Utah Pony Express Stations

A curbside monument in front of the First National Bank Building at 163 South Main Street commemorates the Great Salt Lake City Pony Express Station. A plaque, located near the entrance of the Tribune Building a few doors north of the monument, lists Utah Pony Express riders and superintendents. The Tribune Building stands at the former site of Salt Lake House, a historic hotel where many notable travelers, including Mark Twain, stayed while visiting Salt Lake City.

The availability of excellent water made Simpson Springs one of the most prominent stations in the West Desert. George Chorpenning established his second mail station at this site in 1858, which was later used by the Pony Express and the Overland Stage. A number of structures have been built and destroyed in the vicinity of Simpson Springs over the years. The current building is a replica, built in 1975 by the Future Farmers of America under the direction of the BLM.

George Chorpenning erected the station in 1858. Henry J. "Doc" Faust later purchased the land as a ranch and raised horses for the Pony Express and later military operations. Faust served as station keeper during the Pony Express era and lived on the land until 1870, when he moved to Salt Lake City and went into the livery business. As late as 1978, the stone station house and a cemetery still existed on private land. A misplaced marker also stands north of the site. 

After it stopped at the Salt Lake House, the Pony Express traversed through Murray City Park on its way to the first station south of Salt Lake City, Traders Rest/Traveler's Rest. Entering the park from State Street, the trail traveled near the Chief Wasatch statue. Travel less than 3 miles south on State Street to the location of the Traders Rest station and imagine how things have changed since 1861. 

At the time of the Pony Express, Camp Floyd provided troops for protection against Indian attacks and served to keep the trail open for the Pony Express, stage lines, and other travelers. The Pony Express Station was a small adobe building that stood several hundred feet northeast of John Carson's Inn. Though the Pony Express station has long since disappeared, the Inn still stands as the centerpiece of today's state park. The Inn has been restored and is open for visitation.

The Hanging Rock Pony Express Station (Echo Canyon), also called Halfway Station, was located near a spring about halfway down the canyon. Nothing remains of the relay station but a pony express marker post standing in a trowel-like wagon swale marks it’s approximate location. The "hanging rock" itself a small natural bridge is just around the curve to the south. The area was an immigrant campground. 

The Weber Station (Echo, UT) began as a settler’s isolated log cabin and blacksmith shop in 1854 and later served as a stage stop and Pony Express home station. A granite memorial commemorating the station (nothing remains of the building itself) is at a turnout on the right at odometer mile 11.3. The site is also marked with Summit County’s brown tour sign No. 17 and with a silver-colored Pony Express marker post.

Echo Canyon is a natural conduit through the Wasatch Mountains, used for thousands of years by wildlife and native people migrating between the Rockies and the Great Basin. Once discovered by mountain men in the early 1800s, the 24-mile passage eventually became a thoroughfare for pack trains, commercial and emigrant wagons, Forty-niner brigades, military columns, handcart processions, the Pony Express, the Overland Stage, and the transcontinental telegraph.

Broad Hallow, which drains into Dixie Hollow near the Donner-Reed campsite of August 11, provided a detour around the Dixie Hollow chokepoint. The pioneers veered northwest up Broad Hollow, turned west across a wide bench, and then dropped south again to East Canyon Creek and through today’s East Canyon State Park.