the trail.
(17:17):
There were some writers who were just amazing, Like one
guy was called, um, what was pony Bob's last name
has them, right, Pony Bob has them. He was one
of the riders for the Pony Express who ironically wasn't
as legendary as he should have been because he was
the actual real deal, But he ended up being forgotten
(17:38):
because I get the impression he wasn't much of a
self promoter. Yeah, he made a legendary documented journey of
three hundred and eighty miles without relief. At one point
where he basically road to road and road and road
went to his station to switch riders, and the guy
there was like, well, I'm not going, Like there's there's
(18:00):
indians out there trying to kill me. And so he
was like, all right, I'm gonna keep going. And he
kept going and delivered the mail and eventually made his
way back and and it ended up being a three
eight mile round trip. And he's, like I said, there's
not a lot of great documentation, but even though he's
been lost to history, he was very well documented as
an expert writer. Yeah, he definitely was. Um, there was
(18:23):
another one called Billy Fisher who had a pretty interesting
claim to fame. He was out riding on the trail
and um, it was during a snowstorm, so This is
another thing too. You said that the riders complained about
things like the terrible weather, like they were carrying mail
from um, let's see Missouri to Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, California.
(18:50):
Some tough weather especially, say like in January, you're gonna
run into some terrible snowstorms, right. And Billy Fisher found
himself in one of these snowstorms and he first he
just dismounted. He's like, I just gotta go over here
and go to sleep for a little while in a blizzard.
And um, he started to fall asleep, and he woke
up to something licking his face, and it was a
(19:12):
jack rabbit who had basically licked his face till he
woke up. I didn't know they licked. I think this
may have been his his spirit animal actually, uh. And
the rabbit like startled Billy Fisher, and Billy Fisher startled
the rabbit and the rabbit ran off, but it woke
Billy Fisher up, and he said, if that rabbit had
to lick my face and woke me up, I never
(19:32):
would have woken up. I would have just frozen to
death out there in this blizzard. But he was woken
up enough and realized the gravity of the situation enough
they got back on his horse and kept rioting to safety. Yeah.
And to to top it off, his great great grandson
is William Fisher, who was one of the U S
astronauts who flew the Space Shuttle. So legend and these
(19:53):
stories are like going around and like being circulated in
newspapers and among people while the any expresses going on. Yeah,
I mean there were some very bad, uh not exploit
of sensationalist books written over the years. And then there
was also a couple of real legitimate dudes, Captain Sir
(20:15):
Richard Burton, the famous British explorer, and one Samuel Clemens,
twenty five year old future Mark Twain. They both individually
um kind of spent some time out there documenting the
Pony Express. And it seems like Burton didn't have a
good time out there. He didn't like the West. He
always complained about the flies and the fleas and just
(20:37):
the the filth and just the people. He just was
not a fan. But he still gave a fairly accurate
account of like the day to day of a Pony
Express writer. Clemens, Mr. The future Mark Twain seemed to
have a good time, and you know, in his true fashion,
wrote some of the uh some really flower flowery eyewitness
(20:58):
testimony about seeing these horsemen coming across the tundra and
the planes. It's pretty cool. You're gonna read that? No, well,
everybody go read that. It's in um Roughing It, which
is his book about traveling the US, and he surfs
in it. Did you know that? I didn't. He goes
to Hawaii and tries surfing when they used to surf
(21:20):
on like ten ft long wooden boards. Your head clean off,
Go go read that quote in your in your best
hell hole brook impression. Really a good way to do it.
I'm more a Val Kilmer Mark Twain guy, That's right.
I forgot he did that. Everyone did, Chuck man. Um,
(21:42):
So you had Mark Twain and Captain Sir Richard Burton
providing like contemporary accounts. But that's like, that is virtually it. Right,
there were again this is a failed business venture. Let's
go ahead and tell him what happened? Why it was
failed business venture? Chuck? Why why ultimately died? Well, they
finally hooked up the two, They finally closed that gap
(22:05):
on the telegraph. They're like well, we can go coast
to coast now, so you're you're sort of immediately literally
immediately out of business. Yeah. The two days later they closed.
The first rider headed out on April third, eighteen sixty
and it was October twenty six of eighteen sixty one
where the last one headed out from St. Joe's. And
(22:27):
some people will say, well, it didn't actually stop in October.
It was actually November because those machilas didn't end up
into in Sacramento until November. That's fine whatever. It was
like eighteen months seventies something weeks of Operation UM and
people loved it at the time. But as with most things,
once the new, better, greater thing came along the telegram,
(22:51):
they forgot about it pretty quick and we really honestly
would not have any recollection of the Pony Express. It
would be footnote to a footnote in history if it
weren't for one guy named Buffalo Bill Cody, who actually
is the reason why we all remember the Pony Express.
He had a soft spot in his heart for um,
(23:13):
not just the Pony Express itself, but one of um,
the founders. I think it was Alexander Major's, right, Yeah,
I think so. Who um, you gave me a job
when he was a kid. Gave him a job when
he was a kid. And while Bill um would go
on or Buffalo Bill would go on to uh to say, well,
I was actually a Pony Express writer. All historical evidence
(23:35):
suggests that that is not actually the case. But um,
he definitely did work for Alexander Majors, who was one
of the owners of the Pony Express as a horseback messenger,
just not a Pony Express writer, which if you're talking
about Pony Express legend, that's a major distinction. Yeah. And
Buffalo Bill would also go on to say she's a
great brick front girl. Sorry, it's he called Buffalo Bill. Yeah, okay.
(24:03):
I always, for some reason I thought it was a
playoff of Buffalo Bill, like Buffalo Bob or something like that. No,
it was Buffalo Bill because he skinned his victims. I remember, Uh,
should we take a break? Geez? Okay, sure, alright, let's
take a break and we'll talk a little bit more
about Buffalo Bill right after this. Alright, So Buffalo Bill's
(24:52):
Wild West. Uh, I want to always want to say
Wild West extravaganza, you can call it that, but it
was really Buffalo Bill's Old West. That was a name
of his big show that he took all over the country,
delighting people with sharp shooting and horseback riding and all
sorts of cool stuff, enchanting America with U with the
Old West, not just America, the world. Well, yeah, and
(25:15):
that's that's a solid point. I mean, he went all
over Europe and that's why, and this article points out
that's why to this day you can go to like
a Pony Express themed club in Germany because back then
he performed in front of Queen Victoria and Kaiservillehelm and
the and the Pope in Rome and basically kind of
he always seemed to have at least one reported or
(25:38):
purported Pony Express rider in the show. It was like
one of the main um segments of his show. Yeah,
so at one point he did have who was the
uh Bronco Bronco Charlie Miller. No, no, no, well he
had him. Oh, pony Bob has them. Yeah, pony Bob
worked for him for a little while and he is
(25:59):
a definite legit rider. The other guy, what's his name,
Bronco Billy Broncho, Charlie Miller, Oh no, that was Clint Eastwood.
Bronco Charlie Miller claimed to have been a Pony Express writer.
A lot of men claim to have been over the
years that were not. Uh, And they traced his his
timeline back and he would have been ten or eleven,
(26:20):
which is really stretching it, like it is possible. It
is it's possible because they did go as low as
like thirteen and fourteen. But uh, it was never super
confirmed that this guy actually wrote for the Pony Express.
