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FeedPSST! The Old Pony Express
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Matthew Midgett emerges on horseback from the Palm Springs Post Office with a packet of mail.
Jay Jorgensen
On the last day a person could mail a letter with a 39-cent stamp (with first-class postage rising to 41 cents), some local residents gladly paid an extra $5 to mail a letter.
No, they hadn’t spent too much time in the sun. Rather, they were reliving a colorful chapter in Old West history.
About a dozen members of the Morongo Basin Horseman’s Association rode from the downtown Palm Springs Post Office 33 miles with mailbags to the Pioneertown Post Office for a fundraising Pony Express re-enactment.
Taking inflation into account, those who paid $5 to have their letters carried by horseback and hand-canceled on May 12 actually got a bargain, since that’s no more than the cost to mail a letter when the Pony Express began in 1860.
