Horseback Mail Carrier on His Route coloring page

About this coloring page

A horseback mail carrier may look like something from a storybook, but for centuries horses were the fastest way to move a message over land. Before trains, cars and phones, letters traveled in saddlebags carried by riders over every kind of road and trail.

The most famous mail service on horseback is the Pony Express. Launched in April 1860, it carried mail between St. Joseph, Missouri, and Sacramento, California, in about ten days, far faster than the stagecoaches of the time. Riders galloped between relay stations, swapping a tired horse for a fresh one every few miles and handing the mail pouch to the next rider at the end of each leg.

The Pony Express lasted only about eighteen months. In October 1861 the transcontinental telegraph line was completed, and messages that once took days could cross the country almost instantly. Even so, the service became a lasting legend of the American West.

Horses and mules kept carrying mail in rugged places long afterward. Today one of the most remote mail routes in the United States still delivers by mule train to Supai, deep in the Grand Canyon.

• mail carrier
• pony express
• horses
• community helpers
• history