Orphans Preferred: The Twisted Truth and Lasting Legend of the Pony Express Review

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Orphans Preferred: The Twisted Truth and Lasting Legend of the Pony Express ReviewChances are you never heard of the great nineteenth century freight-hauling firm of Russell, Majors & Waddell. You never heard the official name of the firm's most famous effort, the Central Overland California & Pike's Peak Express Company. You have certainly heard of the popular name of the endeavor: the Pony Express. You know the Pony Express, because from its beginning, it was the stuff of legend, and the legend has never stopped growing. That is the main point of _Orphans Preferred: The Twisted Truth and Lasting Legend of the Pony Express_ (Broadway Books) by Christopher Corbett. Corbett has given as good a history as can be written about the Pony Express because he has shown what difficulties there are in digging up such history. "We know that much to be true" becomes a frequent refrain in his work to emphasize how little we really know of the truth. It isn't important. The legends about the Pony Express may not be literally true, but they are real and they mean something, and Corbett's book is about them as much as it is about plain facts.
Take the title of the book, for a start. An ad that supposedly ran in newspapers all through California in 1860 sought "Young, skinny, wiry fellows, not over eighteen. Must be expert riders, willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred." The ad has been reproduced many times as part of the Pony Express's history, in such journals as _The New York Times_, but there is no documentation of any original. Such a title for the book is thus perfectly emblematic of its contents, and also ensures that the undocumented quotation will continue to be attached to the Pony Express. Such are the risks of writing fact about legend. Russell, Majors, & Waddell instituted the Pony Express in 1860 as a commercial gamble that mail could get in days from the western edge of civilization (St. Joseph, Missouri) to the western edge of the country (Sacramento, California), almost two thousand miles. The most surprising thing about _Orphans Preferred_ is that almost exactly halfway through the book, the Pony Express is disbanded. This reflects its short life; it ran for only eighteen months, overtaken by the first transcontinental telegraph. So much legend was based on such an ephemeral institution that the second half of the book examines the making and continuance of the legend. One name looms largest: Buffalo Bill Cody, who had a Pony Express performance at every show.
Buffalo Bill's representation may well have been heroic, but it must have been realistic, too. That is much more than can be said for the Pony Express in novels, and especially in movies. Corbett lists various movies through which the Pony Express rides, and could never have actually ridden due to its northern route or restricted months of operation. _The Pony Express_, made in 1953 and staring Charlton Heston, is "the best bad movie" about the service, and is "a spectacular fraud," containing "virtually no facts in its entire 101 minutes." But it is wrong to let facts get in the way of a legend; Buffalo Bill never did, and because of him, everyone still knows about the Pony Express. Corbett's entertaining book is certainly not a debunking of the myths as much as an appreciation of them.Orphans Preferred: The Twisted Truth and Lasting Legend of the Pony Express Overview

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