But it kind of doesn't matter because apparently everyone loved him. Yeah,
And and so the reason why it's stretching it but
(26:43):
still in the realm of possibility is because so like
when when William Russell we talk about the Ponty Express
and his company would say, like, these men have to
take an oath not to drink or fight, which still happened.
Of course. Yeah, we have like eighty eighty people in
the saddle and in reality, yeah, were all drunk around
like at all the way stations and on and on
(27:03):
the trail. Um. And the the impression is that you
if you needed a rider and there was somebody who
said I'll go you, you were a Pony Express rider
right then. So the idea that an eleven year old
kids said I'll go, and they said, all right, fine
go that could have possibly happened. So it's possible Bronco
Charlie Miller did right. But like you said, he was
(27:25):
just such a great like old West archetype. They were
like whatever, we'll believe anything you say. Yeah. So uh.
Through the years, like we said, a lot of bad information,
a lot of legend um everything from uh for movies
like three, a paramount film called The Pony Express. Charlton
(27:46):
Heston is Buffalo Bill. In the movie, Buffalo Bill teams
up with wild Bill Hillo Hilcok to start the Pony Express.
And as this author said, there is not a shard
effect in the entire film. I don't know if he
meant shred shard all right, He could have said shough.
And then this the um. If you read this, it
sounds super cool, like a notice in the St. Louis
(28:08):
and San Francisco newspaper that said wanted young, skinny, wiry
fellows not over eighteen, must be expert writers willing to
risk death daily orphans preferred way just twenty five dollars
per week. And that seems like, man, what a great
job listing for the Pony Express. Orphans preferred that was
written in the twentieth century by a journalist in the
(28:29):
Sunset magazine. So that probably wasn't even true. No, No,
that's so like again there was. It was forgotten like
they think. Alexander Majors wrote his um memoirs. Remember he
was one of the three guys who owned the Pony Express.
He wrote his memoirs like thirty forty years after um
the Pony Express his last ride. So and by this
(28:53):
time most people had forgotten it. And again it was
Buffalo Bill who came along actually paid a visit to
Ali Sander Majors and found him in a fairly sorry state.
He was broke, he was in poor health, and said,
you gave me my first job when I was eleven
after my father died, and I want to repay you
by taking care of you. So he put him in
a show, he let him stay at his old Scouts
(29:14):
Rest ranch in Nebraska, just basically took care of him.
But he also was like, we've got to publish this book.
So he got Rand McNally to actually publish this book
about his life as a freight Old West freight legend guy.
Including the Pony Express, and that was some of the
(29:34):
earliest documentation about it. But it also kicked off like
this history of terrible documentation, of just surrounding the whole
thing with tall tales and embellishments, and it just very
quickly became it's very tough to to root fact from
fiction even today, even at some of these places that
are like this is actually this museum is a Pony
(29:56):
express Way station. May not the case. They're not entirely
certain what the trail was any longer. They think that
there's some pristine segments that are aren't covered over by
um tracks of some sort that they're actually like, this
was the the course that the Pony Express took, but
they're not a hundred percent sure. It just got lost
(30:17):
the time. Yeah, I don't even think we mentioned that
Buffalo Bill Um That job he got was was as
a horseback delivery writer for the initial Freight Company, but
he never wrote for the Pony Express, though he did
he outright claim to or just kind of let people
send that know in his in his in the notes
for the Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, it talked about
(30:39):
how he was and then it would say you should
buy his autobiography it shows even more. And then they
would talk in depth about how he rode for the
Pony Express. For sure, if you were from the Old
West of this time, you were basically expected to just
lie constantly about some of the things you've done. And
same not just with um Buffalo Bill Wild. Bill Hiccock
said the same thing, said he worked for the Pony
(31:01):
Express too, and he did, but he was one of
those guys who ran away station intended to the horses lame. Well,
he was bigger and older, so he couldn't write. You know,
it wasn't his fault. He's a victim of circumstances. Yeah,
there are also a bunch of Uh. There was a
series of last living Pony Express riders throughout the years.
(31:22):
Um Various newspapers, even sometimes multiple times in the same
newspaper over the years, would print articles claiming that the
last Pony Express rider has just died. Um, so we
don't know if you know any of them were or not,
or if they were the last or not. Uh. And
it finally took a woman named a poet, apparently not
(31:43):
a very good one, named Mabel Loving, who said, why
don't you know, wasn't someone actually write letters and get
in touch with some of these people and get the
true dirt. And she did that. She apparently wrote letters
and had some correspondence with the surviving Pony Express writers
as an amateur poet and said this was right before
(32:05):
World War One, And apparently that is some of the
only like real documentation we have from some of the
real writers that she eventually published in something called The
Pony Express Rides on exclamation Point, which apparently can still
buy if you have a lot of money. Uh. Yeah,
it's like a collectible. I'm sure, yeah, I think. And
(32:26):
supposedly the printers lost a couple of the chapters, so
like even if you buy a copy, it's not and
it's intact form because nobody took that very seriously. I
think probably because of the exclamation point. It's never a
good idea. No, um, you got anything else? Well, I mean,
I guess the PostScript is, uh, after this telegraph that,
(32:49):
like I said, two days after it was hooked up,
they realized that they were done for because they were
already in bad financial straits. So wat L went home
to Missouri. He was broke and in debt. He sold
us home to his son for a dollar and still
lived there. Uh And apparently he died in April of
eighteen seventy two, never worked again. Um Russell, who was
(33:11):
only forty eight, went to New York. Failed as a stockbroker.
Apparently no one trusted him. He filed for bankruptcy in
eighteen sixty five. Uh and this was what just five
years after it shut down, sold off his assets to
pay his creditors, went back to Missouri finally because of
poor health, and died in eighteen seventy two. And then
(33:33):
Majors lived the longest uh and we know his story,
like you said, Buffalo Bill helped him publish his book.
And if there if Bronco Charlie Miller really was a
Pony Express rider, he definitely by far was the last
one to die. He died at a hundred and five
in nineteen fifty five, and years before that, at age
(33:54):
eighty two, he rode from New York to California on
horseback to bring its tension back to the Pony Express
and the glory of it, Wow Pony Express. So final facts,
they ended up losing about two grand and that day's money,
which is millions of dollars now. The personal best delivery time,
(34:17):
apparently was when they carried Abraham Lincoln's inaugural address. They
got it to California in seven days, seventeen hours, and
in the end they delivered about thirty five thousand pieces
of mail over that eighteen or nineteen months. And I think,
isn't it wasn't only one mailshipment that didn't only one
fail to make it? That's what I understand. Yeah, it's
(34:39):
pretty good track record for a failed business. It's not
bad at all. They all they wrote a combined half
a million miles in that time. Pretty great. And again
that's the Pony Express, totally different than what you thought about,
but also sort of the same. I just didn't know
that it was such a flopt. You just bad timing,
(35:00):
terrible timing. Man. Um, Well, if you wanted more about
the Pony Express, we'll get on out there on the trail.
You varm it and check it out yourself. Uh. And
since I said arm and, it's time for listener mail.
