60th annual Hashknife Pony Express ride to kick off in Arizona this week
Feb 6, 2018, 4:41 AM
(Facebook/Original Hashknife Pony Express)
(Facebook/Original Hashknife Pony Express)
PHOENIX — The Pony Express is coming to town.
According to the Arizona Department of Transportation, riders will travel between Holbrook and the East Valley this week to reenact the Pony Express mail delivery service.
The department announced in a press release that the 60th annual Hashknife Pony Express ride will begin in Holbrook at 8 a.m. on Wednesday and finish up in Old Town Scottsdale by noon on Friday.
The riders — who are with the the Navajo County Sheriff’s Posse — are expected to travel along State Route 77 south of Holbrook to State Route 377 and State Route 277 on Wednesday. They should reach the Heber-Overgaard post office by about 11:30 a.m. that same day.
They are then expected to travel along State Route 260 to the Payson post office, where they will arrive around 4:45 p.m. that day.
The next day, the so-called Hashknife horsemen will ride along State Route 87 from Payson and reach the Fountain Hills post office at about 3 p.m. on Thursday.
On Friday, the riders will take SR 87 from Fort McDowell to Scottsdale, ending the 200-mile trip at the Museum of the West in Scottsdale.
But the riders will not be alone: The department said law enforcement officers will provide a safety escort for them.
The purpose of the journey is to hand off mail bags each mile of the relay route, just like the original Pony Express riders did in the late 1800s.
The Pony Express only operated for 19 months, but it helped reduce the time it took to relay messages between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and became the most direct means of communication until the telegraph was established.
