By Nancy Pope, NPM HistorianWells Fargo & Company worked to try and make the Pony Express profitable. They lowered the costs from $5 to $1 per half ounce and advertised the service in cities along the US east coast.Under the headline “The New California Express,” an April 1860 article in the Chicago Times & Tribune announced the latest innovation in speedy communication. The paper cheered the new service, noting that “whatever increases the communication between the Atlantic and Pacific States, and makes the transmission of intelligence more rapid, is a public benefit. It tends to bind these distant sections of the Union together, and to make us in every essential element one great & happy people.”
