Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know from how Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, you welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
Speaker 1: There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry over there, and
Speaker 1: we're bringing you all the news fast as lightning. In
Speaker 1: this episode on Pony Express, Hey, you resurrected that don't
Speaker 1: be Dumb Josh for a moment. Then you're also staining
Speaker 1: on your head in your chair. This is like the
Speaker 1: end of Primal fear Man. That Don't be Dumb Josh
Speaker 1: never went away. There's nothing but that Don't Be Dumb.
Speaker 1: I hope I didn't ruin that for anybody just now.
Speaker 1: I probably did, But come on, it was the eighties. Yeah.
Speaker 1: There was a bit of a discussion about on the
Speaker 1: movie Crush facebook page about me spoiling things that are
Speaker 1: old movies like Jaws, like the Shark dies. Like a
Speaker 1: bunch of people came to my defense. They're like, you know,
Speaker 1: there's a limit on spoilers, Like if you're talking about
Speaker 1: a ten year old an older movie, like come on,
Speaker 1: who who was it that chose Jaws? Was it Roman?
Speaker 1: He's got great taste, man. I watched that movie twice
Speaker 1: in the last two weeks the first time it was
Speaker 1: on mute and I was still like engrossed by it.
Speaker 1: And then I recently watched it from like start to
Speaker 1: finish um for the first time in well over a decade,
Speaker 1: and I was like, oh my god, it is basically
Speaker 1: perfect everything about it. It's just enjoyable. It's beautifully shot,
Speaker 1: the characters are great. It's just wonderful. Here's the swimming
Speaker 1: with bow legged women. Yeah. Man, he's he's quite a character.
Speaker 1: Was still good in that movie, man, Yeah, all of them.
Speaker 1: It's just so great. Yeah, even Royce. Yeah. My favorite
Speaker 1: moment in that whole movie, I think, well, gosh, there's
Speaker 1: so many, but don't spoil it. When that real moment,
Speaker 1: like Spielberg peppers in these moments, it just makes it
Speaker 1: such a richer film, Like when he's sitting there with
Speaker 1: his kid before Dreyfus comes over for dinner that night.
Speaker 1: He just says that moment with his son, we're asked
Speaker 1: him for a kiss, and it's just leaven in. Just
Speaker 1: little tidbits like that make the movie so much more rich.
Speaker 1: YEA love it. That's our Spielberg. I have a question
Speaker 1: for you. Has there ever been more attention paid to
Speaker 1: a utter failure of a business that was only open
Speaker 1: for about nineteen months than the Pony Express. Trying to
Speaker 1: think it's really remarkable. Yeah, it's like the new Coke
Speaker 1: of mail service. Because when you said this topic, I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, hot, diggity dog, this is gonna be
Speaker 1: great and it's an interesting story. But it's like, wow,
Speaker 1: the Pony Express was a big fat failure. Yeah. Really
Speaker 1: this So one of the articles we're working from is
Speaker 1: called the Pony Express colon Riders of Destiny in parentheses.
Speaker 1: Couldn't resist that, um, Christopher Corbett um. And he basically
Speaker 1: makes the case that the most interesting thing about the
Speaker 1: Pony expresses the fact that we remember it at all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that that's real, the real story behind it, because it
Speaker 1: was a big stinking failure. Business wise, it was as
Speaker 1: success as an actual mail service, but as a business
Speaker 1: it was terrible. The timing was terrible, The whole structure
Speaker 1: of it was just a bad idea. It was just dumb.
Speaker 1: But it was as far as the service goes, if
Speaker 1: you're looking at the very definition of the word service,
Speaker 1: it was invaluable for a lot of people. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: just to set the table real quick, if you don't
Speaker 1: know what we're talking about. The Pony Express was a
Speaker 1: delivery a mail delivery system. Uh. When the the trans
Speaker 1: Continental well, I guess pre transcontinental telegram when it only
Speaker 1: went how far east did that go at the time? St?
Speaker 1: Joe Missouri? Okay? St. Joe Missouri, and then it went
Speaker 1: west as far as Sacramento, Sacramento. And the idea was
Speaker 1: to join those two lines so you would have a
Speaker 1: true transcontinental telegram telegraph service. But before that happened, there
Speaker 1: were three entrepreneurs who said, we can close this gap
Speaker 1: because it takes weeks or months to get mail from
Speaker 1: east to west these days, and we can do that.
Speaker 1: We want to be able to do that in like
Speaker 1: a week to ten days. Yeah, which was enormously ambitious,
Speaker 1: because if you sent mail overland right from you know,
Speaker 1: between Missouri and California, you maybe twenty five days was
Speaker 1: a good thing to expect for the mail to get there.
Speaker 1: It's a Missouri that's one way, Okay, if you wanted
Speaker 1: to send it by ship, months a couple of months
Speaker 1: before the person ever got the mail, because you gotta
Speaker 1: dig a river from Missouri to Sacramento. You gotta flood
Speaker 1: it and then you gotta run the ship down that channel,
Speaker 1: and then when you get to the other side, you
Speaker 1: have to drain it and fill it back in start
Speaker 1: over the next time. It was a terrible idea. This
Speaker 1: was back when America was full of just complete idiots.
