Overland Mail
The United States Congress in 1857 passed the Overland California Mail Act. This act offered government aid in the form of mail contracts to any company that could provide stagecoach service from the eastern United States to California. Soon the postmaster general awarded the first contract to the Overland Mail Company, headed by John Butterfield of New York.
Butterfield's stagecoaches began carrying passengers and mail across the continent from St. Louis to San Francisco in 1858. The coaches crossed 2,800 miles of roads that were little more than rutted dirt trails. The trip lasted about three weeks.
As Mark Twain once discovered, riding in a stagecoach was not nearly as much fun as one might imagine. Meals along the way usually were a combination of beans, stale bacon, and crusty bread. Overnight accommodations were dirty and uncomfortable. The ride itself was a bone-jarring, teeth-rattling, muscle-straining experience.
One of the many young Americans to cross the continent in a stagecoach carrying the overland mail was the writer Samuel Clemens, better known as Mark Twain. He came to Nevada in 1861 and worked on the Territorial Enterprise newspaper. Later in 1864 he moved to San Francisco and began writing for the Golden Era.
"Whenever the stage stopped to change horses, we would wake up, and try to recollect where we were.... We began to get into country, now, threaded here and there with little streams. These had high, steep banks on each side, and every time we flew down one bank and scrambled up the other, our party inside got mixed somewhat. First we would all be down in a pile at the forward end of the stage, nearly in a sitting posture, and in a second we would shoot to the other end, and stand on our heads. And we would sprawl and kick, too, and ward off ends and corners of mailbags that came lumbering after us and about us; and as the dust rose from the tumult, we would all sneeze in chorus, and the majority of us would grumble, and probably say some hasty thing, like: 'Take your elbow out of my ribs! --Can't you quit crowding.'"
Charlotte Parkhurst was a stagecoach driver in the 1850s and '60s. She drove a four-horse team for Wells, Fargo and Company on the road from Santa Cruz to San Jose. Since the stagecoach companies in those days hired only men as drivers, she dressed in men's clothing and applied for the job as "Charley Parkhurst." She wore gloves (in both summer and winter) to hide her small hands and pleated shirts to hide her figure.
Apparently no one suspected Parkhurst's true identity. One of her unknowing companions later said that Charley Parkhurst "out-swore, out-drank, and out-chewed even the Monterey whalers." Parkhurst was a tough-looking hombre with a patch over one eye, blinded by the kick of a horse. In later years, this colorful character was known as "Cock-eyed Charley."
When Parkhurst died in 1879, the San Francisco Morning Call mourned the passing of "the most dexterous and celebrated of the California drivers, and it was an honor to occupy the spare end of the driver's seat when the fearless Charley Parkhurst held the reins."
The Pony Express began carrying mail between California and St. Joseph, Missouri, on April 3, 1860. The route was nearly 2,000 miles long and service was provided semi-weekly. In summer, the trip took ten and a half days.
The Missouri freighting firm of Russell, Majors and Waddell hired eighty young riders to carry the mail across the continent aboard fleet-footed ponies. The average age of the riders was just eighteen. The company outfitted them with revolvers and knives to defend themselves against any varmints they might meet along the trail, critters like wolves and mountain lions. The company also supplied the riders with bibles and prohibited them from engaging in any "drinking or swearing." The riders wore close-fitting clothes to reduce wind resistance and on their ponies were light racing saddles. They carried leather pouches filled with twenty pounds of mail wrapped in oiled silk to keep out the moisture.
These dashing young riders sped across the continent at twenty-five miles an hour, stopping every ten to fifteen miles for a fresh horse at one of the hundreds of relay stations along the way. As the rider approached each station, his replacement mount would be saddled and ready to go. The rider would transfer his mail pouch and be on his way again in less than two minutes.
The Pony Express delivered the mail to California far faster than other means. But the cost was much higher. After only about eighteen months, the Pony Express went out of business. It ended on October 24, 1861, the day the transcontinental telegraph began providing instant communication across the continent.