TELPAS Practice

Which sentence from the passage best supports the idea that the telegraph made the Pony Express unnecessary?

Analyze and Evaluate Information and Ideas · TELPAS Grades 6–7 reading. The correct answer, and the reasoning behind it.

Reporting category 3: make inferences, draw conclusions, and think about why the author wrote a text and how it is built.

Read the passage. Then answer the questions.

The Pony Express

In 1860, a letter sent from Missouri to California could take three weeks or more to arrive by stagecoach. California had become a state in 1850, and many thousands of people had moved there. They wanted faster news from family and friends in the East.

In April 1860, a company started a new mail service called the Pony Express. Riders on fast horses carried mail nearly 2,000 miles, from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, California. The trip took about ten days.

The secret to its speed was a relay. About every 10 to 15 miles along the trail, there was a station where a rested horse was waiting. A rider would leap off his tired horse, grab the mail, and gallop away on the fresh one in just a couple of minutes. After riding about 75 to 100 miles, he handed the mail to the next rider, who carried it on.

Riders had to be small and light so the horses could run fast. They rode day and night, in summer heat and winter snow, across deserts and over mountains.

Yet the Pony Express lasted only about a year and a half. In October 1861, workers finished the first telegraph line that crossed the country. Now a message could travel from coast to coast in minutes instead of days. There was no longer a reason to pay for mail carried on horseback, and the Pony Express shut down that same month.

Even though it did not last long, the Pony Express is still remembered as one of the boldest chapters in the history of the American West.

The question

Choose the best answer.

Which sentence from the passage best supports the idea that the telegraph made the Pony Express unnecessary?

  • "The trip took about ten days."
  • "They rode day and night, in summer heat and winter snow, across deserts and over mountains."
  • "California had become a state in 1850, and many thousands of people had moved there."
  • "Now a message could travel from coast to coast in minutes instead of days."Correct answer

Why “"Now a message could travel from coast to coast in minutes instead of days."” is correct

This asks the student to choose evidence for a claim. The telegraph made the Pony Express unnecessary because it was much faster, and the sentence about messages crossing the country "in minutes instead of days" states that directly. The other sentences are true details from the passage, but they support different ideas.

Why the other answers are wrong

  • "The trip took about ten days." — This tells how fast the Pony Express was, not why it ended.
  • "They rode day and night, in summer heat and winter snow, across deserts and over mountains." — This shows how hard the job was, not why it stopped.
  • "California had become a state in 1850, and many thousands of people had moved there." — This explains why the service was needed at the start.

Practice more of this

More reading practice for Grades 6–7, or see the TELPAS practice test for 6th and 7th grade.

This is an independent study resource. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the Texas Education Agency or the official TELPAS program. All questions here are original practice material written to match the published test design.