Speaker 1: But nowadays we know what we're doing. We've got the
Speaker 1: Internet and Twitter and all that stuff, right, So there
Speaker 1: there was this idea where if you were in California,
Speaker 1: which by this time was a state. And the reason
Speaker 1: California was a state before so much of the other
Speaker 1: parts of the country is because of the Goldbrush of
Speaker 1: eighteen forty nine brought a lot of people out west
Speaker 1: and they started to build and and create these cities,
Speaker 1: and California was a state. So you had Americans living
Speaker 1: in a state that was geographically isolated from the rest
Speaker 1: of the country. So they wanted news, they wanted newspapers,
Speaker 1: they wanted news of America back east. They wanted all
Speaker 1: this tough and again the telegraph lines weren't connected, so
Speaker 1: they set up this mail service to run in between
Speaker 1: them fastest lightning and fastest lightning was about ten days,
Speaker 1: like you said, and the whole route from St. Joseph,
Speaker 1: Missouri to Sacramento took them about eighteen hundred miles, which
Speaker 1: is a really long way. But the way that they
Speaker 1: did a chuck in just ten days was through a
Speaker 1: stroke of genius. Is that where I come in. I
Speaker 1: just set you up. Yeah, they had about uh, and
Speaker 1: they don't have great records, and we'll get into that,
Speaker 1: but as far as we can tell, and there's a boy,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of misinformation out there from over the
Speaker 1: years and legend and lore and tall tales, but they
Speaker 1: had about eighty horseback riders, young wiry young men who
Speaker 1: they compared to like a modern day jockey. These were
Speaker 1: little guys and by all accounts they could haul butt
Speaker 1: on horses. Though. Uh. They had about eighty of these dudes.
Speaker 1: And they had about four or five horses and several
Speaker 1: dozen what they called way stations or these stations in between,
Speaker 1: where you would ride ride, ride, ride, ride to a
Speaker 1: station either switch riders or switch horses or both and
Speaker 1: get you know, get a fresh horse, or if you
Speaker 1: were worn out, you would hand the mail off and
Speaker 1: we'll get to the how that worked as well. And
Speaker 1: then they would go and it was just a point
Speaker 1: to point thing where you would just move this mail
Speaker 1: as fast as you could ride a horse basically yep.
Speaker 1: And so the horses would last for ten to fifteen miles,
Speaker 1: depending on how rough the terrain was in between way stations,
Speaker 1: and then at the waist the next way station, the
Speaker 1: rider would jump from one horse to another horse with
Speaker 1: this mail bag called the Mochila, which you could hold
Speaker 1: about twenty pounds of mail, and would ride on to
Speaker 1: the next way station and switch horses again. And so
Speaker 1: the horses would go ten to fifteen miles and the
Speaker 1: riders would go about seventy five miles from what I've seen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And this whole operation was from a business called the
Speaker 1: Central Overland, California and Pie Speak Express Company that was
Speaker 1: run by three gentlemen, Russell's Majors and Waddell, William Hepburn
Speaker 1: Russell Alexander Majors and William Bradford Waddell, who had already
Speaker 1: been in the freight hauling business for military outposts, which
Speaker 1: you think would be a great money making venture. But
Speaker 1: apparently when they started the Pony Express, all accounts say
Speaker 1: that their business probably wasn't doing very well when they
Speaker 1: even started, right, so they said, well, let's see what
Speaker 1: is a money pit, we can sink our remaining money
Speaker 1: into what makes no sense financially. They said, oh, the
Speaker 1: Pony Express. Yeah, because you said, I mean, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of reasons why it failed, which we'll get to.
Speaker 1: But you said that they held up to twenty pounds
Speaker 1: of mail in these uh these saddle bags. Again, by
Speaker 1: all accounts, they rarely had that much mail. Sometimes they
Speaker 1: would have eight or ten letters, and that's just not
Speaker 1: you know, if you're in the shipping business, you're not
Speaker 1: maximizing your load. No, I did some a little bit
Speaker 1: of math. Wasn't hard, but I'm still proud of it. Um.
Speaker 1: So they charged five dollars per half graham at first,
Speaker 1: and so the the Mochila could hold twenty pounds. So
Speaker 1: twenty pounds times thirty two is sixty or times five
Speaker 1: dollars the six hundred forty dollars and in today's money,
Speaker 1: that's about sixteen thousand, six hundred forty bucks. It's not
Speaker 1: too bad, um. But apparently it was way more to
Speaker 1: maintain this line than than that. And like you said,
Speaker 1: plenty of these things only had a couple dozen letters
Speaker 1: in him at any given time. And the people who
Speaker 1: would use the pony Express would write these letters on
Speaker 1: tissue paper to cut down on costs, because you know,
Speaker 1: they charged by the half Graham. Yeah, and it was
Speaker 1: generally not just regular American people like uh, apparently it
Speaker 1: was mostly like government and military, and you know, you
Speaker 1: couldn't just generally people couldn't afford to send a letter
Speaker 1: by pony express, right right, So newspapers would send cables
Speaker 1: to other newspapers. Um or yeah, like you said, government
Speaker 1: although the government never officially granted a contract to the
Speaker 1: Central Overland. Um, they would use them, but there was
Speaker 1: no official contract. And it's I get the impression that
Speaker 1: had they ever landed a government contract they might have
Speaker 1: they might have actually made money, although I don't think
Speaker 1: it would ultimately kept them from their their fate. But um,
Speaker 1: they they the fact that they didn't have a wide
Speaker 1: customer base, they didn't have a government contract, and then
Speaker 1: this was just such an expensive venture and they couldn't
Speaker 1: possibly make their money back from it. It was I
Speaker 1: don't know if we've gotten the point across yet or not.
Speaker 1: This is a terrible business venture. Yeah, and what made
Speaker 1: matters worse, I mean, they were likely doomed. Uh, maybe
Speaker 1: we should hold off the final nail in the coffin
Speaker 1: until later, even though it's pretty obvious if you're paying attention.
Speaker 1: But one thing that heard him along the way for
Speaker 1: sure was the Pyramid Lake War, Yeah, or the Piute War. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I even looked it up. That's what Emma Saying says.
