Beat these Records!

The best time the young Pony Express riders set was in March of 1861, when they delivered the text of President Lincoln’s inaugural speech from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, California. This trip normally took 10 days, but the boys covered those 1,966 miles in seven days and seventeen hours to bring Lincoln’s words to the far reaches of the nation. They weren’t the only ones traveling fast. What was the record for the most track laid in a single day during construction of the Transcontinental Railroad in 1869? One day in April, Chinese laborers of the Central Pacific line placed 4,037 rails and 31,000 ties while driving 120,000 spikes to complete a record 10.6 miles of track!