The photo above is of Samuel Clemens, better known as “Mark Twain” a famous author. During the time of the Pony Express, Samuel Clemens took a stage coach across the west to Virginia City. Along the way, as he looked out the stage coach window, he saw a Pony Express rider. He wasn’t a published author at the time, but it wouldn’t be long.

In what became Mark Twain’s second book, Roughing It, he wrote of his adventures and described what the West looked like in 1860 and 1861. In so doing, he unintentionally wrote much of what we know about the stations of the Pony Express during that time.

Mark Twain said of a Pony Express rider, “The pony rider was usually a little bit of a man, brimful of spirit and endurance.”

He wrote an entire chapter about the Pony Express in Roughing It.