The story of the United States Transcontinental Air Mail Service, the first of its kind in the world, is one of romanticism and danger. Through calm or storm, in light or dark, a contingent of courageous couriers relayed the public mail across three thousand miles in less than a day and a half-faster than ever before. Though the U.S. Air Mail Service began on the East Coast, some of the frontier tales of the route through the Rocky Mountains were lost. The western leg of the airmail service from Chicago to San Francisco included the Mountain Division, headquartered in Cheyenne, Wyoming. The route through Wyoming, considered the most treacherous, provided harrowing tales of the pilots who risked their lives. Authors Starley Talbott and Michael Kassel lionize these folk heroes, aviation legends and icons of western history.
