A Race to End All Races
The true exploits of horseman Francis Aubry.
By: Ron Soodalter 08/01/2007
Alexander Majors, who had witnessed that brief moment in Aubry’s legendary ride, later wrote, “This ride, in my opinion ... was the most remarkable ever made by any man. The entire distance was made without stopping to rest.... At the time he made this ride, in much of the territory he passed through he was liable to meet hostile Indians, so that his adventure was daring in more ways than one. In the first place, the man who attempted to ride 800 miles in the time he did took his life in his hands. There is perhaps not one man in a million who could have lived to finish such a journey.”
Just six years later, Majors, with his partners, William H. Russell and William B. Waddell, launched an enterprise for the fast cross-country delivery of the mail. They officially called it the Central Overland and Pike’s Peak Express Company, but no one could handle such a mouthful, and the company was simply called the Pony Express. The ad the partners placed seeking carriers read, in part, “WANTED: Young, skinny, wiry fellows.... Must be expert riders. Willing to risk death daily.”
As Alexander Majors would have been the first to acknowledge, they were describing F.X. Aubry. In the words of one historian, “Americans love a race and they love a winner, and they loved that man on the horse.”
Ron Soodalter’s Hanging Captain Gordon: The Life and Trial of an American Slave Trader is published by Atria Books.
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