The Pony Express

Saddled Horse,
Ninety-Six Ranch, Paradise Valley, Nevada,
Carl Fleischhauer, photographer,
1980.
Buckaroos in Paradise: Ranching Culture in Northern Nevada, 1945-1982

On October 24, 1861, the first transcontinental telegraph system was completed, making it possible to transmit messages rapidly (by mid-19th-century standards) from coast to coast. This technological advance, pioneered by inventor Samuel F.B. Morse, brought an end to the Pony Express, the horseback mail service which had previously provided the fastest communication between the East and the West.

Established in April 1860 as a subsidiary of a famous freight company, the Pony Express operated between St. Joseph, Missouri, and Sacramento, California, using a continuous relay of the best riders and horses. The nearly 2000 mile route — running through present-day Kansas, Nebraska, the northeast corner of Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, and California — included vast stretches of rugged terrain once thought impassable in winter. Pushing the physical limits of man and beast, the Pony Express ran nonstop. Summer deliveries averaged ten days, while winter deliveries required twelve to sixteen days, approximately half the time needed by stagecoach. When delivering President Lincoln's Inaugural Address, the Express logged its fastest time ever at seven days and seventeen hours.

Landscape with Line Camp,
showing terrain similar to sections of the Pony Express route, Paradise Valley, Nevada,
Howard W. Marshall, photographer,
1978.
Buckaroos in Paradise: Ranching Culture in Northern Nevada, 1945-1982

The Pony Express was founded with high hopes for securing a lucrative government contract. Political pressures and the outbreak of the Civil War prevented such an arrangement. When the enterprise closed it was in the red, its founders having lost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Although a financial failure, the Pony Express is considered a success for keeping communication open with California during the early months of the Civil War and proving that a central route to the West could be traveled year round. Additionally, the mail service is credited with having lost only one mail pouch, or mochila, during its entire run.

Some 200 horsemen rode for the Pony Express. Most were in their late teens and early twenties and small in stature; theoretically, the lighter the rider, the faster the horse could travel. Famous riders included William "Buffalo Bill" Cody and "Pony Bob" Haslam.

Spurs,
worn by Chuck Wheelock, Reed (Read) Ranch, Nevada,
Carl Fleischhauer, photographer,
October 1979.
Buckaroos in Paradise: Ranching Culture in Northern Nevada, 1945-1982

During a typical shift riders traveled 75 to 100 miles, changing horses every ten to fifteen miles at relief stations along the route. Station keepers and stock tenders ensured that changes between horses and riders were synchronized so that no time was wasted. For their dangerous and grueling work riders received between $100 and $125 per month. A few with unusually treacherous routes were paid $150, more than twice the salary of the average station worker.

For a first-hand account of the Pony Express, read the interview with former rider George S. Stiers in American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1940. Stiers remembers riding for the Pony Express longer than it actually operated, but his memories of life on the trail are in sync with other historical accounts.

For more resources on mail delivery and telecommunications:

• The Pony Express ran through parts of the country currently used for cattle ranching. For a thorough introduction to ranch life, including a view of all manner of horse gear, from horseshoes to saddles, browse the subject index in Buckaroos in Paradise: Ranching Culture in Northern Nevada, 1945-1982.
• See over 100 photographs related to mail delivery, including images of mail trains, sleds, and wagons. Search across the American Memory photograph collections on mail.
• Learn more about Samuel F. B. Morse and Alexander Graham Bell and the 19th-century revolution in telecommunications.
• Search the Today in History Archive on Morse and Bell to learn more about Morse's dispatch of the first telegraph message, and Bell's invention of the first telephone and transmission of the first wireless telephone message. Also search on the term stamp to learn more about how mail delivery is assured.
• Search on the term pony express or mail in History of the American West, 1860-1920: Photographs from the Collection of the Denver Public Library to see images which include Seth Hathaway, a Pony Express rider who appeared in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, a bronze plaque to the Pony Express riders, and the making of the Warner Brothers film Limited Mail.

The United Nations

We the peoples of the United Nations determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind…do hereby establish an international organization to be known as the United Nations.

Preamble, Charter of the United Nations, 1945.

United Nations,
New York, New York,
Gottscho-Schleisner, Inc., photographer,
April 20, 1956.
Architecture and Interior Design for 20th Century America: Photographs by Samuel Gottscho and William Schleisner, 1935-1955

The United Nations (UN) Charter was ratified on October 24, 1945, bringing the international body officially into existence. The term "United Nations" was first used in the 1942 Declaration by United Nations, when representatives of twenty-six nations pledged to continue fighting against the Axis powers (Germany, Italy, and Japan) in World War II.

From August to October 1944, representatives of the United States, United Kingdom, China, and the U.S.S.R. met at Dumbarton Oaks, an estate in Washington, D.C., to formulate plans for an organization to foster international cooperation after the war. The resulting Dumbarton Oaks proposals, along with provisions agreed upon by Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin at the Yalta Conference in February 1945, formed the basis for the United Nations Conference on International Organization.

In April 1945, delegates from fifty countries met in San Francisco to draw up the final charter of the United Nations. It was signed on June 26 and ratified on October 24, 1945 by a majority of the other signatories. Poland, not represented at the conference, signed the charter later and became one of the original fifty-one member countries. Three years later, on December 10, 1948, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted and proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Article 1. All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
Article 2. Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.

Article 1 and Article 2, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948.

Washington Conversations on International Organization,
Dumbarton Oaks, August 1944.
Taking the Long View: Panoramic Photographs, 1851-1991

Learn more about the United Nations:

• The United Nations assumed many of the functions of the League of Nations, which had been championed by Woodrow Wilson at the close of World War I. Listen to advocates and opponents of the concept of institutional international cooperation voice their opinions in American Leaders Speak: Recordings from World War I and the 1920 Election, a collection of sound recordings from The Nation's Forum collection. To find text and recordings, search the collection on League of Nations.
• America from the Great Depression to World War II: Photographs from the FSA and OWI, ca.  1935-1945 has numerous photographs of the United Nations from UN heroes marching in a parade to UN officers in their various uniforms; to find them, search on United Nations. There are also six photographs of a UN exhibit mounted by the Office of War Information in Rockefeller Plaza.
• The United Nations' Web site, with information on the structure and work of the U.N. and its main bodies and main documents, includes the text of Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Charter of the United Nations.