About this place
The Pony Express National Historic Trail was a cross-country mail route. Young men on horses and mules carried the nation’s priority mail from Missouri to California, from 1860 to 1861.
For a short while it was the most direct east-west communication the country had, before the transcontinental telegraph was finished. Letters crossed in ten days, which had never been done.
It was the overnight priority mail of its day. It never made a profit, and it went bankrupt.
150 years later you can follow the route across Utah’s west desert on a maintained gravel National Backcountry Byway.
There are station sites and interpretive displays along the way, and the landscape has barely changed since the riders went through.
There is a campground at Simpson Springs with twenty sites, open all year. It charges.
The facts
- Cost
- Free to camp on the open land, paid campground inside
- Roads around it
- A maintained gravel byway
- Type
- Open area. Camp anywhere within it
- Managed by
- Bureau of Land Management
Getting there
Interstate 15 to Exit 279, Lehi. SR 73 runs west from there for 25 miles, and the Pony Express Backcountry Byway turns off west.
Coordinates 40.230611, -112.184416
Open in Google Maps Agency page
What is near here
This is a good base for somewhere people travel a long way to see.
- Utah Lake Directions
- Sundance Resort Directions
- Mount Timpanogos Directions
Every distance on this page is the driving distance. A short distance can still take a long time. The road may be closed for the season, covered in snow, or washed out. Many of these roads are dirt. Plan your route before you leave home. Out here there is often no phone signal to look it up on the way.
Nearest town and supplies
- Fairfield, UT Directions
- Eagle Mountain, UT Directions
Eagle Mountain is big enough that you’d normally expect fuel and somewhere to buy food. Nobody from here has been to check, so don’t count on it if you’re running low.
Have you been here?
Fees and access change, and the records do not always keep up. If you have been, tell us what you found.
Thank you, that is recorded. It helps the next person.
Add road notes for this site
The thing we cannot get from any government record is what the drive in is actually like. If you have done it, this is the most useful thing you can leave behind. We read everything before it appears, and we print a first name with it if you give one.
Thank you. A person will read it before it goes on the page.
Where this information comes from
The description on this page is ours. The facts in it, and the fee and facility details below it, come from the Bureau of Land Management’s own records, read in August 2026.