Oh no, no it's not. Oh boy, it's time for
administrated d all right, Okay, for the uninitiated, this is
(35:31):
where Josh and I and Jerry, by way of our voices,
thank you for the nice things that you've sent us
in the mail. Thank you, gifts, tokens, crafts, books, postcards, letters.
By the way, I didn't log all the postcards and letters.
That can be tough. It can be tough. How about
a blanket. Thank you to everyone who sent us postcards
(35:53):
in lineups Greed, Thank you all right, Dan Kent, thank
you big time for sending us Pliny the Elder or
beer and T shirts. Yes. Thanks to the bar Fight
Supply Company for all the awesome leather goods, including the
um the Mole skin holder, which I use a lot. Yeah, yeah,
(36:13):
the business card holders all that jam. Thank you very much, guys.
Kelly Sumski of Two Little Els, she sent us a
or sent me a painted rock and memory of the
wizard of my cat who passed. Sweet. It was very
sweet and very sad to get, but in a good way.
Uh sad, bitter sweet. Chris Wallzac sent us beer from Hamburg,
(36:36):
New York, and I p a thank you. Chris. Andy Krueger,
you sent me a ween T shirt that I wear
all the time, including on stage in Atlanta. I saw
it myself. Um Anna Dyne coffee. Uh. They sent us
some coffee from Milwaukee. Thanks Anna Dyne, Jeremiah and Mason Brandrick.
(36:58):
Oh I remember this. They sent us the F five
I p A, which is a beer I had when
I spent some time in Tulsa. So it's I think
it Tulsa beer and some beer in Bear in Stein
Bear shirts soaked in cologne. It seemingly soaked in cologne.
They they they're like, here, you look like you smell.
(37:21):
We're gonna make you pretty. It was interesting. Julie sent
us handmade personalized Christmas ornaments, which it's been a while
since we did this, or um for Jerry, you, me,
Emily and the kids. Yeah, yeah, it's very nice. Those
are great. Actually, yeah that was on my tree. Uh
Kaylee Hamar sent uh my dog Nikot some pet treats.
(37:43):
Nice pet treater, very nice. Lindsay Lundstrom sent us some
wonderful bottle key cap or bottle cap key chains. Yeah,
there's a s Y s K one and don't be
dumb one last chance garage Mama Jerry Red Wagon and
she's out of Etsy and Facebook at Red Dragon Handcrafts.
(38:05):
Check him out. You're gonna love him. Yeah, it's good stuff.
Becca sent uh sent me a library copy of a book,
my children's book that I was so fond of as
a kid, The Great Christmas Kidnapping Caper. I'm really excited
to read this with my daughter Becca. So thank you
so much for sending that. Kelly Butler Olson sent Murdered
by Death a copy of Murdered by Death, arguably one
(38:29):
of the greatest boof movies of all time, one of
my favorites. So thank you. Kelly H. Taylor Stonehawker sent
lovely Christmas card and handmade caramels which were Damons. And
Nick Stiglick send us some stroop waffles, those amazing things
that you put over your coffee to heat up. Yeah,
we've we've got more than one stroop waffle. So if
(38:49):
you sent stroop Waffles, many thanks and to send him
again Nathan for lots. Uh. He's actually Australian, he's an
artist and he sent us. Uh. These are great variety
of bookmarks, magnets, coloring books all uh that are animals
with their bodies made of flowers and plants. Yeah, it's amazing,
(39:11):
it's really nice. So you you should check this out.
It's online at uh Marini Ferlazzo dot au m A
r I n I f E R l A z
z O dot au and a portion of these sales
go to wildlife conservation. So gorgeous and well funded. Speaking
of gorgeous, Aidan Dale sent us metal sculpture orchids and
(39:32):
you can find them at Aiden A I D E
N day ol d A l E dot com. Thank you, Aiden.
Just a few more here, folks, alias Pa Girko sitting
honey from their three colony a pry. That's pretty great. Thanks,
that was awesome. Robin sent us beer and mead from
Wisconsin and it was well appreciated and didn't last very long. Robin,
(39:55):
thank you. We did not drink Wisconsin ly, Robbin. That's
a T shirt. I didn't make it up. Bonnie Bowden
centis moulda Rama's guitars, which I think it got from
third Man Records in Nashville, UM. And I think she
(40:15):
also sent the Willis Tower one which I was like,
what the heck is the Willis Tower And I was like, oh,
that's the Sears Tower. Well, and we got actually more
than one person sent his molda Rama's yeah, like Luke
and David shirt skull father and son. This in his
elephant molder ramas from war Chuckledo Zoo Bam, which has
probably the largest selection of mold rama's outside of the
(40:36):
Chicago land area. It's right. And you grew up right
there in the gorilla cage. It's right. Nathan Centiss Band
c d ep Missouri Loves Company or Missouri or Missouri
Missouri Loves Company. Philip la Palm, great name, sent Robert
shaw Jaws Christmas card to Chuck. That's right. Uh. And finally,
(41:00):
just a couple of weeks ago, I got sent some
guitar picks from Forever Pick. And apparently these picks have
like a better sustain and better performance. And I have
not yet plucked with him, but I can't wait to
use my Forever picks. That is fantastic. You have some more, Yeah,
We've got just a couple more, Chuck, if you'll bear
with me, take us home. Brother Um Josh Jones sent
(41:21):
us catfish Head Vodka. Oh yeah, thanks a lot, Josh.
Um Doug sent us an amazing poster congratulating us for
a thousand episodes, and old Off and Millie the Shop
Dogs sent us the amazing railroad spike bottle openers. Remember those?
You can go to church mouseforge dot com. And dude,
I want to say Ian Newton, who founded the Baltimore
(41:44):
Whiskey Company. Ian has been sending us stuff like this
shot Tower Gin. It's kind of like a multi gen
that I love. UM sent that bourbon that you love.
Just has been sending us some pretty great stuff. So
first of all, Ian, thank you. Second of all, and
keep it coming. And third, everybody else who's not Ian,
go check out Baltimore Whiskey Company's stuff. Baltimore Spirits Company. Um,
(42:09):
they have just amazing booze that's locally made in Baltimore,
and you can tell it's like craft distilled stuff. You're
gonna love it. So thank you to everybody who sent
us anything. Ever, and if you sent us something in
between the last administrative details in this one and we
didn't say your name, first of all, we apologize. Secondly,
(42:30):
get in touch of us and let us know because
we do want to thank you, and it's just an oversight.
We're not actually mad at you, okay. And and I
have even more I want to thank Doug Sashery. I
know how to pronounce the name now. I don't know
if you guys remember not, but I mispronounced Tony Cocherri's
seasoning Creole Seasoning. Uh it turns out it's Tony Sassaris,
(42:54):
and Doug let me know by sending me tons of
Tony Sassaries products and their awesome So thank you, Doug.
I also want to thank another Doug, Doug Dixon, the
CEO of Joel Cola, who sent us some joke Cola
care packages. And then every once in a while people
bring us stuff to our live shows. So thank you
to Ron from Dundee, Michigan for giving me the um
(43:18):
complete DVD set of Thunder the Barbarian, which I've never
seen all the way through because of swimming lessons. And
a very nice person gave us gooey cakes at the St.
Louis show. Uh. Our friend Dale from Australia sent us
a care package of Australian candy to um acclamate us
to Australian candy for our Australia tour. And then John
(43:40):
from Capistrano Beach who sent us a giant puzzle wheel
that I've yet to begin to even try to figure out.
