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• pony express
  pony express

  noun

  a former system in the American West of carrying mail and express by relays of riders mounted on ponies, especially the system operating (1860–61) between St. Joseph, Missouri, and Sacramento, California.
• Pony Express
  Pony Express

  A system of mail service by relays of riders on horses, established in 1860 between Missouri and California, through the Rocky Mountains. It operated for only a year and a half, until a telegraph line eliminated the need for it.

pony express

American  

noun

1. a former system in the American West of carrying mail and express by relays of riders mounted on ponies, especially the system operating (1860–61) between St. Joseph, Missouri, and Sacramento, California.

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pony express British  

noun

1. (in the American West) a system of mail transport that employed relays of riders and mounts, esp that operating from Missouri to California in 1860–61

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Pony Express Cultural  

1. A system of mail service by relays of riders on horses, established in 1860 between Missouri and California, through the Rocky Mountains. It operated for only a year and a half, until a telegraph line eliminated the need for it.

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Buffalo Bill (see also BuffaloBill) Cody and Wild Bill Hickok were Pony Express riders in their youth.

An early advertisement for Pony Express riders is well known: “Wanted: Young, skinny, wiry fellows not over eighteen. Must be expert riders, willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred.”

Etymology

Origin of pony express

An Americanism dating back to 1840–50

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

pony express Pony Express

Stagecoach services, like the pony express, took days to traverse the gutted tracks across the wilderness that still separated America’s nascent cities.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 28, 2025

Why would anyone deliver a thumb drive by pony express or carrier pigeon when the internet was made for the purpose of quickly and easily delivering data electronically?

From Slate ● Dec. 14, 2018

Filippini and other ranchers have sued, staged a "pony express" protest ride on horseback to Washington, D.C., and petitioned for Furtado's ouster.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 14, 2016

"Did the pony express riders ask the permission of the Indians to carry the mail?" he cried.

From Time Magazine Archive

And that's what the pony express is for—to transport speedily valuable and important packages and letters.

From Jack of the Pony Express by Webster, Frank V.

Mr. Crytzer’s narrative hums along with the National Road’s traffic as he colorfully describes Pony Express riders, stagecoaches, Conestoga wagons and many thousands of migrants wending ever westward, feeding the nation’s economic and territorial growth.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 24, 2026

The famed Pony Express, which rushed the news of Abraham Lincoln’s election to California in November 1860, went out of business less than a year later, after the telegraph made coast-to-coast communications infinitely faster.

From MarketWatch ● Nov. 20, 2025

Mustangs went 34-11-1 over Mr. Dickerson’s four years — the team’s vaunted Pony Express era.

From New York Times ● Mar. 30, 2024

Thanks to technological advances such as smartphones and QR codes, handing someone a business card seems to have gone the way of the Pony Express.

From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 1, 2023

It was dated before I even left the States, so I guess the army’s still using the Pony Express.

From "Moon Over Manifest" by Clare Vanderpool