Talk:Pony Express

Pony Express was one of the History good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
July 24, 2010	Good article nominee	Listed
September 14, 2012	Featured article candidate	Not promoted
February 20, 2023	Good article reassessment	Delisted
Facts from this article were featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "On this day..." column on April 3, 2004, April 3, 2005, April 13, 2006, April 13, 2007, April 3, 2011, April 3, 2015, April 3, 2016, April 3, 2017, April 3, 2019, April 3, 2020, and April 3, 2022.
Current status: Delisted good article

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Archives

Archive 1

File:Pony Express Map William Henry Jackson.jpg to appear as POTD

Hello! This is a note to let the editors of this article know that File:Pony Express Map William Henry Jackson.jpg will be appearing as picture of the day on April 9, 2015. You can view and edit the POTD blurb at Template:POTD/2015-04-09. If this article needs any attention or maintenance, it would be preferable if that could be done before its appearance on the Main Page. Thanks! — Crisco 1492 (talk) 01:19, 17 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Picture of the day

The Pony Express was a mail service operating from 1860 until 1861 that delivered messages, newspapers, mail, and small packages by horseback, keeping California in touch with the rest of the United States. Messages forwarded by Pony Express could cross the country in ten days. Its route from Sacramento, California, to St. Joseph, Missouri, had to cross the Sierra Nevada, the Rocky Mountains, and the Great Plains.Map: William Henry Jackson; restoration: Chris Woodrich

Archive – More featured pictures...

Ponys?

In the "Operations" section, it says that "... Alexander Majors, one of the founders of the Pony Express, had acquired more than 400 horses for the project. He selected horses ... . These averaged about 14 1⁄2 hands (4 feet 10 inches (1.47 m)) high and averaged 900 pounds (410 kg)[17] each; thus, the name pony was appropriate, even if not strictly correct in all cases." When I look up the definition of "pony", I find that the definition specifies that a pony is 14.2 hands or shorter. Thus the average height of the animals acquired would be higher than the defined height. Has the definition changed since 1860, or what? Terry Thorgaard (talk) 14:13, 3 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

"Pony" was used by native Americans to refer to their horses, regardless of size, and the frontiersmen apparently picked it up. Horses on cattle drives were also called ponies regardless of actual height. White Arabian Filly (Neigh) 17:10, 30 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

origins

_____Pony Express 1400 years ago. Arabs used pony express since 1400 years ago. They developed this method during Umayyad and Abbasid dynasties. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.219.8.249 (talk • contribs) 12:38, 14 April 2015

Might want to mention some of the following information which is found in the wiki article on mail

Post is derived from the Persian word "post" (پست), which refers to sending a message to which an answer is expected, while a one way message was named "payam" in that same language. According to Persian history or mythology, mail was instated and used by people who weren't Hakhai or Hakha Manesh, now better known as Achaemenid.

History

Many early post systems consisted of fixed courier routes. Here, a post house on a postal route in the 19th century Finland The practice of communication by written documents carried by an intermediary from one person or place to another almost certainly dates back nearly to the invention of writing. However, development of formal postal systems occurred much later. The first documented use of an organized courier service for the diffusion of written documents is in Egypt, where Pharaohs used couriers for the diffusion of their decrees in the territory of the State (2400 BC). The earliest surviving piece of mail is also Egyptian, dating to 255 BC.[3]

Persia

Main articles: Royal Road and Chapar-Khaneh The first credible claim for the development of a real postal system comes from Ancient Persia, but the point of invention remains in question. The best documented claim (Xenophon) attributes the invention to the Persian King Cyrus the Great (550 BC),[4] who mandated that every province in his kingdom would organize reception and delivery of post to each of its citizens. He also negotiated with neighbouring countries to do the same and had roads built from the city of Post in Western Iran all the way up to the city of Hakha in the East. Other writers credit his successor Darius I of Persia (521 BC). Other sources claim much earlier dates for an Assyrian postal system, with credit given to Hammurabi (1700 BC) and Sargon II (722 BC). Mail may not have been the primary mission of this postal service, however. The role of the system as an intelligence gathering apparatus is well documented, and the service was (later) called angariae, a term that in time came to indicate a tax system. The Old Testament (Esther, VIII) makes mention of this system: Ahasuerus, king of Medes, used couriers for communicating his decisions.

The Persian system worked on stations (called Chapar-Khaneh), where the message carrier (called Chapar) would ride to the next post, whereupon he would swap his horse with a fresh one, for maximum performance and delivery speed. Herodotus described the system in this way: "It is said that as many days as there are in the whole journey, so many are the men and horses that stand along the road, each horse and man at the interval of a day's journey; and these are stayed neither by snow nor rain nor heat nor darkness from accomplishing their appointed course with all speed".[5] The verse prominently features on New York's James Farley Post Office, although it has been slightly rephrased to Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.79.143.139 (talk • contribs) 22:17, 14 April 2015

The above is mostly irrelevant to this article. It might have some use in Mail, but is entirely overkill here. In any event "post" does not derive from Persian, but from the past participle of Latin ponere, and the idea of using ponies to deliver mail in the American West was certainly not inspired by ancient Arabic practice. -- Elphion (talk) 04:04, 15 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified

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Bad math (#1)?

Under "Horses", it now says that each horse was ridden for "... an average distance of 15 miles (24 km), and then were relieved. ..."Later, During his route of 80 to 100 miles (130 to 160 km), a Pony Express rider would change horses 8 to 10 times."

This doesn't add up. If each horse was ridden for 15 miles and a rider changed horses 8 to 10 times, his route would be 120 to 150 miles, not 80 to 100.Marzolian (talk) 10:44, 6 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

also, it says "stations were about 10 to 15 miles (16 to 24 km) apart", but for example from Marysville to Hollenberg it's 32 km, etc. 80.220.35.119 (talk) 16:17, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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GA Reassessment

Pony Express

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch • Watch article reassessment page • Most recent review

Result: Delisted. Femke (alt) (talk) 12:24, 20 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This is an old GA from 2010 that, unfortunately, has not been maintained over the years. This article has several outstanding maintenance tags, including numerous {{citation needed}} tags, two {{more citations needed section}} tags which have not been addressed for nearly a year, and several instances of failed verification. Thus, this article no longer meets WP:GACR criterion 2, namely that the page is verifiable with no original research. Epicgenius (talk) 15:24, 13 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Bad Math #2

Howard from NYC (talk) 07:50, 11 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, 25,000% would be $500 - crazy.

Also, “At each station, the express rider would change to a fresh horse, get a bite to eat, and would only the mail pouch called a mochila (from the Spanish for pouch or backpack) with him.” - words missing. 2600:1700:5011:D440:59FF:485:59FE:D22B (talk) 09:21, 11 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The following sentence contains bad math...

"The initial price was 25000% higher than the price of mail through the normal mail service, which was $0.02."

$1.00 is 50X $0.02, which is 5000% not 25000% (which should have been presented as "25,000%")

Q: is there something I am overlooking? inflation is not at issue, since monetary amounts mentioned all occur in the same year

Precedent elsewhere?

Did Europe or elsewhere worldwide have an equivalent system before or after the USA? Casey (talk) 18:21, 29 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]