Speaker 1: It was. Uh, that was in Nevada and Utah mainly,
Speaker 1: and that was a war that took a great toll
Speaker 1: on especially these way stations. Uh. And if you are
Speaker 1: a way station, dude, you've fared much worse than Pony
Speaker 1: Express writers as far as activity an attack from Native
Speaker 1: Americans because you were sitting duck basically in a station
Speaker 1: that that seems to be no more than just like
Speaker 1: four walls and a dirt floor and maybe a horse
Speaker 1: corral and a thing to put water in. Yeah, on
Speaker 1: the open prairie. Yeah, you were sitting out there. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And during the Pyramid Lake warm hostilities between the Piute
Speaker 1: and Shoshonees who had banded together with the Pyramid Lake tribe,
Speaker 1: those um, those three groups rose up together against um.
Speaker 1: The settler is the euro the Euro American settlers who
Speaker 1: have been um coming out there and just basically encroaching
Speaker 1: on their land. The thing that the straw that broke
Speaker 1: the camel's back was Um. A pair of Um brothers,
Speaker 1: Euro American brothers kidnapped a couple of Piute I think
Speaker 1: twelve year old girls and raped them and kept them
Speaker 1: hidden at one of these little towns, these little frontier towns,
Speaker 1: and the Piute Indians got wind of this and went
Speaker 1: and found him, killed a couple of the people, burned
Speaker 1: the town down and then started going from like towntown
Speaker 1: or um town totown, but also a way station to
Speaker 1: way station, just like Um, massacring people there, burning down
Speaker 1: way stations, just basically like torching all these places right Um.
Speaker 1: And at first the the cavalry was called in and
Speaker 1: grossly underestimated what the Piute and Shoshonian pyramid Um group
Speaker 1: was capable of UH and just got got whooped basically.
Speaker 1: And then the they further reinforcements that got called in.
Speaker 1: We're basically able to bring it to a standoff. But
Speaker 1: this this whole thing just raised tensions from simmering below
Speaker 1: you know, the surface, to out and out right what
Speaker 1: you would call a war between these tribes and the
Speaker 1: Americans who were pressing into their land. So from that
Speaker 1: moment on, it got way more difficult and scarier to
Speaker 1: be a Pony Express rider. And as per Pony Express history,
Speaker 1: this happened like ten weeks after the first rider disembarked. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so they I mean, not only did it cost them,
Speaker 1: uh men, but it costs them about seventy five grand,
Speaker 1: and this is an eighteen sixty it's like to something
Speaker 1: million today. Yeah, I mean that was a huge loss.
Speaker 1: So they started they ramped up their operation to try
Speaker 1: and make up for that, and all of a sudden
Speaker 1: they were delivering twice a week instead of once a week. Uh.
Speaker 1: And they eventually tried to lower their prices too, but
Speaker 1: it just none of it worked, and financially it was
Speaker 1: a mess. Uh. Like I said earlier, they didn't really
Speaker 1: keep a lot of records. They either didn't keep them
Speaker 1: or they may have destroyed them. That's what I think,
Speaker 1: to avoid creditors. Because these guys were not the greatest
Speaker 1: well I don't know if they weren't the greatest businessman,
Speaker 1: but they surely didn't farewell in this case. Well, one
Speaker 1: of them was supposedly an outright calm man Russell. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah he was. He was supposedly he was the spokesperson
Speaker 1: for this this business venture. And he was good at that,
Speaker 1: but he was not, um, not a great stand up
Speaker 1: guy as far as business is concerned. So the image
Speaker 1: that you get in your head of Pony Express or
Speaker 1: these guys riding full bore on these horses being chased
Speaker 1: by Native Americans and desperados and uh, apparently all the
Speaker 1: you know, many of the books over the years, even
Speaker 1: ones that sound uh super official, a lot of times
Speaker 1: were just made up stories when and we'll talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about who finally got in touch with a
Speaker 1: lot of these riders. But apparently when they were um
Speaker 1: officially on record, they didn't talk a lot about fighting
Speaker 1: the Native Americans or anyone. They talked about the weather,
Speaker 1: stinking about being ripped off and not being paid, uh,
Speaker 1: sort of like normal business complaints. And it wasn't like
Speaker 1: the thing that you see at the Wells Fargo Bank, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we rode horses fast, but it kind of sucked, right.
Speaker 1: But the thing is is like this, this was a
Speaker 1: uh a legend in its own time, is how I've
Speaker 1: seen it. Put Um, well, we'll talk about that after
Speaker 1: a break. How about that. Yeah, let's do it, okay. Um,
Speaker 1: So Chuck. We said that, like the Pony Express was
Speaker 1: the legend in sometime, and that's absolutely true. Like there
Speaker 1: was again in part of William Russell's superior spokesperson ship.
Speaker 1: I think is a word. Um they like newspapers wrote
Speaker 1: about it in Sacramento. They called it there our friend
Speaker 1: the pony Um. I think they were referring to drugs.
Speaker 1: I think they were talking about the Pony Express. But um,
Speaker 1: like people love the Pony Express. It was it was
Speaker 1: just hugely innovative and the idea that like these guys
Speaker 1: were out there writing as fast as they can for
Speaker 1: scores of miles with bandits on their tails, just to
Speaker 1: bring us the mail. People fell in love with this thing.
Speaker 1: Even though at the end of the day the thing
Speaker 1: lasted like eighteen months, like the Only Express, it was
Speaker 1: huge legend that we think of. It was an eighteen
Speaker 1: month business venture that ultimately failed, right, but it was
Speaker 1: a legend, um. And one of the reasons that was
Speaker 1: a legends because there there were a um, I mean,
Speaker 1: there were real deal exploits going on on the trail.
