Chapter II

Inception and Organization of the Pony Express

Following the discovery of gold in California in January 1848, that region sprang into immediate prominence.  From all parts of the country and the remote corners of the earth came the famous Forty-niners.  Amid the chaos of a great mining camp the Anglo-Saxon love of law and order soon asserted itself.  Civil and religious institutions quickly arose, and, in the summer of 1850, a little more than a year after the big rush had started, California entered the Union as a free state.

The boom went on and the census of 1860 revealed a population of 380,000 in the new commonwealth.  And when to these figures were added those of Oregon and Washington Territory, an aggregate of 444,000 citizens of the United States were found to be living on the Pacific Slope.  Crossing the Sierras eastward and into the Great Basin, 47,000 more were located in the Territories of Nevada and Utah, — thus making a grand total of nearly a half million people beyond the Rocky Mountains in 1860.  And these figures did not include Indians nor Chinese.

Without reference to any military phase of the problem, this detached population obviously demanded and deserved adequate mail and transportation facilities.  How to secure the quickest and most dependable communication with the populous sections of the East had long been a serious proposition.  Private corporations and Congress had not been wholly insensible to the needs of the West.  Subsidized stage routes had for some years been in operation, and by the close of 1858 several lines were well-equipped and doing much business over the so-called Southern and Central routes.  Perhaps the most common route for sending mail from the East to the Pacific Coast was by steamship from New York to Panama where it was unloaded, hurried across the Isthmus, and again shipped by water to San Francisco.  All these lines of traffic were slow and tedious, a letter in any case requiring from three to four weeks to reach its destination.  The need of a more rapid system of communication between the East and West at once became apparent and it was to supply this need that the Pony Express really came into existence.

The story goes that in the autumn of 1854, United States Senator William Gwin of California was making an overland trip on horseback from San Francisco to Washington, D. C. He was following the Central route via Salt Lake and South Pass, and during a portion of his journey he had for a traveling companion, Mr. B. F. Ficklin, then General Superintendent for the big freighting and stage firm of Russell, Majors, and Waddell of Leavenworth.  Ficklin, it seems, was a resourceful and progressive man, and had long been engaged in the overland transportation business.  He had already conceived an idea for establishing a much closer transit service between the Missouri river and the Coast, but, as is the case with many innovators, had never gained a serious hearing.  He had the traffic agent’s natural desire to better the existing service in the territory which his line served; and he had the ambition of a loyal employee to put into effect a plan that would bring added honor and preferment to his firm.  In addition to possessing these worthy ideals, it is perhaps not unfair to state that Ficklin was personally ambitious.