In 1858, John Hockaday began weekly mail service by stagecoach between Independence and Salt Lake City, and John Butterfield, with a $600,000 annual appropriation from Congress, established semi-monthly mail transportation by coach and rail from St. Louis to San Francisco. On 3 April 1860, the Pony Express was launched, picking up mail arriving by train at St. Joseph and racing it westward on horseback; the system ceased in October 1861, when the Pacific Telegraph Co. began operations. The first experiment in airmail service took place at St. Louis in 1911; Charles Lindbergh was an airmail pilot on the St. Louis-Chicago route in 1926.
As of 2001, Missouri had approximately 96.6% of all state residences had telephone service.
Radio broadcasting in Missouri dates from 1921, when a station at St. Louis University began experimental programming. On Christmas Eve 1922, the first midnight Mass ever to be put on the air was broadcast from the Old Cathedral in St. Louis. The voice of a US president was heard over the air for the first time on 21 June 1923, when Warren G. Harding gave a speech in St. Louis. FM broadcasting began in Missouri during 1948. As of 2003 there were 36 major commercial AM stations and 96 major FM stations in service. Missouri's first television station, KSD-TV in St. Louis, began in 1947, with WDAF-TV in Kansas City following in 1949. As of 2003, Missouri had 25 major television stations. The St. Louis area had 1,114,370 television households, and only 56% of those received cable (one of the lowest penetration rates of all cities). Kansas City had a 65% penetration rate in 802,580 television households.
A total of 84,512 Internet domain names had been registered in Missouri by the year 2000.