Postmark celebrates Pony Express reenactment

Postmark Pursuit by Scott Tiffney

To honor the 68th annual Navajo County (Arizona) Sheriff’s Posse Pony Express reenactment event, the United States Postal Service is offering a pictorial postmark illustrating a postrider inside a circular datestamp to the left of four wavy lines.

This year the Pony Express reenactment began Jan. 27 with a parade and swearing-in of the riders, followed by a Jan. 28-30 ride from Holbrook, Ariz., to Scottsdale, Ariz., by the Navajo County Sheriff’s Posse.

More than 20 volunteer riders carried first-class letters along the route, which runs from the Mogollon Rim to the Mazatzal Mountains, a distance of approximately 200 miles.

Although the real Pony Express never operated in Arizona, for 18 months (April 1860–October 1861) the short-lived mail service used relays of riders on horseback to carry mail between St. Joseph, Mo., and Sacramento, Calif., before the telegraph made the 10-day, 1,900-mile ride obsolete.

The 2026 event started with a send-off dinner on Jan. 27 at the Holbrook Fairgrounds. The first set of riders began their trek at 8 a.m. the following day (Jan. 28). The postriders then rode just under 100 miles to the Payson Event Center, arriving at 4 p.m. that afternoon. The riders saddled up again the next day (Jan. 29) and arrived at the Museum of the West in Scottsdale at noon on Jan. 30.

The annual January/February reenactment is recognized as the world’s oldest officially sanctioned Pony Express commemoration, with riders relaying mailbags and delivering roughly 20,000 letters annually.

For more information, visit the Navajo County Sheriff’s Posse Pony Express on Facebook.

To obtain the postmark, address your request to:

SCOTTSDALE Station, Postmaster, 1776 N. Scottsdale Road, Scottsdale, AZ 85257, Jan. 30.

Share information by writing to Postmark Pursuit, Box 882, Troy, OH 45373.

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