GUERNSEY – The Pony Express is mounting up and getting ready to deliver Valentines.

In addition to the Ponly Express delivering Valentine’s Day cards, the “Friends of Hartville” 2022 Valentines Postal Cancellation Stamp will be available this year starting Feb. 7 – 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, Wyoming, 82215.

The cancellation can be received until March 21, 2022, upon special request. The Friends of Hartville group have 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 a.m. – 10:30 a.m. and Saturday 8 a.m. – 9:45 a.m.

A lot of kids today have heard of FedEx, but there is a delivery organization that was started in 1860 and still carries mail today. They ride from Guernsey to Hartville Saturday morning Feb. 12 and will leave the Guernsey post office at approximately 10 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 rising 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, this group has been doing this ride for the past 15 years.

“We have 25 riders,” Goulart said last year before the ride. “I think we’re expecting maybe 6 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.”

Goulart said that although their trail is in Goshen County, the Valentine ride only goes from Guernsey to Hartville. The riders do another one for the delivery of Christmas cards that goes from Guernsey to Ft. Laramie.