The Pony Express was a fast mail service crossing the North American continent from the Missouri River to the Pacific coast. Messages were
carried on horse-back relay across the plains, deserts, and mountains of the Western United States. Compared to earlier delivery services, the Pony Express was very fast.
In 1861, telegraph wires connected New York and San Francisco, and the Pony express riders went out of business. But their courage and determination to deliver messages through rain and snow, sleet and ice, over the toughest mountain trials and harshest desert have become legendary.