Whatever the obstacles of his adventure, he is met at the end by a glorious reception line in an old-timey town, people cheering and waving parasols as pony and messenger sprint to the final station. A stylized, cartoon cowboy rides atop a comically round horse, their silliness heightened by the furious pace of the pony’s tiny animated legs and the determined expression on the cowboy’s face.Īlthough the silliness of the illustrations invites us to laugh, we’re also earnestly engaged with the rider’s task of getting the mail to its destination.
The game begins with a “play” prompt embedded in the Google logo, written out in Wild West font based on the real-life advertisements used by the Pony Express. A search of the hashtag #ponyexpress on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram revealed people all over the internet sharing their high scores and their delight at the game’s illustrations. (See Minecraft, Video Games, and Objectivist Values). I was completely charmed by this game, and it’s another instance of video games becoming a common cultural medium, emerging as a mainstream art form out of its rarified audiences, such as gamers or technology geeks. The doodle was one of Google’s occasional interactive logos, meaning it was actually a short video game, and it can now be found and played in the archives, here: It was designed by Mark Ivey, Kris Hom, Brian Murray, Kevin Laughlin, Greg Capuano, and Matt Cruickshank. Google now compresses massive amounts of data and connects billions of people in order to put a world of information at our fingertips. And there was no better entity to do it: The Pony Express’s founders sought to compartmentalize and distribute a 1900 mile pilgrimage across America in order to speed up communication. But it had forever heightened expectations of speed in letter delivery, and, of course, had gained a place in the American imagination.ġ55 years have passed since that day, and there was no better celebration of the Pony Express’s memory than Google’s instantly iconic doodle last week. The Pony Express company conceded to the transcontinental telegraph in 1861, losing the government mail contract the company’s founders had sought. Ultimately, the journey of the Pony Express would continue criss-crossing the country for eighteen months, transmitting messages about the gold rush in California, Lincoln’s inauguration, and the Civil War. He was the last rider in a ten-day relay that began in St. The mail he carried had been borne at a gallop across the desert of the American West. Around midnight on April 14th, 1860, the rider on the first westbound run of the Pony Express clattered into San Francisco, California, on his horse.