Cost: Free admission all day!
The Museums Association of St. Joseph is once again hosting its annual Free Museum Day. The Pony Express Museum will showcase Pony School, a one-room schoolhouse constructed to 1860s standards. Schoolmarms will teach short lessons much like those presented to students of days gone by.
The Pony School schedule is as follows:
Schoolmarm: 10:00 am – 10:30 am, 10:30 am – 11:00 am
Handwriting: 11:00 am– 11:30 am
Games: 11:30 am – 12:00 pm
Schoolmarm: 1:00 pm – 1:30 pm, 1:30 pm – 2:00 pm
Handwriting: 2:00 pm– 2:30 pm
Games: 2:30 pm – 3:00 pm
Executive Director Cindy Daffron says “Join us at Pony School for a unique learning experience as taught by experienced schoolmarms. We’ll also teach Spencerian script, an elegant, lightweight style of cursive handwriting developed in the US by Platt Rogers Spencer in the early 1830s. It’s this style schoolmarms taught in the 1860s. This session will be followed by games popular at the time, because what would a school day be without games?!”
The Pony Express Museum is open all year, 7 days a week except major holidays. The Museum is located in the building where the Pony Express founders housed their stables. Stand in the exact spot where the first rider left St. Joseph heading west carrying mail and other important documents on April 3, 1860. Learn all about the critical role this 18-month endeavor played in our nation’s history. And how our interpretation of endeavor is critical in the Museum’s rank of third of the Top Ten Western Museums of 2026 by True West magazine in its September/October issue.