So thank you John for this madness. Uh, if you
want to get in touch with us, whether to send
us something or just to say hi. You can go
onto our website, stuff Podcast at how stuff We're dot com,
(44:00):
check out our t shirt store at t Public t
e public dot com, slash stuff you Should Know, and
you can just send us a good old fashioned email
to Stuff Podcast at how stuff works dot com. For
more on this and thousands of other topics, is it
(44:21):
how stuff works dot com
Welcome to Stuff you should know from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, you welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry over there, and
(00:21):
we're bringing you all the news fast as lightning. In
this episode on Pony Express, Hey, you resurrected that don't
be Dumb Josh for a moment. Then you're also staining
on your head in your chair. This is like the
(00:41):
end of Primal fear Man. That Don't be Dumb Josh
never went away. There's nothing but that Don't Be Dumb.
I hope I didn't ruin that for anybody just now.
I probably did, But come on, it was the eighties. Yeah.
There was a bit of a discussion about on the
movie Crush facebook page about me spoiling things that are
(01:02):
old movies like Jaws, like the Shark dies. Like a
bunch of people came to my defense. They're like, you know,
there's a limit on spoilers, Like if you're talking about
a ten year old an older movie, like come on,
who who was it that chose Jaws? Was it Roman?
He's got great taste, man. I watched that movie twice
(01:23):
in the last two weeks the first time it was
on mute and I was still like engrossed by it.
And then I recently watched it from like start to
finish um for the first time in well over a decade,
and I was like, oh my god, it is basically
perfect everything about it. It's just enjoyable. It's beautifully shot,
(01:44):
the characters are great. It's just wonderful. Here's the swimming
with bow legged women. Yeah. Man, he's he's quite a character.
Was still good in that movie, man, Yeah, all of them.
It's just so great. Yeah, even Royce. Yeah. My favorite
moment in that whole movie, I think, well, gosh, there's
so many, but don't spoil it. When that real moment,
(02:07):
like Spielberg peppers in these moments, it just makes it
such a richer film, Like when he's sitting there with
his kid before Dreyfus comes over for dinner that night.
He just says that moment with his son, we're asked
him for a kiss, and it's just leaven in. Just
little tidbits like that make the movie so much more rich.
YEA love it. That's our Spielberg. I have a question
(02:29):
for you. Has there ever been more attention paid to
a utter failure of a business that was only open
for about nineteen months than the Pony Express. Trying to
think it's really remarkable. Yeah, it's like the new Coke
of mail service. Because when you said this topic, I
(02:49):
was like, oh, hot, diggity dog, this is gonna be
great and it's an interesting story. But it's like, wow,
the Pony Express was a big fat failure. Yeah. Really
this So one of the articles we're working from is
called the Pony Express colon Riders of Destiny in parentheses.
Couldn't resist that, um, Christopher Corbett um. And he basically
(03:12):
makes the case that the most interesting thing about the
Pony expresses the fact that we remember it at all. Yeah,
that that's real, the real story behind it, because it
was a big stinking failure. Business wise, it was as
success as an actual mail service, but as a business
it was terrible. The timing was terrible, The whole structure
(03:35):
of it was just a bad idea. It was just dumb.
But it was as far as the service goes, if
you're looking at the very definition of the word service,
it was invaluable for a lot of people. Yeah, So
just to set the table real quick, if you don't
know what we're talking about. The Pony Express was a
delivery a mail delivery system. Uh. When the the trans
(04:00):
Continental well, I guess pre transcontinental telegram when it only
went how far east did that go at the time? St?
Joe Missouri? Okay? St. Joe Missouri, and then it went
west as far as Sacramento, Sacramento. And the idea was
to join those two lines so you would have a
true transcontinental telegram telegraph service. But before that happened, there
(04:25):
were three entrepreneurs who said, we can close this gap
because it takes weeks or months to get mail from
east to west these days, and we can do that.
We want to be able to do that in like
a week to ten days. Yeah, which was enormously ambitious,
because if you sent mail overland right from you know,
(04:46):
between Missouri and California, you maybe twenty five days was
a good thing to expect for the mail to get there.
It's a Missouri that's one way, Okay, if you wanted
to send it by ship, months a couple of months
before the person ever got the mail, because you gotta
dig a river from Missouri to Sacramento. You gotta flood
(05:08):
it and then you gotta run the ship down that channel,
and then when you get to the other side, you
have to drain it and fill it back in start
over the next time. It was a terrible idea. This
was back when America was full of just complete idiots.
But nowadays we know what we're doing. We've got the
Internet and Twitter and all that stuff, right, So there
(05:29):
there was this idea where if you were in California,
which by this time was a state. And the reason
California was a state before so much of the other
parts of the country is because of the Goldbrush of
eighteen forty nine brought a lot of people out west
and they started to build and and create these cities,
and California was a state. So you had Americans living
(05:49):
in a state that was geographically isolated from the rest
of the country. So they wanted news, they wanted newspapers,
they wanted news of America back east. They wanted all
this tough and again the telegraph lines weren't connected, so
they set up this mail service to run in between
them fastest lightning and fastest lightning was about ten days,
(06:11):
like you said, and the whole route from St. Joseph,
Missouri to Sacramento took them about eighteen hundred miles, which
is a really long way. But the way that they
did a chuck in just ten days was through a
stroke of genius. Is that where I come in. I
just set you up. Yeah, they had about uh, and
(06:31):
they don't have great records, and we'll get into that,
but as far as we can tell, and there's a boy,
there's a lot of misinformation out there from over the
years and legend and lore and tall tales, but they
had about eighty horseback riders, young wiry young men who
they compared to like a modern day jockey. These were
little guys and by all accounts they could haul butt
(06:53):
on horses. Though. Uh. They had about eighty of these dudes.
And they had about four or five horses and several
dozen what they called way stations or these stations in between,
where you would ride ride, ride, ride, ride to a
station either switch riders or switch horses or both and
get you know, get a fresh horse, or if you
(07:14):
were worn out, you would hand the mail off and
we'll get to the how that worked as well. And
then they would go and it was just a point
to point thing where you would just move this mail
as fast as you could ride a horse basically yep.
And so the horses would last for ten to fifteen miles,
depending on how rough the terrain was in between way stations,
and then at the waist the next way station, the
(07:35):
rider would jump from one horse to another horse with
this mail bag called the Mochila, which you could hold
about twenty pounds of mail, and would ride on to
the next way station and switch horses again. And so
the horses would go ten to fifteen miles and the
riders would go about seventy five miles from what I've seen. Yeah,
And this whole operation was from a business called the
(07:57):
Central Overland, California and Pie Speak Express Company that was
run by three gentlemen, Russell's Majors and Waddell, William Hepburn
Russell Alexander Majors and William Bradford Waddell, who had already
been in the freight hauling business for military outposts, which
(08:17):
you think would be a great money making venture. But
apparently when they started the Pony Express, all accounts say
that their business probably wasn't doing very well when they
even started, right, so they said, well, let's see what
is a money pit, we can sink our remaining money
into what makes no sense financially. They said, oh, the
Pony Express. Yeah, because you said, I mean, there's a
(08:38):
lot of reasons why it failed, which we'll get to.