Speaker 1: There were some writers who were just amazing, Like one
Speaker 1: guy was called, um, what was pony Bob's last name
Speaker 1: has them, right, Pony Bob has them. He was one
Speaker 1: of the riders for the Pony Express who ironically wasn't
Speaker 1: as legendary as he should have been because he was
Speaker 1: the actual real deal, But he ended up being forgotten
Speaker 1: because I get the impression he wasn't much of a
Speaker 1: self promoter. Yeah, he made a legendary documented journey of
Speaker 1: three hundred and eighty miles without relief. At one point
Speaker 1: where he basically road to road and road and road
Speaker 1: went to his station to switch riders, and the guy
Speaker 1: there was like, well, I'm not going, Like there's there's
Speaker 1: indians out there trying to kill me. And so he
Speaker 1: was like, all right, I'm gonna keep going. And he
Speaker 1: kept going and delivered the mail and eventually made his
Speaker 1: way back and and it ended up being a three
Speaker 1: eight mile round trip. And he's, like I said, there's
Speaker 1: not a lot of great documentation, but even though he's
Speaker 1: been lost to history, he was very well documented as
Speaker 1: an expert writer. Yeah, he definitely was. Um, there was
Speaker 1: another one called Billy Fisher who had a pretty interesting
Speaker 1: claim to fame. He was out riding on the trail
Speaker 1: and um, it was during a snowstorm, so This is
Speaker 1: another thing too. You said that the riders complained about
Speaker 1: things like the terrible weather, like they were carrying mail
Speaker 1: from um, let's see Missouri to Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, California.
Speaker 1: Some tough weather especially, say like in January, you're gonna
Speaker 1: run into some terrible snowstorms, right. And Billy Fisher found
Speaker 1: himself in one of these snowstorms and he first he
Speaker 1: just dismounted. He's like, I just gotta go over here
Speaker 1: and go to sleep for a little while in a blizzard.
Speaker 1: And um, he started to fall asleep, and he woke
Speaker 1: up to something licking his face, and it was a
Speaker 1: jack rabbit who had basically licked his face till he
Speaker 1: woke up. I didn't know they licked. I think this
Speaker 1: may have been his his spirit animal actually, uh. And
Speaker 1: the rabbit like startled Billy Fisher, and Billy Fisher startled
Speaker 1: the rabbit and the rabbit ran off, but it woke
Speaker 1: Billy Fisher up, and he said, if that rabbit had
Speaker 1: to lick my face and woke me up, I never
Speaker 1: would have woken up. I would have just frozen to
Speaker 1: death out there in this blizzard. But he was woken
Speaker 1: up enough and realized the gravity of the situation enough
Speaker 1: they got back on his horse and kept rioting to safety. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And to to top it off, his great great grandson
Speaker 1: is William Fisher, who was one of the U S
Speaker 1: astronauts who flew the Space Shuttle. So legend and these
Speaker 1: stories are like going around and like being circulated in
Speaker 1: newspapers and among people while the any expresses going on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean there were some very bad, uh not exploit
Speaker 1: of sensationalist books written over the years. And then there
Speaker 1: was also a couple of real legitimate dudes, Captain Sir
Speaker 1: Richard Burton, the famous British explorer, and one Samuel Clemens,
Speaker 1: twenty five year old future Mark Twain. They both individually
Speaker 1: um kind of spent some time out there documenting the
Speaker 1: Pony Express. And it seems like Burton didn't have a
Speaker 1: good time out there. He didn't like the West. He
Speaker 1: always complained about the flies and the fleas and just
Speaker 1: the the filth and just the people. He just was
Speaker 1: not a fan. But he still gave a fairly accurate
Speaker 1: account of like the day to day of a Pony
Speaker 1: Express writer. Clemens, Mr. The future Mark Twain seemed to
Speaker 1: have a good time, and you know, in his true fashion,
Speaker 1: wrote some of the uh some really flower flowery eyewitness
Speaker 1: testimony about seeing these horsemen coming across the tundra and
Speaker 1: the planes. It's pretty cool. You're gonna read that? No, well,
Speaker 1: everybody go read that. It's in um Roughing It, which
Speaker 1: is his book about traveling the US, and he surfs
Speaker 1: in it. Did you know that? I didn't. He goes
Speaker 1: to Hawaii and tries surfing when they used to surf
Speaker 1: on like ten ft long wooden boards. Your head clean off,
Speaker 1: Go go read that quote in your in your best
Speaker 1: hell hole brook impression. Really a good way to do it.
Speaker 1: I'm more a Val Kilmer Mark Twain guy, That's right.
Speaker 1: I forgot he did that. Everyone did, Chuck man. Um,
Speaker 1: So you had Mark Twain and Captain Sir Richard Burton
Speaker 1: providing like contemporary accounts. But that's like, that is virtually it. Right,
Speaker 1: there were again this is a failed business venture. Let's
Speaker 1: go ahead and tell him what happened? Why it was
Speaker 1: failed business venture? Chuck? Why why ultimately died? Well, they
Speaker 1: finally hooked up the two, They finally closed that gap
Speaker 1: on the telegraph. They're like well, we can go coast
Speaker 1: to coast now, so you're you're sort of immediately literally
Speaker 1: immediately out of business. Yeah. The two days later they closed.
Speaker 1: The first rider headed out on April third, eighteen sixty
Speaker 1: and it was October twenty six of eighteen sixty one
Speaker 1: where the last one headed out from St. Joe's. And
Speaker 1: some people will say, well, it didn't actually stop in October.
