Print Size: 24" x 36" (Frame Size: 24" x 36")
Hollenberg Station was the largest on the 2,000 mile Pony Express circuit from St. Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento, California, and the only one to survive intact in its original location. It was built in 1857 by Gerat Hollenberg with his wife Sophia to provide basic supplies to travelers on the California-Oregon Trail, the most trafficked route to the West. It began as a single room log cabin (bottom left) and evolved into a 6-room building housing family space, a grocery and dry goods store, unofficial post office, and meal-serving tavern. When the short lived Pony Express began its 18-month existence in 1860-61, the station also offered a change of horses (in a nearby stable) and common sleeping quarters for horsemen weary from their top-speed rides of 75-100 miles per day. The building’s irregular plan and varied floor boards reveal incremental growth in a compelling abstract pattern. Each room was added to the next without formality, hallways or other organizational device yet each was determined by the size and shape of previous construction to create a rectangular whole.