But you said that they held up to twenty pounds
of mail in these uh these saddle bags. Again, by
all accounts, they rarely had that much mail. Sometimes they
would have eight or ten letters, and that's just not
you know, if you're in the shipping business, you're not
maximizing your load. No, I did some a little bit
(09:01):
of math. Wasn't hard, but I'm still proud of it. Um.
So they charged five dollars per half graham at first,
and so the the Mochila could hold twenty pounds. So
twenty pounds times thirty two is sixty or times five
dollars the six hundred forty dollars and in today's money,
that's about sixteen thousand, six hundred forty bucks. It's not
(09:25):
too bad, um. But apparently it was way more to
maintain this line than than that. And like you said,
plenty of these things only had a couple dozen letters
in him at any given time. And the people who
would use the pony Express would write these letters on
tissue paper to cut down on costs, because you know,
(09:46):
they charged by the half Graham. Yeah, and it was
generally not just regular American people like uh, apparently it
was mostly like government and military, and you know, you
couldn't just generally people couldn't afford to send a letter
by pony express, right right, So newspapers would send cables
(10:07):
to other newspapers. Um or yeah, like you said, government
although the government never officially granted a contract to the
Central Overland. Um, they would use them, but there was
no official contract. And it's I get the impression that
had they ever landed a government contract they might have
they might have actually made money, although I don't think
(10:29):
it would ultimately kept them from their their fate. But um,
they they the fact that they didn't have a wide
customer base, they didn't have a government contract, and then
this was just such an expensive venture and they couldn't
possibly make their money back from it. It was I
don't know if we've gotten the point across yet or not.
This is a terrible business venture. Yeah, and what made
(10:50):
matters worse, I mean, they were likely doomed. Uh, maybe
we should hold off the final nail in the coffin
until later, even though it's pretty obvious if you're paying attention.
But one thing that heard him along the way for
sure was the Pyramid Lake War, Yeah, or the Piute War. Yeah.
I even looked it up. That's what Emma Saying says.
(11:12):
It was. Uh, that was in Nevada and Utah mainly,
and that was a war that took a great toll
on especially these way stations. Uh. And if you are
a way station, dude, you've fared much worse than Pony
Express writers as far as activity an attack from Native
Americans because you were sitting duck basically in a station
(11:33):
that that seems to be no more than just like
four walls and a dirt floor and maybe a horse
corral and a thing to put water in. Yeah, on
the open prairie. Yeah, you were sitting out there. Yeah.
And during the Pyramid Lake warm hostilities between the Piute
and Shoshonees who had banded together with the Pyramid Lake tribe,
(11:53):
those um, those three groups rose up together against um.
The settler is the euro the Euro American settlers who
have been um coming out there and just basically encroaching
on their land. The thing that the straw that broke
the camel's back was Um. A pair of Um brothers,
Euro American brothers kidnapped a couple of Piute I think
(12:17):
twelve year old girls and raped them and kept them
hidden at one of these little towns, these little frontier towns,
and the Piute Indians got wind of this and went
and found him, killed a couple of the people, burned
the town down and then started going from like towntown
or um town totown, but also a way station to
(12:39):
way station, just like Um, massacring people there, burning down
way stations, just basically like torching all these places right Um.
And at first the the cavalry was called in and
grossly underestimated what the Piute and Shoshonian pyramid Um group
was capable of UH and just got got whooped basically.
(13:02):
And then the they further reinforcements that got called in.
We're basically able to bring it to a standoff. But
this this whole thing just raised tensions from simmering below
you know, the surface, to out and out right what
you would call a war between these tribes and the
Americans who were pressing into their land. So from that
(13:25):
moment on, it got way more difficult and scarier to
be a Pony Express rider. And as per Pony Express history,
this happened like ten weeks after the first rider disembarked. Yeah,
so they I mean, not only did it cost them,
uh men, but it costs them about seventy five grand,
(13:45):
and this is an eighteen sixty it's like to something
million today. Yeah, I mean that was a huge loss.
So they started they ramped up their operation to try
and make up for that, and all of a sudden
they were delivering twice a week instead of once a week. Uh.
And they eventually tried to lower their prices too, but
it just none of it worked, and financially it was
a mess. Uh. Like I said earlier, they didn't really
(14:07):
keep a lot of records. They either didn't keep them
or they may have destroyed them. That's what I think,
to avoid creditors. Because these guys were not the greatest
well I don't know if they weren't the greatest businessman,
but they surely didn't farewell in this case. Well, one
of them was supposedly an outright calm man Russell. Oh yeah,
yeah he was. He was supposedly he was the spokesperson
(14:29):
for this this business venture. And he was good at that,
but he was not, um, not a great stand up
guy as far as business is concerned. So the image
that you get in your head of Pony Express or
these guys riding full bore on these horses being chased
by Native Americans and desperados and uh, apparently all the
(14:50):
you know, many of the books over the years, even
ones that sound uh super official, a lot of times
were just made up stories when and we'll talk a
little bit about who finally got in touch with a
lot of these riders. But apparently when they were um
officially on record, they didn't talk a lot about fighting
(15:11):
the Native Americans or anyone. They talked about the weather,
stinking about being ripped off and not being paid, uh,
sort of like normal business complaints. And it wasn't like
the thing that you see at the Wells Fargo Bank, like, yeah,
we rode horses fast, but it kind of sucked, right.
But the thing is is like this, this was a
(15:33):
uh a legend in its own time, is how I've
seen it. Put Um, well, we'll talk about that after
a break. How about that. Yeah, let's do it, okay. Um,
(16:11):
So Chuck. We said that, like the Pony Express was
the legend in sometime, and that's absolutely true. Like there
was again in part of William Russell's superior spokesperson ship.
I think is a word. Um they like newspapers wrote
about it in Sacramento. They called it there our friend
(16:31):
the pony Um. I think they were referring to drugs.
I think they were talking about the Pony Express. But um,
like people love the Pony Express. It was it was
just hugely innovative and the idea that like these guys
were out there writing as fast as they can for
scores of miles with bandits on their tails, just to
bring us the mail. People fell in love with this thing.
(16:54):
Even though at the end of the day the thing
lasted like eighteen months, like the Only Express, it was
huge legend that we think of. It was an eighteen
month business venture that ultimately failed, right, but it was
a legend, um. And one of the reasons that was
a legends because there there were a um, I mean,
there were real deal exploits going on on the trail.
(17:17):
There were some writers who were just amazing, Like one
guy was called, um, what was pony Bob's last name
has them, right, Pony Bob has them. He was one
of the riders for the Pony Express who ironically wasn't
as legendary as he should have been because he was
the actual real deal, But he ended up being forgotten
(17:38):
because I get the impression he wasn't much of a
self promoter. Yeah, he made a legendary documented journey of
three hundred and eighty miles without relief. At one point
where he basically road to road and road and road
went to his station to switch riders, and the guy
there was like, well, I'm not going, Like there's there's
(18:00):
indians out there trying to kill me. And so he
was like, all right, I'm gonna keep going. And he
kept going and delivered the mail and eventually made his
way back and and it ended up being a three
eight mile round trip. And he's, like I said, there's
not a lot of great documentation, but even though he's
been lost to history, he was very well documented as
an expert writer. Yeah, he definitely was. Um, there was
(18:23):
another one called Billy Fisher who had a pretty interesting
claim to fame. He was out riding on the trail
and um, it was during a snowstorm, so This is
another thing too. You said that the riders complained about
things like the terrible weather, like they were carrying mail
from um, let's see Missouri to Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, California.