Speaker 1: It was actually November because those machilas didn't end up
Speaker 1: into in Sacramento until November. That's fine whatever. It was
Speaker 1: like eighteen months seventies something weeks of Operation UM and
Speaker 1: people loved it at the time. But as with most things,
Speaker 1: once the new, better, greater thing came along the telegram,
Speaker 1: they forgot about it pretty quick and we really honestly
Speaker 1: would not have any recollection of the Pony Express. It
Speaker 1: would be footnote to a footnote in history if it
Speaker 1: weren't for one guy named Buffalo Bill Cody, who actually
Speaker 1: is the reason why we all remember the Pony Express.
Speaker 1: He had a soft spot in his heart for um,
Speaker 1: not just the Pony Express itself, but one of um,
Speaker 1: the founders. I think it was Alexander Major's, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think so. Who um, you gave me a job
Speaker 1: when he was a kid. Gave him a job when
Speaker 1: he was a kid. And while Bill um would go
Speaker 1: on or Buffalo Bill would go on to uh to say, well,
Speaker 1: I was actually a Pony Express writer. All historical evidence
Speaker 1: suggests that that is not actually the case. But um,
Speaker 1: he definitely did work for Alexander Majors, who was one
Speaker 1: of the owners of the Pony Express as a horseback messenger,
Speaker 1: just not a Pony Express writer, which if you're talking
Speaker 1: about Pony Express legend, that's a major distinction. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: Buffalo Bill would also go on to say she's a
Speaker 1: great brick front girl. Sorry, it's he called Buffalo Bill. Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1: I always, for some reason I thought it was a
Speaker 1: playoff of Buffalo Bill, like Buffalo Bob or something like that. No,
Speaker 1: it was Buffalo Bill because he skinned his victims. I remember, Uh,
Speaker 1: should we take a break? Geez? Okay, sure, alright, let's
Speaker 1: take a break and we'll talk a little bit more
Speaker 1: about Buffalo Bill right after this. Alright, So Buffalo Bill's
Speaker 1: Wild West. Uh, I want to always want to say
Speaker 1: Wild West extravaganza, you can call it that, but it
Speaker 1: was really Buffalo Bill's Old West. That was a name
Speaker 1: of his big show that he took all over the country,
Speaker 1: delighting people with sharp shooting and horseback riding and all
Speaker 1: sorts of cool stuff, enchanting America with U with the
Speaker 1: Old West, not just America, the world. Well, yeah, and
Speaker 1: that's that's a solid point. I mean, he went all
Speaker 1: over Europe and that's why, and this article points out
Speaker 1: that's why to this day you can go to like
Speaker 1: a Pony Express themed club in Germany because back then
Speaker 1: he performed in front of Queen Victoria and Kaiservillehelm and
Speaker 1: the and the Pope in Rome and basically kind of
Speaker 1: he always seemed to have at least one reported or
Speaker 1: purported Pony Express rider in the show. It was like
Speaker 1: one of the main um segments of his show. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so at one point he did have who was the
Speaker 1: uh Bronco Bronco Charlie Miller. No, no, no, well he
Speaker 1: had him. Oh, pony Bob has them. Yeah, pony Bob
Speaker 1: worked for him for a little while and he is
Speaker 1: a definite legit rider. The other guy, what's his name,
Speaker 1: Bronco Billy Broncho, Charlie Miller, Oh no, that was Clint Eastwood.
Speaker 1: Bronco Charlie Miller claimed to have been a Pony Express writer.
Speaker 1: A lot of men claim to have been over the
Speaker 1: years that were not. Uh, And they traced his his
Speaker 1: timeline back and he would have been ten or eleven,
Speaker 1: which is really stretching it, like it is possible. It
Speaker 1: is it's possible because they did go as low as
Speaker 1: like thirteen and fourteen. But uh, it was never super
Speaker 1: confirmed that this guy actually wrote for the Pony Express.
Speaker 1: But it kind of doesn't matter because apparently everyone loved him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And and so the reason why it's stretching it but
Speaker 1: still in the realm of possibility is because so like
Speaker 1: when when William Russell we talk about the Ponty Express
Speaker 1: and his company would say, like, these men have to
Speaker 1: take an oath not to drink or fight, which still happened.
Speaker 1: Of course. Yeah, we have like eighty eighty people in
Speaker 1: the saddle and in reality, yeah, were all drunk around
Speaker 1: like at all the way stations and on and on
Speaker 1: the trail. Um. And the the impression is that you
Speaker 1: if you needed a rider and there was somebody who
Speaker 1: said I'll go you, you were a Pony Express rider
Speaker 1: right then. So the idea that an eleven year old
Speaker 1: kids said I'll go, and they said, all right, fine
Speaker 1: go that could have possibly happened. So it's possible Bronco
Speaker 1: Charlie Miller did right. But like you said, he was
Speaker 1: just such a great like old West archetype. They were
Speaker 1: like whatever, we'll believe anything you say. Yeah. So uh.
Speaker 1: Through the years, like we said, a lot of bad information,
Speaker 1: a lot of legend um everything from uh for movies
Speaker 1: like three, a paramount film called The Pony Express. Charlton
Speaker 1: Heston is Buffalo Bill. In the movie, Buffalo Bill teams
Speaker 1: up with wild Bill Hillo Hilcok to start the Pony Express.
Speaker 1: And as this author said, there is not a shard
Speaker 1: effect in the entire film. I don't know if he
Speaker 1: meant shred shard all right, He could have said shough.
