Arthur Jacob Miller and The Pony Express

Joe and I went to a free lecture at Ft. Caspar entitled "Alfred Jacob Miller and the 1837 Rendezvous". And as an added bonus, we found out that the Pony Express rider would be stopping by the Ft. Caspar museum. So, even though we'd left the Interpretive Trails thinking we'd miss the rider, we got lucky - the lecture and the rider!

Alfred Jacob Miller was one of the first artists to document in his work the adventures of mountain men and Native Americans in the American West in the early nineteenth century. It was in New Orleans where Scottish nobleman, Capt. William Drummond Stewart, recently retired from the British Army, visited with Miller.

Steward, who sought his own adventure in the American West, asked Miller to accompany him on an expedition in 1837. Steward wanted the artist to document one of the American frontier’s most exciting gatherings of white and native people; the annual Fur Trade Rendezvous, which in 1837 was located on the Green River in present day western Wyoming. Subsequently, Miller became famous for his depictions of western inhabitants in the early nineteenth century. Miller captured in his paintings a realistic yet romantic vision of Mountain men and Native Americans interacting at the Rendezvous on the Green River. There are very few journals or diaries of participants who attended the 1837 Rendezvous; Miller’s sketches and paintings are a valuable contribution that document one of the last Fur Trade gatherings in the American history.

and they finally arrived...

Waiting For The Pony Express Rider

Last week Joe and I had the opportunity to participate in the 150th Anniversary of the reenactment of the Pony Express ride at the National Historic Trails Interpretive Center. David Fairbanks, son of sculptor Avard T. Fairbanks a man from Utah, told about the sculptor his father had made back in 2001.

Raising the flag...

Notice the number of stars on the flag...

Watch out Joe! You might hurt someone!

This is a wagon that used in the civil war...

Items that were stored in the back of the wagon...

The beginnings of a log cabin being built on site...

Another authentic pioneer wagon...

The wagon belongs to Wells Fargo and they even had horses stabled nearby...

Standing on the hill overlooking Casper...

Some good ole folk music inside the center...

The horses trailer and where they store the stagecoach...

We were hoping to be able to stick around and see the rider come in, but unfortunately we had to leave to go. We had to plans attend a free lecture at Ft. Caspar and since the rider hadn't come in, we rode off into the almost sunset.

There are other interesting historical sites in the Guernsey area that are not connected with the Oregon and California Trail. One of them is the site of a Pony Express station from the early 1860s.

This particular one is sited right on the banks of the North Platte. These stations were sited all along the route on average every 12 or so miles apart, the distance a horse could run at full gallop. At each station, the rider would leap from the saddle clutching his saddlebag, throw it over the saddle of a waiting horse, leap aboard and race off on the next leg. After 7 or 8 legs, a new rider would take over.

The riders were paid $100 per month, a fantastic sum when you consider that the average wage was a dollar a day. But, they were out all day in the wild, totally alone and unarmed, at the mercy of the weather and bandits and Indians AND unarmed! Why? Because the weight of the gun would tire the horse quicker and slow it down. There was even a weight limit on the riders of about 125 pounds.

Wartime conditions coupled with the completion of the transcontinental telegraph lines at the end of 1861 saw the end of the Pony Express.

Farson, Wyoming

On our way to spending the night in Alpine, we went through the small town of Farson. Everyone says you have to go there for two reasons...one is that this is basically where the Pony Express riders coming from the east and the west passed each other. The monuments below are to celebrate that. This is where Joe and I stopped to have our picnic lunch. It was the town park located across the street from the only school in town and next to the community ballpark.

This is Joe after having checked out the park restroom facilities...

Oh, the number two (and most important reason) to visit Farson lies in this old building... It is the home of "The Big Cone" which is truly a very large ice cream cone in a waffle cone. You dON't need more than one scoop - it's that big!

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BTW...the Pony Express monument mentioned about the eastbound riders using saddlebags and the westbound riders using a "mochila". Read on about that...

The telegrams and letters transported by the Pony Express were carried in a mochila. The word "mochila" came from the Spanish word for knapsack.

Although there have been other riders to carry the mail by horseback (Benjamin Franklin established post riders that carried mail in the East), it was the mochila that made the Pony Express unique. Mail pouches were never in use on the Overland Pony Express because of their size and shape, they would be difficult to attach to the saddle, and would cause undue delay in changing mounts. To get around this difficulty, a mochila, or covering of leather, was thrown over the saddle. The saddle horn and cantle projected through holes which were cut in the mochila. Attached to the broad leather skirt of the mochila were four cantinas, or boxes of hard leather. When the rider was in the saddle, his legs came between these boxes. The mail was put in these cantinas, which were locked with small padlocks. Station keepers at either end of the line, or at designated way stations, had keys to these boxes.

Through the use of the mochila, it was not necessary to change saddles at all, properly speaking. When a rider arrived at a relay station, a fresh horse, saddled and bridled, was waiting for him. The rider changed the mochila from one saddle to another and was away, inside the two-minute limit allowed for changing horses. If a horse fell and was killed or injured, the rider could strip the mochila from the saddle and walk to the next station with the mail.

The saddles were made by the famous saddlery firm, headed by Israel Landis. They were light even to the stirrups. The saddle horn was short and broad and the entire saddle weighed about one-third of the ordinary frontier used saddle.

Since the riders only had two minutes to exchange horses, this design allowed for easy and quick removal and placement on a fresh horse at Remount Stations. The rider's weight kept the mochila in place during the rugged rides. The mochila, saddle and bridle together weighed 13 pounds.

The National Pony Express Association uses a mochila designed to carry a greater number of letters and to fit over a western saddle, yet can easily be transferred to a fresh horse at rider and mochila exchange points during the annual Re-Run.