Mail Delivery By Animal - Horses

Horses

Horses were a primary method of delivering mail and messages for many years in different countries around the world. Riders on horseback could take small bundles quickly, while carts pulled by horses could take large amounts of mail very long distances.

Relay rider networks were a common feature of every ancient empire. They were primarily for the exclusive use of the government or military and carried no civil correspondence as a rule. Later, post riders became popular when there was an obvious demand for the transportation of public correspondence.

The Hanseatic League had a regular mounted service as early as the year 1274 between the principal towns of the League as well as the fortified castles which protected the merchants in their commerce. On behalf of the far-flung Habsburg dynasty of The Holy Roman Empire, Franz von Taxis set up a courier network that grew to cover all of Western Europe by the middle of the 16th century. Permanent post stations were built about a day's journey apart. Elizabethan England really started using post riders in earnest, being much more open to public use despite government restrictions.

The Pony Express was a fast mail service crossing the North American continent from the Missouri River to the Pacific coast, operating from April 1860 to November 1861. Messages were carried on horseback relay across the prairies, plains, deserts, and mountains of the western United States. It briefly reduced the time for mail to travel between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts to around ten days before being replaced by the First Transcontinental Railroad and the telegraph.

Regular mail delivery is now provided by horses in limited areas where other forms of transportation are not practical. For example, some towns in mountainous parts of Sichuan and Tibet, in China, are served by horse couriers. The village of Supai, in the bottom of the Grand Canyon of Arizona, United States, is served by a regular mule train from the canyon's rim.