Today it is difficult to imagine what the invention of the telegraph meant to the development of the country. In the early 1800s it took weeks for messages to get from one side of the country to the other. The telegraph changed that. By 1860, the telegraph stretched as far west as St. Joseph, Missouri. The Pony Express took messages and mail from there to Sacramento, California in a record ten days. On this date in 1861, a telegraph message was sent from St. Louis to San Francisco, finally connecting the east coast with the west.