What's this about a Pony Express rider's skeleton?

On May 9 in the column "This Week in Arizona History," it was stated that on "May 14, 1922: 60-year-old undelivered letters were found with the skeleton of a Pony Express carrier in the cellar of an old cabin near Oatman."

The Arizona Republic cannot just drop this tasty tidbit of tantalizing information in the laps of history buffs and walk off without a word of explanation. What is the rest of the story?

Beats me.

This one turns up every few years, and I don't know where it comes from.

The Pony Express operated in 1860 and '61 until the advent of the telegraph made it obsolete. It really never came anywhere close to Arizona, running more or less across the center of the nation between Missouri and California.

Riders were recruited with such ads as this: "Wanted: Young, skinny, wiry fellows not over 18. Must be expert pony riders willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred."

So it seems highly unlikely that a Pony Express rider showed up as a skeleton with a pouch full of mail in the basement of a cabin near Oatman.

A few Pony Express riders were waylaid and killed by Indians, but most of the stuff I read said their mail pouches were eventually recovered.

Arizona did have the Butterfield Overland Mail Co., which ran between Tipton, Mo., and San Francisco. It traversed the state to Yuma, then crossed the Colorado River and went up the coast to San Francisco.

The problem was that the stage took about 24 days to complete the trip one way, while the Pony Express could do it in 10 or 12 days.

And we have the Hashknife Pony Express, a colorful lot that bring mail from Holbrook to Scottsdale every January in connection with the Parada de Sol. They're fun to see, but they are a modern creation and don't really have anything to do with the real Pony Express.

E-mail Clay at clay.thompson@arizonarepublic.com.