The only transportation to California was by stage-coach, a sixty days' journey, or else across Panama, or else round the Horn, a choice of three evils.
But to establish quicker communication, even though transportation might lag, the men of St.Joseph organized the Pony Express, to cover the great wild distance by riders on horseback, in ten or twelve days.

Relay stations for the horses and men were set up at appropriate points all along the way, and a postboy dashed off from St.Joseph every twenty-four hours, on arrival of the train from the East.

And for a time the Pony Express did its work and did it well.

President Lincoln's First Inaugural was carried to California by the Pony Express; so was the news of the firing on Fort Sumter.

But by 1869.