On April 3rd, 1860, two riders leapt onto their horses with bags of mail. One was in St. Joseph, Missouri. The other was in Sacramento, California. They were the inaugural riders of the Pony Express. For a period of sixteen months, they, along with eighty other intrepid riders, made U.S. mail service possible across the West. Pioneers scattered across the countryside suddenly had access to an essential means of communication.
Seventy-five years later members of the Oregon Trail Memorial Association decided to recreate a cross country Pony Express ride. They approached the Boy Scouts, which agreed to provide three-hundred riders and horses.
Mayors and governors along the route sent mail to be delivered by the riders. Each Boy Scout rider travelled ten miles, handing off a mail pouch to each successive rider, starting from Sacramento and ending in St. Joseph. Thirteen days after the start of the ride President Franklin D. Roosevelt was on hand to open the delivered mail.
See the Edmund Seymour papers at UW’s https://www.wyomingpublicmedia.org/show/archives-on-the-air to learn more.