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Landmark 696
Site of Western Headquarters of Russell, Majors, and Waddell
(Pony Express)
601 Montgomery Street at Clay
3 April 1860 - 26 October 1861
Site of Western Headquarters of Russell, Majors, and Waddell
Click the Photo to Read the Plaque

The Pony Express

These plaques placed on the site of the western business headquarters, April 3, 1963, by the Society of California Pioneers.

National Pony Express Centennial Association
Dwight D. Eisenhower - Chairman
Waddell F. Smith - President

Site of Western Headquarters of Russell, Majors, and Waddell
Click the Photo to Read the Plaque

Pony Express

The first pony express rider to reach San Francisco on the final relay, carrying mail from St. Joseph, Missouri to California, arrived in this city Apr. 14, 1860 aboard the river str. 'Antelope.' Led by a band and several engine companies, a concourse of citizens escorted the rider, mounted on his gayly decorated pony to the office of the Alta California Telegraph Company, headquarters of the Pony Express, which stood on this spot.

The Pony Express in operation from Apr. 3, 1860 to Oct. 26, 1861.

Medallion furnished by Oregon Trail Memorial Association.
Tablet placed by Historic Landmarks Committee, Native Sons of the Golden West, 1936.

Site of Western Headquarters of Russell, Majors, and Waddell
Click the Photo to Read the Plaque
High Resolution Viewer
The Intersection of Montgomery and Clay Streets in 1859
Daily Morning Call in San Francisco: 1859
Click the Photo to Enlarge It
 
When you stand on Clay Street reading the Pony Express plaques, you are in an especially sterile block of the Financial District surrounded by undistinguished high-rise office buildings which give no sense of what this neighborhood must have been like in 1860 when it was only a few hundred feet from the wharves and from Portsmouth Plaza.

The photograph of the Daily Morning Call after the fire of 1859 gives a sense of the neighborhood as it was.

Photograph frpm the Library of Congress Historic American Buildings Survey.

 
 
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