(KNZA)--The Pony Express will ride again across the American West.

A re-run of the famed mail service will take place beginning Monday ( June 10) through June 20 by the National Pony Express Association.

Commemorative letters and personal mail will be carried by horse and rider relays from the Missouri River to the Sacramento River.  The first rider will depart from the Patee House in St. Joseph, Missouri Monday afternoon at 3:00, with the last rider riding into the Pony Express Plaza in Old Sacramento, California the afternoon of June 20.

The route will be over the Pony Express National Historic Trail.  From Missouri, the mail will travel 1,966 miles through Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and Nevada, to California.

600 riders are to take part, riding relays of 1-5 miles each.  

The re-ride honors the Central Overland California and Pikes Peak Express Company founded by Russell, Majors and Waddell, a Missouri freighting firm.  It carried letters and telegrams from April 1860 to November 1861, to prove the Central Route through Salt Lake and Placerville, passable year-round and win a proposed federal mail contract.