The Overland Mail

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The acquisition of Oregon and discovery of gold in California in the 1840s created a need for a transportation network linking the East with the Pacific coast. California pressure for a regular stagecoach service led in 1857 to the award of a federal mail contract to a syndicate headed by John Butterfield, the owner of stagecoach lines in New York. The following year, Butterfield’s Overland Mail Company began a semi-weekly mail service, operating in each direction on a 25-day schedule over a 2,800 mile route between St. Louis and San Francisco. Thousands of miles of overland routes were established in the next decade. Best-known was the Pony Express, established in 1860 by the firm of Russell, Majors and Waddell. Relays of pony riders covered the 1,966 miles between St. Joseph, Missouri and Sacramento, California in only ten days, thus demonstrating the superiority of the Central Plains route over the more circuitous southerly route followed by Butterfield. But without a government subsidy the Pony Express was incapable of make a profit. In any case it was rendered obsolete after only eight months by the completion of the transcontinental telegraph line. When Russell, Majors and Waddell went bankrupt in 1862, its remaining freight lines were bought by Ben Holladay, who, after organizing a thriving stagecoach empire spanning most the the West, sold out in 1866 to Wells, Fargo, and Co.

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The Overland Mail