Speaker 1: And then this the um. If you read this, it
Speaker 1: sounds super cool, like a notice in the St. Louis
Speaker 1: and San Francisco newspaper that said wanted young, skinny, wiry
Speaker 1: fellows not over eighteen, must be expert writers willing to
Speaker 1: risk death daily orphans preferred way just twenty five dollars
Speaker 1: per week. And that seems like, man, what a great
Speaker 1: job listing for the Pony Express. Orphans preferred that was
Speaker 1: written in the twentieth century by a journalist in the
Speaker 1: Sunset magazine. So that probably wasn't even true. No, No,
Speaker 1: that's so like again there was. It was forgotten like
Speaker 1: they think. Alexander Majors wrote his um memoirs. Remember he
Speaker 1: was one of the three guys who owned the Pony Express.
Speaker 1: He wrote his memoirs like thirty forty years after um
Speaker 1: the Pony Express his last ride. So and by this
Speaker 1: time most people had forgotten it. And again it was
Speaker 1: Buffalo Bill who came along actually paid a visit to
Speaker 1: Ali Sander Majors and found him in a fairly sorry state.
Speaker 1: He was broke, he was in poor health, and said,
Speaker 1: you gave me my first job when I was eleven
Speaker 1: after my father died, and I want to repay you
Speaker 1: by taking care of you. So he put him in
Speaker 1: a show, he let him stay at his old Scouts
Speaker 1: Rest ranch in Nebraska, just basically took care of him.
Speaker 1: But he also was like, we've got to publish this book.
Speaker 1: So he got Rand McNally to actually publish this book
Speaker 1: about his life as a freight Old West freight legend guy.
Speaker 1: Including the Pony Express, and that was some of the
Speaker 1: earliest documentation about it. But it also kicked off like
Speaker 1: this history of terrible documentation, of just surrounding the whole
Speaker 1: thing with tall tales and embellishments, and it just very
Speaker 1: quickly became it's very tough to to root fact from
Speaker 1: fiction even today, even at some of these places that
Speaker 1: are like this is actually this museum is a Pony
Speaker 1: express Way station. May not the case. They're not entirely
Speaker 1: certain what the trail was any longer. They think that
Speaker 1: there's some pristine segments that are aren't covered over by
Speaker 1: um tracks of some sort that they're actually like, this
Speaker 1: was the the course that the Pony Express took, but
Speaker 1: they're not a hundred percent sure. It just got lost
Speaker 1: the time. Yeah, I don't even think we mentioned that
Speaker 1: Buffalo Bill Um That job he got was was as
Speaker 1: a horseback delivery writer for the initial Freight Company, but
Speaker 1: he never wrote for the Pony Express, though he did
Speaker 1: he outright claim to or just kind of let people
Speaker 1: send that know in his in his in the notes
Speaker 1: for the Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, it talked about
Speaker 1: how he was and then it would say you should
Speaker 1: buy his autobiography it shows even more. And then they
Speaker 1: would talk in depth about how he rode for the
Speaker 1: Pony Express. For sure, if you were from the Old
Speaker 1: West of this time, you were basically expected to just
Speaker 1: lie constantly about some of the things you've done. And
Speaker 1: same not just with um Buffalo Bill Wild. Bill Hiccock
Speaker 1: said the same thing, said he worked for the Pony
Speaker 1: Express too, and he did, but he was one of
Speaker 1: those guys who ran away station intended to the horses lame. Well,
Speaker 1: he was bigger and older, so he couldn't write. You know,
Speaker 1: it wasn't his fault. He's a victim of circumstances. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are also a bunch of Uh. There was a
Speaker 1: series of last living Pony Express riders throughout the years.
Speaker 1: Um Various newspapers, even sometimes multiple times in the same
Speaker 1: newspaper over the years, would print articles claiming that the
Speaker 1: last Pony Express rider has just died. Um, so we
Speaker 1: don't know if you know any of them were or not,
Speaker 1: or if they were the last or not. Uh. And
Speaker 1: it finally took a woman named a poet, apparently not
Speaker 1: a very good one, named Mabel Loving, who said, why
Speaker 1: don't you know, wasn't someone actually write letters and get
Speaker 1: in touch with some of these people and get the
Speaker 1: true dirt. And she did that. She apparently wrote letters
Speaker 1: and had some correspondence with the surviving Pony Express writers
Speaker 1: as an amateur poet and said this was right before
Speaker 1: World War One, And apparently that is some of the
Speaker 1: only like real documentation we have from some of the
Speaker 1: real writers that she eventually published in something called The
Speaker 1: Pony Express Rides on exclamation Point, which apparently can still
Speaker 1: buy if you have a lot of money. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like a collectible. I'm sure, yeah, I think. And
Speaker 1: supposedly the printers lost a couple of the chapters, so
Speaker 1: like even if you buy a copy, it's not and
Speaker 1: it's intact form because nobody took that very seriously. I
Speaker 1: think probably because of the exclamation point. It's never a
Speaker 1: good idea. No, um, you got anything else? Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess the PostScript is, uh, after this telegraph that,
Speaker 1: like I said, two days after it was hooked up,
Speaker 1: they realized that they were done for because they were
Speaker 1: already in bad financial straits. So wat L went home
Speaker 1: to Missouri. He was broke and in debt. He sold
Speaker 1: us home to his son for a dollar and still
Speaker 1: lived there. Uh And apparently he died in April of
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy two, never worked again. Um Russell, who was
Speaker 1: only forty eight, went to New York. Failed as a stockbroker.
Speaker 1: Apparently no one trusted him. He filed for bankruptcy in
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty five. Uh and this was what just five
Speaker 1: years after it shut down, sold off his assets to
Speaker 1: pay his creditors, went back to Missouri finally because of
Speaker 1: poor health, and died in eighteen seventy two. And then
Speaker 1: Majors lived the longest uh and we know his story,
Speaker 1: like you said, Buffalo Bill helped him publish his book.
