Pony Express Home Station, Marysville

Marysville sits at a milestone in the short, legendary life of the Pony Express. A stone barn was built here in eighteen fifty nine. The following year, the freighting firm of Russell, Majors and Waddell leased it as a livery stable, and it became Home Station Number One, the first home station west of the riders' starting point at Saint Joseph, Missouri.

From April eighteen sixty to October eighteen sixty one, relays of young horsemen carried mail across nearly two thousand miles to California in about ten days, riding day and night. The telegraph soon made them obsolete, but the romance never faded. The remarkable thing about Marysville is that the original stone barn still stands on its original site, one of the few authentic Pony Express buildings left where it actually operated. It is now a small museum downtown.