The Butterfield mail was transferred to the central route of the pony express in the summer of 1861. For two and a half years it had run steadily along its southern route, proving the entire practicability of carrying on such a service. But its expense had been out of all proportion to its revenue. In 1859 the Postmaster-general reported that its total receipts from mails had been $27,229.94, as against a cost of $600,000. It is not unlikely that the fast service would have been dropped had not the new military necessity of 1861 forbidden any act which might loosen the bonds between the Pacific and the Atlantic states. Congress contemplated the approach of war and authorized early in 1861 the abandonment of the southern route through the confederate territory, and the transfer of the service to the line of the pony express. To secure additional safety the mails were sent by way of Davenport, Iowa, and Omaha, to Fort Kearney a few times, but Atchison became the starting-point at last, while military force was used to keep the route free from interference. The transfer worked a shortening of from five to seven days over the southern route.
In the autumn of 1861, when the overland mail and the pony express were both running at top speed along the Platte trail, the overland service reached its highest point. In October the telegraph brought an end to the express. "The Pacific to the Atlantic sends greeting," ran the first message over the new wire, "and may both oceans be dry before a foot of all the land that lies between them shall belong to any other than one united country." Probably the pony express had done its share in keeping touch between California and the Union. Certainly only its national purpose justified its existence, since it was run at a loss that brought ruin to Russell, its backer, and to Majors and Waddell, his partners.
Russell, Majors, and Waddell, with the biggest freighting business of the plains, had gone heavily into passenger and express service in 1859-1860. Russell had forced through the pony express against the wishes of his partners, carried away from practical considerations by the magnitude of the idea. The transfer of the southern overland to their route increased their business and responsibility. The future of the route steadily looked larger. "Every day," wrote the Postmaster-general, "brings intelligence of the discovery of new mines of gold and silver in the region traversed by this mail route, which gives assurance that it will not be many years before it will be protected and supported throughout the greater part of the route by a civilized population." Under the name of the Central Overland, California, and Pike's Peak Express the firm tried to keep up a struggle too great for them. "Clean out of Cash and Poor Pay" is said to have been an irreverent nickname coined by one of their drivers. As their embarrassments steadily increased, their notes were given to a rival contractor who was already beginning local routes to reach the mining camps of eastern Washington. Ben Holladay had been the power behind the company for several months before the courts gave him control of their overland stage line in 1862. The greatest names in this overland business are first Butterfield, then Russell, Majors, and Waddell, and then Ben Holladay, whose power lasted until he sold out to Wells, Fargo, and Company in 1866. Ben Holladay was the magnate of the plains during the early sixties. A hostile critic, Henry Villard, has written that he was "a genuine specimen of the successful Western pioneer of former days, illiterate, coarse, pretentious, boastful, false, and cunning." In later days he carried his speculation into railways and navigation, but already his was the name most often heard in the West. Mark Twain, who has left in "Roughing It" the best picture of life in the Far West in this decade, speaks lightly of him when he tells of a youth travelling in the Holy Land with a reverend preceptor who was impressing upon him the greatness of Moses, "'the great guide, soldier, poet, lawgiver of ancient Israel! Jack, from this spot where we stand, to Egypt, stretches a fearful desert three hundred miles in extent--and across that desert that wonderful man brought the children of Israel!--guiding them with unfailing sagacity for forty years over the sandy desolation and among the obstructing rocks and hills, and landed them at last, safe and sound, within sight of this very spot. It was a wonderful, wonderful thing to do, Jack. Think of it!"