Expedient Delivery

Expedient Delivery. . , The goal of the Pony Express was to provide speedy and dependable mail service between Missouri and California. Before the first ride, an important task was to develop a shorter route especially across the wild open spaces between Utah and California. With only two months to prepare, the owners of the Pony Express needed to insure that the mail would get through in a timely manner. To do so meant finding a route that would be more expedient than the established California Trail., Settlements and homesteads between Utah and California were rare prior to the Pony Express. Fortunately for Russell, Majors, and Waddell, recent explorations southwest of Salt Lake City and work already in progress by other private companies provided the means to shave nearly 300 miles off the Humboldt River route. , In the mid-1850s, a Mormon settler named Howard Egan scouted and developed a trail across the Utah west desert to drive his cattle between Salt Lake City and the markets in California. Learning about Egan's route, entrepreneur George Chorpenning who had previously developed three different routes along the Humboldt River, quickly realized the value this new route would have for his mail and freight business. Together, Chorpenning and Egan began building the road and developing provisioned way stations for passenger stagecoaches, freight wagons, and transporting mail., Learning about Chorpenning and Egan's roadwork, U.S. Topographical Engineer Captain James H. Simpson spent a few weeks in the late fall of 1858 exploring the desert area southwest of the Great Salt Lake. The following spring the U.S. Army ordered Simpson to survey the entire route as a potential road for transporting supplies to its outpost at Camp Floyd. On Simpson's recommendation, in 1859 and 1860, the Army made some route adjustments and vastly improved the road and the water holes located along it for use by military freight wagons., When the Pony Express began its first run in early April of 1860, only a handful of way station existed across the new Central Overland Route. These first stations were roughly 20 to 25 miles apart. Pony Express riders would have to push their mustangs 50 to 70 miles between stations at Salt Lake City, Faust, Willow Springs, and Deep Creek until the new 10-mile relay stations were in place. With only two months to prepare, those new relay stations often began with nothing more than a tent canopy for the station keeper and a makeshift corral for the horses., (caption:) The Central Overland Route, a more direct and shorter road between Utah and California, left Lake City turned south of the Great Salt Lake through the mountains of Utah and central Nevada to Carson City For a decade afterwards, it continued to serve a vital role in the transport of emigrants, mail, freight and passengers between Salt Lake City and California.