The Pony Express was one of the fastest means of communication in 1860, but it could not compete in speed with the telegraph, invented by Samuel F. Morse in 1837. By 1860 Hiram Sibley's Western Union Telegraph Company connected the principal cities of the East, and the Missouri & Western Telegraph Company had extended lines from the Missouri River to Fort Kearny. In the West, the Alta Telegraph Company provided service to Californians, and the Placerville & St. Joseph Overland Telegraph Company extended across the Sierra Nevadas to Carson City, Nevada.

Private telegraph companies served Americans on both coasts, but a communication gap existed in the center of the country. Successful runs by Pony Express riders proved that the central route was feasible for communication purposes and increased the demand for even better, speedier communication with the West. Author Howard Driggs writes, "The hoof-beats of the wiry little horses speeding the...