Mail Riders

In the early days of the new nation that would become the United States of America, getting information from one area to another was not easy. There was no official mail service, nor, in fact, were there established roads on which to take mail from the eastern states to the cities that were popping up in the West. Each of these things had to be established, pioneered by ambitious individuals who dreamed of what could be done and then dared to do just that.

The first mail riders faced difficult and dangerous obstacles as they traveled through the wilderness to settlements that were anything but easy to get to. Treacherous terrain and harsh weather were just two of the hazards, but there were also native peoples who became angry at their treatment by the new government of America, which saw them as problems to be overcome instead of people whose rights and customs were worthy of honor and respect. For these reasons and more, it was not easy getting mail across the country. But there were people who persevered, in spite of the multiple threats they faced, and these people transformed the country, connecting East and West and the small places in between.

From Paul Revere (an unlikely early mail rider, unknown as such to most people) to the overland mail stagecoaches to the Pony Express, the United States went through a variety of methods of getting mail from one point to another, each building on the ones before. This book explores those methods and the people who created them and worked within them, besting the odds to deliver the mail.