Throwback Thursday – Alexander Majors’ Wild West and the Pony Express

A founder of one of the most famous cross-country mail delivery services hails from Simpson County just 20 miles south of Bowling Green. In this week’s Throwback Thursday, we share the 150-year-old story of Alexander Majors, whose freight success led to the start of the famous Pony Express.

Alexander Majors was born in 1814, to a family of farmers in Franklin. The Majors family spent the first few years of Alexander’s childhood in Kentucky, then moved west to Missouri territory. He continued the farming family tradition until 1849 after the Mexican American war, when he took advantage of new trade opportunities from annexed territory. With six wagons and oxen teams, he started a freight company that moved cargo from New Mexico to Missouri.

He became business partners with former competitors, William Russell and William Waddell, and together their team had 3500 wagons, four thousand men, 40 thousand oxen, and a thousand mules. They launched the Pony Express in 1860, with mail carried from Missouri to California in 10 days on horseback. Its 500 riders were trained with special saddles with 138 relay stations for rider changes. 

True West magazine historians debate if Buffalo Bill Cody, one of the most famous global celebrities of the Wild West era, got his start in horseback riding for the Pony Express at age 14. They say Buffalo Bill rode 22 hours straight and over 300 miles when his relief rider was killed by Sioux warriors. Buffalo Bill Cody did indeed help Alexander Majors write his personal memoir, “Seventy Years on the Frontier.”

The Pony Express only lasted 18 months thanks to the transcontinental telegraph. But tales of the Wild West live on thanks to men like Alexander Majors and Buffalo Bill.