The Pony Express: A Rider Out of St. Joseph

What Is Actually True

• The National Park Service says the Pony Express quartered horses at Pikes Peak Stables, 914 Penn Street in St. Joseph, from April 3, 1860 through mid-September 1861.
• The Pony Express National Museum page says the first rider left the stables on April 3, 1860, on a route of more than 2,000 miles to California.
• NPS says riders collected the mail pouch at the Patee House, then rode to the Missouri River and ferried to Elwood, Kansas.
• NPS says the Patee House was built in 1858 as a 140-room hotel and housed the company offices in 1860.
• The sources we read do not name the first rider, so we do not either.