Lachlan Morton is trying to ride the Pony Express route faster than anyone in history
FIle under: Cool american history, possible trivia questions
He's already passed the halfway point, but this has been so fun to follow along with.
Link to the tracker and trail journal
From EF Pro Cycling's site
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On October 5th, Lachlan Morton will set out on his next challenge: racing across the American West on one of the nation’s most fabled routes.
>Lachlan is going to try to ride the route of the Pony Express faster than the horsemen who carried mail from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, California, during the heyday of the legendary 19th-century postal service.
>He admires the courage of the young riders who signed up for that wild, high-speed horseback relay across the prairies and mountains that connect the western states.
>“The way they could get mail across the country at that speed – before there was any railroad connecting it – was revolutionary,” Lachlan said. “The idea of people traversing such massive distances just captured my imagination, especially knowing a lot of that terrain. Think of these big open spaces – huge plains, mountain ranges – and you imagine a slow transition, but with the elevation and the vegetation it's always evolving, and when you're covering big distances you get a really diverse variety of riding. It's a great canvas for adventure. It's existed there for so long, and you feel like you're participating in what the country is all about."
>The Pony Express was founded in 1860 with the promise to deliver mail across the West by horse in 10 days or less. The fastest recorded time for the 1,966-mile (3,164-kilometer) route, which crossed Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, and California, was set in 1861, when young horsemen carried Abraham Lincoln's inaugural address the distance in seven days and 17 hours, changing horses every 10 miles (16 kilometers) and riders every 75 to 100 miles (120 to 160 kilometers). They carried the message that helped persuade California to remain in the Union.