(18:50):
Some tough weather especially, say like in January, you're gonna
run into some terrible snowstorms, right. And Billy Fisher found
himself in one of these snowstorms and he first he
just dismounted. He's like, I just gotta go over here
and go to sleep for a little while in a blizzard.
And um, he started to fall asleep, and he woke
up to something licking his face, and it was a
(19:12):
jack rabbit who had basically licked his face till he
woke up. I didn't know they licked. I think this
may have been his his spirit animal actually, uh. And
the rabbit like startled Billy Fisher, and Billy Fisher startled
the rabbit and the rabbit ran off, but it woke
Billy Fisher up, and he said, if that rabbit had
to lick my face and woke me up, I never
(19:32):
would have woken up. I would have just frozen to
death out there in this blizzard. But he was woken
up enough and realized the gravity of the situation enough
they got back on his horse and kept rioting to safety. Yeah.
And to to top it off, his great great grandson
is William Fisher, who was one of the U S
astronauts who flew the Space Shuttle. So legend and these
(19:53):
stories are like going around and like being circulated in
newspapers and among people while the any expresses going on. Yeah,
I mean there were some very bad, uh not exploit
of sensationalist books written over the years. And then there
was also a couple of real legitimate dudes, Captain Sir
(20:15):
Richard Burton, the famous British explorer, and one Samuel Clemens,
twenty five year old future Mark Twain. They both individually
um kind of spent some time out there documenting the
Pony Express. And it seems like Burton didn't have a
good time out there. He didn't like the West. He
always complained about the flies and the fleas and just
(20:37):
the the filth and just the people. He just was
not a fan. But he still gave a fairly accurate
account of like the day to day of a Pony
Express writer. Clemens, Mr. The future Mark Twain seemed to
have a good time, and you know, in his true fashion,
wrote some of the uh some really flower flowery eyewitness
(20:58):
testimony about seeing these horsemen coming across the tundra and
the planes. It's pretty cool. You're gonna read that? No, well,
everybody go read that. It's in um Roughing It, which
is his book about traveling the US, and he surfs
in it. Did you know that? I didn't. He goes
to Hawaii and tries surfing when they used to surf
(21:20):
on like ten ft long wooden boards. Your head clean off,
Go go read that quote in your in your best
hell hole brook impression. Really a good way to do it.
I'm more a Val Kilmer Mark Twain guy, That's right.
I forgot he did that. Everyone did, Chuck man. Um,
(21:42):
So you had Mark Twain and Captain Sir Richard Burton
providing like contemporary accounts. But that's like, that is virtually it. Right,
there were again this is a failed business venture. Let's
go ahead and tell him what happened? Why it was
failed business venture? Chuck? Why why ultimately died? Well, they
finally hooked up the two, They finally closed that gap
(22:05):
on the telegraph. They're like well, we can go coast
to coast now, so you're you're sort of immediately literally
immediately out of business. Yeah. The two days later they closed.
The first rider headed out on April third, eighteen sixty
and it was October twenty six of eighteen sixty one
where the last one headed out from St. Joe's. And
(22:27):
some people will say, well, it didn't actually stop in October.
It was actually November because those machilas didn't end up
into in Sacramento until November. That's fine whatever. It was
like eighteen months seventies something weeks of Operation UM and
people loved it at the time. But as with most things,
once the new, better, greater thing came along the telegram,
(22:51):
they forgot about it pretty quick and we really honestly
would not have any recollection of the Pony Express. It
would be footnote to a footnote in history if it
weren't for one guy named Buffalo Bill Cody, who actually
is the reason why we all remember the Pony Express.
He had a soft spot in his heart for um,
(23:13):
not just the Pony Express itself, but one of um,
the founders. I think it was Alexander Major's, right, Yeah,
I think so. Who um, you gave me a job
when he was a kid. Gave him a job when
he was a kid. And while Bill um would go
on or Buffalo Bill would go on to uh to say, well,
I was actually a Pony Express writer. All historical evidence
(23:35):
suggests that that is not actually the case. But um,
he definitely did work for Alexander Majors, who was one
of the owners of the Pony Express as a horseback messenger,
just not a Pony Express writer, which if you're talking
about Pony Express legend, that's a major distinction. Yeah. And
Buffalo Bill would also go on to say she's a
great brick front girl. Sorry, it's he called Buffalo Bill. Yeah, okay.
(24:03):
I always, for some reason I thought it was a
playoff of Buffalo Bill, like Buffalo Bob or something like that. No,
it was Buffalo Bill because he skinned his victims. I remember, Uh,
should we take a break? Geez? Okay, sure, alright, let's
take a break and we'll talk a little bit more
about Buffalo Bill right after this. Alright, So Buffalo Bill's
(24:52):
Wild West. Uh, I want to always want to say
Wild West extravaganza, you can call it that, but it
was really Buffalo Bill's Old West. That was a name
of his big show that he took all over the country,
delighting people with sharp shooting and horseback riding and all
sorts of cool stuff, enchanting America with U with the
Old West, not just America, the world. Well, yeah, and
(25:15):
that's that's a solid point. I mean, he went all
over Europe and that's why, and this article points out
that's why to this day you can go to like
a Pony Express themed club in Germany because back then
he performed in front of Queen Victoria and Kaiservillehelm and
the and the Pope in Rome and basically kind of
he always seemed to have at least one reported or
(25:38):
purported Pony Express rider in the show. It was like
one of the main um segments of his show. Yeah,
so at one point he did have who was the
uh Bronco Bronco Charlie Miller. No, no, no, well he
had him. Oh, pony Bob has them. Yeah, pony Bob
worked for him for a little while and he is
(25:59):
a definite legit rider. The other guy, what's his name,
Bronco Billy Broncho, Charlie Miller, Oh no, that was Clint Eastwood.
Bronco Charlie Miller claimed to have been a Pony Express writer.
A lot of men claim to have been over the
years that were not. Uh, And they traced his his
timeline back and he would have been ten or eleven,
(26:20):
which is really stretching it, like it is possible. It
is it's possible because they did go as low as
like thirteen and fourteen. But uh, it was never super
confirmed that this guy actually wrote for the Pony Express.
But it kind of doesn't matter because apparently everyone loved him. Yeah,
And and so the reason why it's stretching it but
(26:43):
still in the realm of possibility is because so like
when when William Russell we talk about the Ponty Express
and his company would say, like, these men have to
take an oath not to drink or fight, which still happened.
Of course. Yeah, we have like eighty eighty people in
the saddle and in reality, yeah, were all drunk around
like at all the way stations and on and on
(27:03):
the trail. Um. And the the impression is that you
if you needed a rider and there was somebody who
said I'll go you, you were a Pony Express rider
right then. So the idea that an eleven year old
kids said I'll go, and they said, all right, fine
go that could have possibly happened. So it's possible Bronco
Charlie Miller did right. But like you said, he was
(27:25):
just such a great like old West archetype. They were
like whatever, we'll believe anything you say. Yeah. So uh.
