A historic city with beautiful parks and large industries, St. Joseph retains traces of the frontier settlement of the 1840s in the "original town" near the Missouri River. It was founded and named by Joseph Robidoux III, a French fur trader from St. Louis, who established his post in 1826. St. Joseph, the western terminus of the first railroad to cross the state, became the eastern terminus of the Pony Express, whose riders carried mail to and from Sacramento, California from 1860 to 1861 using relays of fast ponies. The record trip, which carried copies of President Lincoln's inaugural address, was made in seven days and 17 hours. The telegraph ended the need for the Pony Express. The Civil War disrupted the region, largely Southern in sympathy, but postwar railroad building and cattle trade restored the city.