The Last Ride of the Pony Express: My 2,000-Mile Horseback Journey into the Old West

Journalist Grant debuts with a thoughtful and entertaining account of his five-month trip along the length of the 19th-century overland mail route from St. Joseph, Mo., to Sacramento, Calif. Launched in 1860, the Pony Express consisted of a series of way stations spread across 2,000 miles and spaced 10 to 20 miles apart, between which horseback riders carried mail in a relay system. Retracing this route with two horses, Badger and Chicken Fry, Grant evocatively describes the Great Plains of Nebraska, the sagebrush steppe of Wyoming, the Great Basin of Utah, and other geographic landmarks, and reflects on the damage “inflicted” on the western landscape by “modernization.” He takes note of family farms abandoned in the face of industrial agriculture’s ascendancy and Las Vegas’s campaign to purchase “all the water in northern Arizona,” but also finds rewarding connections with farmers, cattlemen, amateur historians, migrant sheep herders, and others he meets along the trail. “The pioneer spirit of the West runs close to the surface of the modern landscape,” he writes. Enriched by Grant’s deep knowledge of the West, matter-of-fact prose, and colorful character sketches, this is a rewarding ride. (July)