Through the years, like we said, a lot of bad information,
a lot of legend um everything from uh for movies
like three, a paramount film called The Pony Express. Charlton
(27:46):
Heston is Buffalo Bill. In the movie, Buffalo Bill teams
up with wild Bill Hillo Hilcok to start the Pony Express.
And as this author said, there is not a shard
effect in the entire film. I don't know if he
meant shred shard all right, He could have said shough.
And then this the um. If you read this, it
sounds super cool, like a notice in the St. Louis
(28:08):
and San Francisco newspaper that said wanted young, skinny, wiry
fellows not over eighteen, must be expert writers willing to
risk death daily orphans preferred way just twenty five dollars
per week. And that seems like, man, what a great
job listing for the Pony Express. Orphans preferred that was
written in the twentieth century by a journalist in the
(28:29):
Sunset magazine. So that probably wasn't even true. No, No,
that's so like again there was. It was forgotten like
they think. Alexander Majors wrote his um memoirs. Remember he
was one of the three guys who owned the Pony Express.
He wrote his memoirs like thirty forty years after um
the Pony Express his last ride. So and by this
(28:53):
time most people had forgotten it. And again it was
Buffalo Bill who came along actually paid a visit to
Ali Sander Majors and found him in a fairly sorry state.
He was broke, he was in poor health, and said,
you gave me my first job when I was eleven
after my father died, and I want to repay you
by taking care of you. So he put him in
a show, he let him stay at his old Scouts
(29:14):
Rest ranch in Nebraska, just basically took care of him.
But he also was like, we've got to publish this book.
So he got Rand McNally to actually publish this book
about his life as a freight Old West freight legend guy.
Including the Pony Express, and that was some of the
(29:34):
earliest documentation about it. But it also kicked off like
this history of terrible documentation, of just surrounding the whole
thing with tall tales and embellishments, and it just very
quickly became it's very tough to to root fact from
fiction even today, even at some of these places that
are like this is actually this museum is a Pony
(29:56):
express Way station. May not the case. They're not entirely
certain what the trail was any longer. They think that
there's some pristine segments that are aren't covered over by
um tracks of some sort that they're actually like, this
was the the course that the Pony Express took, but
they're not a hundred percent sure. It just got lost
(30:17):
the time. Yeah, I don't even think we mentioned that
Buffalo Bill Um That job he got was was as
a horseback delivery writer for the initial Freight Company, but
he never wrote for the Pony Express, though he did
he outright claim to or just kind of let people
send that know in his in his in the notes
for the Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, it talked about
(30:39):
how he was and then it would say you should
buy his autobiography it shows even more. And then they
would talk in depth about how he rode for the
Pony Express. For sure, if you were from the Old
West of this time, you were basically expected to just
lie constantly about some of the things you've done. And
same not just with um Buffalo Bill Wild. Bill Hiccock
said the same thing, said he worked for the Pony
(31:01):
Express too, and he did, but he was one of
those guys who ran away station intended to the horses lame. Well,
he was bigger and older, so he couldn't write. You know,
it wasn't his fault. He's a victim of circumstances. Yeah,
there are also a bunch of Uh. There was a
series of last living Pony Express riders throughout the years.
(31:22):
Um Various newspapers, even sometimes multiple times in the same
newspaper over the years, would print articles claiming that the
last Pony Express rider has just died. Um, so we
don't know if you know any of them were or not,
or if they were the last or not. Uh. And
it finally took a woman named a poet, apparently not
(31:43):
a very good one, named Mabel Loving, who said, why
don't you know, wasn't someone actually write letters and get
in touch with some of these people and get the
true dirt. And she did that. She apparently wrote letters
and had some correspondence with the surviving Pony Express writers
as an amateur poet and said this was right before
(32:05):
World War One, And apparently that is some of the
only like real documentation we have from some of the
real writers that she eventually published in something called The
Pony Express Rides on exclamation Point, which apparently can still
buy if you have a lot of money. Uh. Yeah,
it's like a collectible. I'm sure, yeah, I think. And
(32:26):
supposedly the printers lost a couple of the chapters, so
like even if you buy a copy, it's not and
it's intact form because nobody took that very seriously. I
think probably because of the exclamation point. It's never a
good idea. No, um, you got anything else? Well, I mean,
I guess the PostScript is, uh, after this telegraph that,
(32:49):
like I said, two days after it was hooked up,
they realized that they were done for because they were
already in bad financial straits. So wat L went home
to Missouri. He was broke and in debt. He sold
us home to his son for a dollar and still
lived there. Uh And apparently he died in April of
eighteen seventy two, never worked again. Um Russell, who was
(33:11):
only forty eight, went to New York. Failed as a stockbroker.
Apparently no one trusted him. He filed for bankruptcy in
eighteen sixty five. Uh and this was what just five
years after it shut down, sold off his assets to
pay his creditors, went back to Missouri finally because of
poor health, and died in eighteen seventy two. And then
(33:33):
Majors lived the longest uh and we know his story,
like you said, Buffalo Bill helped him publish his book.
And if there if Bronco Charlie Miller really was a
Pony Express rider, he definitely by far was the last
one to die. He died at a hundred and five
in nineteen fifty five, and years before that, at age
(33:54):
eighty two, he rode from New York to California on
horseback to bring its tension back to the Pony Express
and the glory of it, Wow Pony Express. So final facts,
they ended up losing about two grand and that day's money,
which is millions of dollars now. The personal best delivery time,
(34:17):
apparently was when they carried Abraham Lincoln's inaugural address. They
got it to California in seven days, seventeen hours, and
in the end they delivered about thirty five thousand pieces
of mail over that eighteen or nineteen months. And I think,
isn't it wasn't only one mailshipment that didn't only one
fail to make it? That's what I understand. Yeah, it's
(34:39):
pretty good track record for a failed business. It's not
bad at all. They all they wrote a combined half
a million miles in that time. Pretty great. And again
that's the Pony Express, totally different than what you thought about,
but also sort of the same. I just didn't know
that it was such a flopt. You just bad timing,
(35:00):
terrible timing. Man. Um, Well, if you wanted more about
the Pony Express, we'll get on out there on the trail.
You varm it and check it out yourself. Uh. And
since I said arm and, it's time for listener mail.
Oh no, no it's not. Oh boy, it's time for
administrated d all right, Okay, for the uninitiated, this is
(35:31):
where Josh and I and Jerry, by way of our voices,
thank you for the nice things that you've sent us
in the mail. Thank you, gifts, tokens, crafts, books, postcards, letters.
By the way, I didn't log all the postcards and letters.
That can be tough. It can be tough. How about
a blanket. Thank you to everyone who sent us postcards
(35:53):
in lineups Greed, Thank you all right, Dan Kent, thank
you big time for sending us Pliny the Elder or
beer and T shirts. Yes. Thanks to the bar Fight
Supply Company for all the awesome leather goods, including the
um the Mole skin holder, which I use a lot. Yeah, yeah,
(36:13):
the business card holders all that jam. Thank you very much, guys.
Kelly Sumski of Two Little Els, she sent us a
or sent me a painted rock and memory of the
wizard of my cat who passed. Sweet. It was very
sweet and very sad to get, but in a good way.