Speaker 1: And if there if Bronco Charlie Miller really was a
Speaker 1: Pony Express rider, he definitely by far was the last
Speaker 1: one to die. He died at a hundred and five
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty five, and years before that, at age
Speaker 1: eighty two, he rode from New York to California on
Speaker 1: horseback to bring its tension back to the Pony Express
Speaker 1: and the glory of it, Wow Pony Express. So final facts,
Speaker 1: they ended up losing about two grand and that day's money,
Speaker 1: which is millions of dollars now. The personal best delivery time,
Speaker 1: apparently was when they carried Abraham Lincoln's inaugural address. They
Speaker 1: got it to California in seven days, seventeen hours, and
Speaker 1: in the end they delivered about thirty five thousand pieces
Speaker 1: of mail over that eighteen or nineteen months. And I think,
Speaker 1: isn't it wasn't only one mailshipment that didn't only one
Speaker 1: fail to make it? That's what I understand. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: pretty good track record for a failed business. It's not
Speaker 1: bad at all. They all they wrote a combined half
Speaker 1: a million miles in that time. Pretty great. And again
Speaker 1: that's the Pony Express, totally different than what you thought about,
Speaker 1: but also sort of the same. I just didn't know
Speaker 1: that it was such a flopt. You just bad timing,
Speaker 1: terrible timing. Man. Um, Well, if you wanted more about
Speaker 1: the Pony Express, we'll get on out there on the trail.
Speaker 1: You varm it and check it out yourself. Uh. And
Speaker 1: since I said arm and, it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 1: Oh no, no it's not. Oh boy, it's time for
Speaker 1: administrated d all right, Okay, for the uninitiated, this is
Speaker 1: where Josh and I and Jerry, by way of our voices,
Speaker 1: thank you for the nice things that you've sent us
Speaker 1: in the mail. Thank you, gifts, tokens, crafts, books, postcards, letters.
Speaker 1: By the way, I didn't log all the postcards and letters.
Speaker 1: That can be tough. It can be tough. How about
Speaker 1: a blanket. Thank you to everyone who sent us postcards
Speaker 1: in lineups Greed, Thank you all right, Dan Kent, thank
Speaker 1: you big time for sending us Pliny the Elder or
Speaker 1: beer and T shirts. Yes. Thanks to the bar Fight
Speaker 1: Supply Company for all the awesome leather goods, including the
Speaker 1: um the Mole skin holder, which I use a lot. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: the business card holders all that jam. Thank you very much, guys.
Speaker 1: Kelly Sumski of Two Little Els, she sent us a
Speaker 1: or sent me a painted rock and memory of the
Speaker 1: wizard of my cat who passed. Sweet. It was very
Speaker 1: sweet and very sad to get, but in a good way.
Speaker 1: Uh sad, bitter sweet. Chris Wallzac sent us beer from Hamburg,
Speaker 1: New York, and I p a thank you. Chris. Andy Krueger,
Speaker 1: you sent me a ween T shirt that I wear
Speaker 1: all the time, including on stage in Atlanta. I saw
Speaker 1: it myself. Um Anna Dyne coffee. Uh. They sent us
Speaker 1: some coffee from Milwaukee. Thanks Anna Dyne, Jeremiah and Mason Brandrick.
Speaker 1: Oh I remember this. They sent us the F five
Speaker 1: I p A, which is a beer I had when
Speaker 1: I spent some time in Tulsa. So it's I think
Speaker 1: it Tulsa beer and some beer in Bear in Stein
Speaker 1: Bear shirts soaked in cologne. It seemingly soaked in cologne.
Speaker 1: They they they're like, here, you look like you smell.
Speaker 1: We're gonna make you pretty. It was interesting. Julie sent
Speaker 1: us handmade personalized Christmas ornaments, which it's been a while
Speaker 1: since we did this, or um for Jerry, you, me,
Speaker 1: Emily and the kids. Yeah, yeah, it's very nice. Those
Speaker 1: are great. Actually, yeah that was on my tree. Uh
Speaker 1: Kaylee Hamar sent uh my dog Nikot some pet treats.
Speaker 1: Nice pet treater, very nice. Lindsay Lundstrom sent us some
Speaker 1: wonderful bottle key cap or bottle cap key chains. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a s Y s K one and don't be
Speaker 1: dumb one last chance garage Mama Jerry Red Wagon and
Speaker 1: she's out of Etsy and Facebook at Red Dragon Handcrafts.
Speaker 1: Check him out. You're gonna love him. Yeah, it's good stuff.
Speaker 1: Becca sent uh sent me a library copy of a book,
Speaker 1: my children's book that I was so fond of as
Speaker 1: a kid, The Great Christmas Kidnapping Caper. I'm really excited
Speaker 1: to read this with my daughter Becca. So thank you
Speaker 1: so much for sending that. Kelly Butler Olson sent Murdered
Speaker 1: by Death a copy of Murdered by Death, arguably one
Speaker 1: of the greatest boof movies of all time, one of
Speaker 1: my favorites. So thank you. Kelly H. Taylor Stonehawker sent
Speaker 1: lovely Christmas card and handmade caramels which were Damons. And
Speaker 1: Nick Stiglick send us some stroop waffles, those amazing things
Speaker 1: that you put over your coffee to heat up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we've we've got more than one stroop waffle. So if
Speaker 1: you sent stroop Waffles, many thanks and to send him
Speaker 1: again Nathan for lots. Uh. He's actually Australian, he's an
Speaker 1: artist and he sent us. Uh. These are great variety
Speaker 1: of bookmarks, magnets, coloring books all uh that are animals
Speaker 1: with their bodies made of flowers and plants. Yeah, it's amazing,
Speaker 1: it's really nice. So you you should check this out.
