Where Is Missouri?
Crowds gathered in the streets of St. Joseph, Missouri, on April 3, 1860. They were waiting to witness the beginning of a new connection between their state and the far west coast of the
United States.
When a cannon finally blasted, twenty-year-old Johnny Fry rushed through the streets on horseback. He crossed the Missouri River at the edge of town. He rode for eighty miles until he reached the next station on the Pony Express in Seneca, Kansas, and passed along the bag of mail he carried.
Fry had just completed the opening leg of the first-ever westbound Pony Express ride. In Seneca, a new rider took the mailbag packed with newspapers, telegrams, and letters and carried it to another station and another new rider. It took many riders and horses for the mailbag to make the journey to Sacramento, California, but they did it in just ten days!
The Pony Express was a way to speed up communication between the eastern and western parts of the country. This was before trains, roads, or even telegraph wires connected to the West Coast. Men and boys—one as young as eleven —raced on horseback through dust storms and blizzards to deliver mail. Missouri was a central point of the United States.
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