A crowd of around 50 people gathered south of Gothenburg last Wednesday, near a small cedar log cabin on the 96 Ranch to witness a throwback to a simpler, yet immensely more difficult time in our nation’s history.
More than a century and a half has passed since the original Pony Express raced across what was then a wild and largely untamed land. Established in 1860, the horseback mail service lasted just 18 months, but left an indelible legacy in its wake.
At the time of the Pony Express’s inception, eastern civilization pretty much ended at the Missouri River.
California and Oregon had been welcomed to the union, but the vast expanse of territory in between was truly still the wild west, full of peril, difficult to travel, and painfully slow to carry news or mail across. With the Civil War s…