Overview
The Pony Express National Museum is
located in the very building where it all began in 1860,
right here in St. Joseph, Missouri. A couple of
entrepreneurial men started an express mail service from
east to west that, while short lived, became legendary.
Adventure Journal
Entry Date: May 31, 2014
Continuing this trip's theme of western exploration and
settlement, we opted to visit the Pony Express museum in St.
Joseph, Missouri. We ate a fast lunch in the motorhome
between the morning stop (Frontier Trails Museum in
Independence) and this one. Everyone knows the basic
story of the Pony Express, but this museum really tells
the entire story graphically.
As soon as we arrived, the kids got their National
Parks Passport stamped in the gift shop. We paid a
reasonable entrance fee and began our self guied tour.
The Pony Express National Museum is much more child
friendly than the
Frontier Trails Museum we'd visited earlier in the
day. The tour of the museum leads visitors through the
origins of the Pony Express, and there are lots of
life-size models and exhibits to make it enjoyable and
believable. Rebecca has been working on some videos to
enhance the local school systems curriculum, so we shot
a little video along with taking pictures during this
visit. The kids were so excited by the end of the tour,
they insisted on purchasing mementos. The gift shop
provided the required resources.
Across the street from the museum is a
park area with several historic markers, and the one
item that put a final end to the Pony Express, a steam
engine. Very cool! From here we headed north toward
Omaha and what would be a very challenging third day.
