Strength and Endurance
Descriptions of the variety and number of horses used by
the Pony Express became ditorted during the course of
its history since November 1861. In general, the type of horse
used for carrying the rider and mail depended greatly on the
region. The more fleet-footed throughbred horses worked
fine on central prairies, but the strength and endurance of
half-broken mustangs were needed to cross the arid deserts,
and rugged mountain ranges fo the West. Alexander Majors,
one of the three founders of the Central Overland California
and Pike's Peak Express Company's Pony Express, chose the
California mustang for its strength and endurance, describing it
"as alert and energetic as their riders."
At each of the more than 100 stations spread along the route, relays
of horses needed to be kept in sufficient numbers to meet the
demands of the relay system. As the C.O.C.&P.P.E.C. prepared for
the "start-up" of the Pony Express, the company estimated that it
would take approximately 75 horses to make the nearly 2,000 mile
trip from Missouri to California.
A little more than two months before the first riders left from St.
Joseph and Sacramento, the firm of Russell, Majors, and Waddell
began purchasing 500 of the best horses available, paying as much
as $200 a head for some stock. One ad, posted in the Kansas
Leavenworth Daily Times, asked for "200 grey mares, from four to
seven years old, not to exceed fifteen hands high, well broek to the
saddle and warrented sound.."
So, just how far and how long can a horse run? A
modern-day horse in good shape can travel at a full
gallop on flat terrain for maybe five to eight miles.
Over the mountainous terrain in the Sierra
Nevada, a horse and rider may be able to cover
five miles. Pony Express mustangs could
travel at speeds of about 10 miles an hour, but
at times could gallop at speeds of up to 25
miles per hour. At a full gallop, the distance
that the horse could travel before becoming
exhausted depended on several variables -
of ot was a hot of cool day, state of health, and
when the horse last had a drink of water.
A good Pony Express rider rodehis horse at a
steady sprint and generally galloped the horse only
to get out of harm's way. None were easy to ride, but all
agreed that in a race for life and mounted on a half-broken
mustang, the express rider could leave danger far behind.
"There were about eighty pony riders in the saddle all the time, night and day,
stretching in a long, scattering procession from Missouri to California, forty
flying eastward, and forty toward the west, and among them making four
hundred gallant horses earn a stirring livelihood and see a deal of scenery every
single day of the year." - Mark Twain, Roughting It. 1872
"The worst imps of Satan in the business. THe oly way I could master them was to throw them and get a
rope around each foot and stake them out, and have a man on the head and another in the body while I
trimmed the feet and nailed the shoes on... It generally took half a day to shoe one of them."
-Pony Express Farrier and Stalion Keeper, Lev Hensel, in 1901 describing his experience shoeing half-wild California
mutangs at Seneca, Kansas. Photograph - D.B. Young, wild mustangs near Simpson Springs Pony Express Station, January 2010.