Speaker 1: It's online at uh Marini Ferlazzo dot au m A
Speaker 1: r I n I f E R l A z
Speaker 1: z O dot au and a portion of these sales
Speaker 1: go to wildlife conservation. So gorgeous and well funded. Speaking
Speaker 1: of gorgeous, Aidan Dale sent us metal sculpture orchids and
Speaker 1: you can find them at Aiden A I D E
Speaker 1: N day ol d A l E dot com. Thank you, Aiden.
Speaker 1: Just a few more here, folks, alias Pa Girko sitting
Speaker 1: honey from their three colony a pry. That's pretty great. Thanks,
Speaker 1: that was awesome. Robin sent us beer and mead from
Speaker 1: Wisconsin and it was well appreciated and didn't last very long. Robin,
Speaker 1: thank you. We did not drink Wisconsin ly, Robbin. That's
Speaker 1: a T shirt. I didn't make it up. Bonnie Bowden
Speaker 1: centis moulda Rama's guitars, which I think it got from
Speaker 1: third Man Records in Nashville, UM. And I think she
Speaker 1: also sent the Willis Tower one which I was like,
Speaker 1: what the heck is the Willis Tower And I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's the Sears Tower. Well, and we got actually more
Speaker 1: than one person sent his molda Rama's yeah, like Luke
Speaker 1: and David shirt skull father and son. This in his
Speaker 1: elephant molder ramas from war Chuckledo Zoo Bam, which has
Speaker 1: probably the largest selection of mold rama's outside of the
Speaker 1: Chicago land area. It's right. And you grew up right
Speaker 1: there in the gorilla cage. It's right. Nathan Centiss Band
Speaker 1: c d ep Missouri Loves Company or Missouri or Missouri
Speaker 1: Missouri Loves Company. Philip la Palm, great name, sent Robert
Speaker 1: shaw Jaws Christmas card to Chuck. That's right. Uh. And finally,
Speaker 1: just a couple of weeks ago, I got sent some
Speaker 1: guitar picks from Forever Pick. And apparently these picks have
Speaker 1: like a better sustain and better performance. And I have
Speaker 1: not yet plucked with him, but I can't wait to
Speaker 1: use my Forever picks. That is fantastic. You have some more, Yeah,
Speaker 1: We've got just a couple more, Chuck, if you'll bear
Speaker 1: with me, take us home. Brother Um Josh Jones sent
Speaker 1: us catfish Head Vodka. Oh yeah, thanks a lot, Josh.
Speaker 1: Um Doug sent us an amazing poster congratulating us for
Speaker 1: a thousand episodes, and old Off and Millie the Shop
Speaker 1: Dogs sent us the amazing railroad spike bottle openers. Remember those?
Speaker 1: You can go to church mouseforge dot com. And dude,
Speaker 1: I want to say Ian Newton, who founded the Baltimore
Speaker 1: Whiskey Company. Ian has been sending us stuff like this
Speaker 1: shot Tower Gin. It's kind of like a multi gen
Speaker 1: that I love. UM sent that bourbon that you love.
Speaker 1: Just has been sending us some pretty great stuff. So
Speaker 1: first of all, Ian, thank you. Second of all, and
Speaker 1: keep it coming. And third, everybody else who's not Ian,
Speaker 1: go check out Baltimore Whiskey Company's stuff. Baltimore Spirits Company. Um,
Speaker 1: they have just amazing booze that's locally made in Baltimore,
Speaker 1: and you can tell it's like craft distilled stuff. You're
Speaker 1: gonna love it. So thank you to everybody who sent
Speaker 1: us anything. Ever, and if you sent us something in
Speaker 1: between the last administrative details in this one and we
Speaker 1: didn't say your name, first of all, we apologize. Secondly,
Speaker 1: get in touch of us and let us know because
Speaker 1: we do want to thank you, and it's just an oversight.
Speaker 1: We're not actually mad at you, okay. And and I
Speaker 1: have even more I want to thank Doug Sashery. I
Speaker 1: know how to pronounce the name now. I don't know
Speaker 1: if you guys remember not, but I mispronounced Tony Cocherri's
Speaker 1: seasoning Creole Seasoning. Uh it turns out it's Tony Sassaris,
Speaker 1: and Doug let me know by sending me tons of
Speaker 1: Tony Sassaries products and their awesome So thank you, Doug.
Speaker 1: I also want to thank another Doug, Doug Dixon, the
Speaker 1: CEO of Joel Cola, who sent us some joke Cola
Speaker 1: care packages. And then every once in a while people
Speaker 1: bring us stuff to our live shows. So thank you
Speaker 1: to Ron from Dundee, Michigan for giving me the um
Speaker 1: complete DVD set of Thunder the Barbarian, which I've never
Speaker 1: seen all the way through because of swimming lessons. And
Speaker 1: a very nice person gave us gooey cakes at the St.
Speaker 1: Louis show. Uh. Our friend Dale from Australia sent us
Speaker 1: a care package of Australian candy to um acclamate us
Speaker 1: to Australian candy for our Australia tour. And then John
Speaker 1: from Capistrano Beach who sent us a giant puzzle wheel
Speaker 1: that I've yet to begin to even try to figure out.
Speaker 1: So thank you John for this madness. Uh, if you
Speaker 1: want to get in touch with us, whether to send
Speaker 1: us something or just to say hi. You can go
Speaker 1: onto our website, stuff Podcast at how stuff We're dot com,
Speaker 1: check out our t shirt store at t Public t
Speaker 1: e public dot com, slash stuff you Should Know, and
Speaker 1: you can just send us a good old fashioned email
Speaker 1: to Stuff Podcast at how stuff works dot com. For
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics, is it
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com