%489. The Pony Express; the Overland Stage.%--By that time, too, the
first locomotive had reached the frontier of Kansas. But between the
Missouri and the Pacific there was still a gap of 2000 miles which the
settlers demanded should be spanned at once, and it was. In 1860 the
same firm that sent the first stagecoach over the prairie from
Leavenworth to Denver, ran a pony express from the Missouri to the
Pacific. Their plan was to start at St. Joseph, Mo., and send the mail
on horseback across the continent to San Francisco. As the speed must be
rapid, there must be frequent relays. Stations were therefore
established every twenty-five miles, and at them fresh horses and riders
were kept. Mounted on a spirited Indian pony, the mail carrier would set
out from St. Joseph and gallop at breakneck speed to the first relay
station, swing himself from his pony, vault into the saddle of another
standing ready, and dash on toward the next station. At every third
relay a fresh rider took the mail. Day and night, in sunshine and storm,
over prairie and mountain, the mail carrier pursued his journey alone.
The cost in human life was immense. The first riders made the journey of
1996 miles in ten days. Next came the Wells and Fargo Express, and then
the Butterfield Overland Stage Company.

%490. The Union Pacific Railroad; the Land Grant Roads.%--Meantime
the war opened, and an idea often talked of took definite shape.
California had scarcely been admitted, in 1850, when the plan to bind
her firmly to the Union by a great railroad, built at national cost, was
urged vigorously. By 1856 the people began to demand it, and in that
year the Republican party, and in 1860 both the Republican and
Democratic parties, pledged themselves to build one. The secession of
the South, and the presence at Denver of a growing population, made the
need imperative, and in 1862 Congress began the work.

Two companies were chartered. One, the Union Pacific, was to begin at
Omaha and build westward. The other, the Central Pacific, was to begin
at Sacramento and build eastward till the two met. The Union Pacific was
to receive from the government a subsidy in bonds of $16,000 for each
mile built across the plains, $48,000 for each of 150 miles across the
Rocky Mountains, and $32,000 a mile for the rest of the way. It received
all told on its 1033 miles $27,226,000. The Central Pacific, under like
conditions, received for its 883 miles from San Francisco t