Uh sad, bitter sweet. Chris Wallzac sent us beer from Hamburg,
(36:36):
New York, and I p a thank you. Chris. Andy Krueger,
you sent me a ween T shirt that I wear
all the time, including on stage in Atlanta. I saw
it myself. Um Anna Dyne coffee. Uh. They sent us
some coffee from Milwaukee. Thanks Anna Dyne, Jeremiah and Mason Brandrick.
(36:58):
Oh I remember this. They sent us the F five
I p A, which is a beer I had when
I spent some time in Tulsa. So it's I think
it Tulsa beer and some beer in Bear in Stein
Bear shirts soaked in cologne. It seemingly soaked in cologne.
They they they're like, here, you look like you smell.
(37:21):
We're gonna make you pretty. It was interesting. Julie sent
us handmade personalized Christmas ornaments, which it's been a while
since we did this, or um for Jerry, you, me,
Emily and the kids. Yeah, yeah, it's very nice. Those
are great. Actually, yeah that was on my tree. Uh
Kaylee Hamar sent uh my dog Nikot some pet treats.
(37:43):
Nice pet treater, very nice. Lindsay Lundstrom sent us some
wonderful bottle key cap or bottle cap key chains. Yeah,
there's a s Y s K one and don't be
dumb one last chance garage Mama Jerry Red Wagon and
she's out of Etsy and Facebook at Red Dragon Handcrafts.
(38:05):
Check him out. You're gonna love him. Yeah, it's good stuff.
Becca sent uh sent me a library copy of a book,
my children's book that I was so fond of as
a kid, The Great Christmas Kidnapping Caper. I'm really excited
to read this with my daughter Becca. So thank you
so much for sending that. Kelly Butler Olson sent Murdered
by Death a copy of Murdered by Death, arguably one
(38:29):
of the greatest boof movies of all time, one of
my favorites. So thank you. Kelly H. Taylor Stonehawker sent
lovely Christmas card and handmade caramels which were Damons. And
Nick Stiglick send us some stroop waffles, those amazing things
that you put over your coffee to heat up. Yeah,
we've we've got more than one stroop waffle. So if
(38:49):
you sent stroop Waffles, many thanks and to send him
again Nathan for lots. Uh. He's actually Australian, he's an
artist and he sent us. Uh. These are great variety
of bookmarks, magnets, coloring books all uh that are animals
with their bodies made of flowers and plants. Yeah, it's amazing,
(39:11):
it's really nice. So you you should check this out.
It's online at uh Marini Ferlazzo dot au m A
r I n I f E R l A z
z O dot au and a portion of these sales
go to wildlife conservation. So gorgeous and well funded. Speaking
of gorgeous, Aidan Dale sent us metal sculpture orchids and
(39:32):
you can find them at Aiden A I D E
N day ol d A l E dot com. Thank you, Aiden.
Just a few more here, folks, alias Pa Girko sitting
honey from their three colony a pry. That's pretty great. Thanks,
that was awesome. Robin sent us beer and mead from
Wisconsin and it was well appreciated and didn't last very long. Robin,
(39:55):
thank you. We did not drink Wisconsin ly, Robbin. That's
a T shirt. I didn't make it up. Bonnie Bowden
centis moulda Rama's guitars, which I think it got from
third Man Records in Nashville, UM. And I think she
(40:15):
also sent the Willis Tower one which I was like,
what the heck is the Willis Tower And I was like, oh,
that's the Sears Tower. Well, and we got actually more
than one person sent his molda Rama's yeah, like Luke
and David shirt skull father and son. This in his
elephant molder ramas from war Chuckledo Zoo Bam, which has
probably the largest selection of mold rama's outside of the
(40:36):
Chicago land area. It's right. And you grew up right
there in the gorilla cage. It's right. Nathan Centiss Band
c d ep Missouri Loves Company or Missouri or Missouri
Missouri Loves Company. Philip la Palm, great name, sent Robert
shaw Jaws Christmas card to Chuck. That's right. Uh. And finally,
(41:00):
just a couple of weeks ago, I got sent some
guitar picks from Forever Pick. And apparently these picks have
like a better sustain and better performance. And I have
not yet plucked with him, but I can't wait to
use my Forever picks. That is fantastic. You have some more, Yeah,
We've got just a couple more, Chuck, if you'll bear
with me, take us home. Brother Um Josh Jones sent
(41:21):
us catfish Head Vodka. Oh yeah, thanks a lot, Josh.
Um Doug sent us an amazing poster congratulating us for
a thousand episodes, and old Off and Millie the Shop
Dogs sent us the amazing railroad spike bottle openers. Remember those?
You can go to church mouseforge dot com. And dude,
I want to say Ian Newton, who founded the Baltimore
(41:44):
Whiskey Company. Ian has been sending us stuff like this
shot Tower Gin. It's kind of like a multi gen
that I love. UM sent that bourbon that you love.
Just has been sending us some pretty great stuff. So
first of all, Ian, thank you. Second of all, and
keep it coming. And third, everybody else who's not Ian,
go check out Baltimore Whiskey Company's stuff. Baltimore Spirits Company. Um,
(42:09):
they have just amazing booze that's locally made in Baltimore,
and you can tell it's like craft distilled stuff. You're
gonna love it. So thank you to everybody who sent
us anything. Ever, and if you sent us something in
between the last administrative details in this one and we
didn't say your name, first of all, we apologize. Secondly,
(42:30):
get in touch of us and let us know because
we do want to thank you, and it's just an oversight.
We're not actually mad at you, okay. And and I
have even more I want to thank Doug Sashery. I
know how to pronounce the name now. I don't know
if you guys remember not, but I mispronounced Tony Cocherri's
seasoning Creole Seasoning. Uh it turns out it's Tony Sassaris,
(42:54):
and Doug let me know by sending me tons of
Tony Sassaries products and their awesome So thank you, Doug.
I also want to thank another Doug, Doug Dixon, the
CEO of Joel Cola, who sent us some joke Cola
care packages. And then every once in a while people
bring us stuff to our live shows. So thank you
to Ron from Dundee, Michigan for giving me the um
(43:18):
complete DVD set of Thunder the Barbarian, which I've never
seen all the way through because of swimming lessons. And
a very nice person gave us gooey cakes at the St.
Louis show. Uh. Our friend Dale from Australia sent us
a care package of Australian candy to um acclamate us
to Australian candy for our Australia tour. And then John
(43:40):
from Capistrano Beach who sent us a giant puzzle wheel
that I've yet to begin to even try to figure out.
So thank you John for this madness. Uh, if you
want to get in touch with us, whether to send
us something or just to say hi. You can go
onto our website, stuff Podcast at how stuff We're dot com,
(44:00):
check out our t shirt store at t Public t
e public dot com, slash stuff you Should Know, and
you can just send us a good old fashioned email
to Stuff Podcast at how stuff works dot com. For
more on this and thousands of other topics, is it
(44:21):
how stuff works dot com
Stuff You Should Know News
Hosts And Creators
Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
Show Links
AboutOrder Our BookStoreSYSK ArmyRSSPopular Podcasts
40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season
Daniel Jeremiah of Move the Sticks and Gregg Rosenthal of NFL Daily join forces to break down every team's needs this offseason.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.