Pony Express and Walter Cronkite

I was just too tired last night to do the blog so will catch up today.... We headed back home in the morning yesterday from Omaha and guess what the weather was? If you said "cold, windy and rainy" you were correct.  We ran out of the rain after an hour and then it was periodic light showers the rest of the way home. St Joseph is 1 hour from my apartment so we stopped there to visit the Pony Express Museum and the Walter Cronkite Memorial.

Pony Express Museum: Of course I have heard about the Pony Express all of my life, studied it in school but didn't really remember a lot of the details. The museum was small but quite interesting and refreshed what I was taught in school many, many years ago.

This is the restored building that the first Pony Express rider left from heading west on April 3, 1860. A rider would change horses every 10-15 miles and  there would be a rider change every 75-100 miles. There was 190 stops along the route between St. Joseph, Missouri and Sacramento, Ca. The average one-way trip took 10 days. I was surprised to learn that the Pony Express only lasted about a year and was replaced with the telegraph.

A replica of the first rider leaving the station. When he rode off, a canon was fired so the ferry boat captain could be waiting at the dock down on the Missouri river which was a short distance away. The ferry would take him across the river and then the train went through Kansas a ways and then went up into Nebraska, northern Wyoming and onto to Salt Lake City before going across Nevada to Sacramento. I was surprised that the route didn't just go straight across Kansas.

Walter Cronkite Memorial: This memorial is located on the campus of Missouri Western State University in St Joseph. I have so many memories of watching Walter Cronkite tell me what was happening in the world. The most memorable are when Kennedy was shot and then when Armstrong Landed on the moon.

This is  a display that is perhaps 30 feet high with his most memorable newscast segments on it. Near by is an interactive display where you can select on of these segments and watch it on a 36" TV screen. Yes, we watched a few of them... 8-)

The other really interesting thing was a replica of his news room in New York City that he broadcast the evening news from.  It was not only a studio but also a working newsroom.

Newscaster Nancy is ready to do the evening news at Cronkite's desk as it was when he set there. On his right were several teletype machines to feed breaking news. The machines were in soundproof cabinets so the sound wouldn't be heard on the air. The map behind her is the one that was behind him on the news. Lots of memories at this museum.....

Tomorrow will be another day around  town here before we head off to Abilene, KS on Wednesday for the Eisenhower Presidential Library.