Three hand-written letters arrived in my mail a few weeks ago. Real notes. Personal and intended just for me.

I was so flabbergasted I quivered. You believe the mail might hold something special, don’t you, even though that’s rare?

People waiting for the mail in 1860 hoped so too.

Perhaps that’s why celebrating the 150th birthday of the Pony Express next year seems like a good journey. Real mail versus stuff to recycle.

St. Joseph in northwest Missouri is the place, telling the story of those 1860-61 mail riders in a wide variety of ways and serving up fine meals and museum visits along the way.

There’s more to this town and its story than the horses and their lightweight riders.

Elegant Victorian and Italianate homes line many streets in St. Jo, thanks largely to wealth earned with post-Civil War manufacturing and wholesale trades, and recently chefs, opera singers, musicians and historic preservationists have moved here from both coasts, opening bed and breakfast inns and restaurants, restoring historic homes and participating in the local symphony, theater, chorus, gardens and nature centers.

The original folks, meanwhile, have kept right on presenting their community stories in remarkable museums. Allow a couple of hours for the Pony Express National Museum and a couple of days for the Patee House Museum.

Jesse James lived and died here so his house is a museum too.

Lunch at the Albrecht-Kemper Museum and all afternoon with the 18th, 19th and 20th century American art is definitely a good plan in St. Joseph; their Western art collection is doubling thanks to a recent bequest — just in time for sesquicentennial celebrations.

Don’t eat before you go to the Glore Psychiatric Museum. Officially it was known as State Lunatic Asylum No. 2 and the story it tells about treatments for mental illness is not a pretty one.

Horses and riders can capture your attention all next year for the sesquicentennial. For all their notoriety, riders with the Pony Express had short-lived careers — Apr. 3, 1860 was the first ride with Johnny Fry leaving St. Joseph and Oct. 22, 1861 the last.

The focus will be Apr. 1 - 3, 2010 so go then if you like honoring history with big crowds; because St. Joseph is an interesting year-round town, I’d be inclined to show up some other time.

The drive north from Kansas City is only an hour, the KC airport is streamlined and easy to navigate and that city looks worth exploring too with loads of new downtown districts, sports and performance facilities and eateries.

Why St. Joseph? Or St. Jo and sometimes St. Joe depending on who’s in charge of spelling.

The train from the east coast reached here and no further and the stagecoach needed 2,000 miles veering north or 3,000 miles taking the southern route.

Horses with riders weighing no more than 120 pounds were faster, and with a shortcut or two, they could deliver the mail from St. Jo to Sacramento in 10 days, riding 1,966 miles.

That demanded non-stop saddle time, changing horses every 10-15 miles at relay stations and switching riders every 75-100 miles at home stations. Some business plan eh, and what an organizing challenge to set up.

They delivered 30,835 letters that way, secured in a leather bag called a mochila; it fit snugly, some say under and some say over the saddle with three locked pouches and a fourth for adding mail along the way.

See an original mochila in the Patee House Museum, which served as the Pony Express headquarters in 1860.

Today it’s an immense collection of the stories, furnishings, tools, buildings, art and treasures of the American West, bigger than you can imagine and far more than a house.

Built in 1858 as a hotel with 140 guest rooms, Patee House Museum today is a fascinating journey in itself; curious to me how compelling it was to keep on looking. So often too much of what somebody else thought worth saving really is too much.

These exhibits, however, alternate from displays to fully furnished western frontier rooms to entire downtowns; get on the mail car and ride the carousel. Drink a sarsaparilla in the replica saloon but honey blonde ale with a Pony Express label isn’t for sale.

Riders pledged no intoxicating liquors, no profane language, no quarrelling or fighting with other riders or members of the Russell, Majors & Waddell Company.

Wine is available with dinner, if you like, at the J. C. Wyatt House. The Pony Express was long gone when this 1891 Victorian home was built.

New York City opera singer Jim Pallone claimed St. Joseph for a new life, and restored the house with period furniture, using original wood, doorways, windows and stained glass.

Every inch is Victorian and feather wreathes, stitchery, pheasant taxidermy, garments and jewelry are visible everywhere as if the 1890 owners were at home.

Ask for an upstairs tour.

“When you can find a city like St. Joseph with all that is here and is affordable, with all the Victorian architecture and history, come to stay,” Pallone tells dinner guests.

“There is nothing like this town in the country except perhaps Cape May, N.J.,” Pallone says. “You can’t live like this on the east or west coasts, but here you can.”

Chef Jeff Keyasko left Manhattan behind too to prepare lunch and dinner at the Wyatt House, plus teach cooking classes once a month.

Stand in the Pony Express National Museum and you’ll be in the actual place where many of the 500 fast horses were stabled --- Mustangs, Morgans, Thoroughbreds, and Pintos. Gives a museum a special feel to be the actual real-deal place.

These men rode hard and fast for 19 months, and the tales of their challenges are well told here. Dioramas with changing weather, life-size replicas of Johnny Fry and the first horse to head from the stable crossing the Missouri River on the ferry to ride to Sacramento, plus paintings, sculpture and maps of many styles give clarity to the legends.

Little children can dress in period clothing to act out the stories and people of all ages can sit on wooden horses complete with saddle and mochila.

Might just meet a Pony Express descendent; they show up frequently and hold family reunions.

Dr. William F. Fisher is the great grandson of rider Billy Fisher — and he’s a Space Shuttle astronaut. Something in the family DNA maybe?



Follow the trail yourself

The National Park Service – National Trails System has great maps and books if you still want more Pony Express experiences (or PX for short like the brand) after enjoying St. Jo.

Contact their Salt Lake City, Utah office at 801-741-1012 to find the best ways to follow the route.

Bring your horse in June 2010 to join the reenactment of the ride!



Mark Twain on the Pony Express

“There were about 80 pony riders in the saddle all the time, night and day, stretching in a long, scattering procession from Missouri to California, 40 flying eastward and 40 toward the west, and among them making 400 gallant horses earn a stirring livelihood, seeing a great deal of scenery every single day of the year.”



“The pony rider was usually a little bit of a man, brimful of spirit and endurance….He must be always ready to leap into the saddle and be off like the wind!”

Roughing It