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Podcast: Today In History with The Retrospectors
Episode: Here Comes The Pony Express
Description: Before the transcontinental telegraph, sending a message coast-to-coast in the United States could take up to a month via stagecoach. Until, that is, the opening of the Pony Express, on April 3, 1860.Its founders, William H. Russell, William Bradford Waddell and Alexander Majors, set up over 150 relay stations along a pioneer trail, recruiting wiry teenage lone riders (‘orphans preferred’) to make the precarious trek in a record-breaking ten days. In this episode, Arion, Rebecca and Olly reveal the employment clauses insisted upon by these entrepreneurs; consider how Buffalo Bill Cody enshrined the concept in the American front...