GUERNSEY – A romantic way to carry the mail. On horseback with the Pony Express. The actual Pony Express.

Last week, bundled-up riders made the 2 and a half-hour trip from the Guernsey post office to Hartville to deliver Valentines.

From the romantic way they were delivered to the romance that surrounds the holiday, the Pony Express had it covered. Once they reached Hartville, they had trailers and trucks waiting to take them all home.

Valentines were picked up from Lingle, Torrington, Guernsey, Hartville, Wheatland and Glendo and delivered for a special federal Valentine’s postal cancellation.

The carriers began their trek to deliver the mail.

In addition to the Pony Express delivering Valentine’s Day cards, the “Friends of Hartville” 2023 Valentines Postal Cancellation Stamp will be available this year through Feb. 21 at the Hartville post office. Anyone wishing to receive the stamp can bring their Valentine’s Day cards to the post office – pre-addressed for mailing with proper postage or send them to: Valentine Station Postmaster, P.O. Box 9988, Hartville, WY, 82215.

The cancellation can be received until March 21, 2023, upon special request. The Friends of Hartville group has been designing and coordinating the cancellation stamps since 1996. In the past 25 years cards have been sent out to over 50 states and to 21 different countries. For more information, contact the Hartville post office at 307-836-2516. Post office hours are Mon-Fri 8:30-10:30 a.m. and Saturday 8-9:45 a.m.

When you think about a FedEx plane that travels across the country in two hours, it may seem like a menial thing, but the horse-mounted riders who carried the mail in the 1800s were not only pioneers risking life and limb, but had such famous riders as Buffalo Bill Cody.

The organization eventually went bankrupt within 18 months, but the legendary riders and logos are still legends today. The Pony Express was also big in Wyoming and part of the original route from Missouri to California carried riders along the Platte River and went through towns such as Fr. Laramie, through what is now Guernsey and down to Green River.

According to Stephanie Goulart, one of the Pony Express riders, she has been doing this ride for 10 years and this group has been doing the ride long before that.

“We have 25 riders,” Goulart said before the ride. “I think we’re expecting maybe 14 riders. We have collection boxes on all the post offices in Goshen and Platte County. The people will deposit their Valentines into those boxes and we collect the boxes and we stamp the letters with the stamp that says, ‘carried horseback.’ And then we gather here and throw mail on everybody and carry it from here to Hartville.”

One of the main riders is Curt Artery who is the retired postmaster from Guernsey. Some of the riders are not postal workers, however, which begs the question, how can they deliver federal mail?

“We can deliver,” said Artery. “As long as we are delivering things that are not in the mail stream directly. When we bring them to Hartville, they will get their special Hartville Valentine stamp on them along with the Pony Express stamp.”

At that point the post office in Hartville will send the Valentines out all over the world including to our men and women in the military half a world away.

According to Artery, the Pony Express is a national organization and this is the southeast organization for Wyoming. There are five other organizations throughout the state. The second week in June all the Pony Express riders gather in St. Louis and ride the Pony Express trail all the way to San Francisco.