Sunday, December 30, 2012

2012 Postal Summary

In keeping with the 2010 and 2011 Going Postal tradition of tabulating postal experiences for the year, let's see what 2012 had to offer: This year I visited an insane 2,097 [new-to-me, active] post offices across 31 states and the District of Columbia -- or about 5.7 per day. The highlight of the year was my 102-day, 17,600-mile, 1,406-post office road trip that spanned July to October. If you'd like a general sense of where I've been, you can see my counties visited map -- counties first visited in 2012 are colored yellow:



That statistic does not include well more than 150 discontinued post offices / contract locations, nor previous sites for post offices, such as WPA offices that have been sold by USPS and consolidated into other facilities. This year I made special efforts to find those locations, photos of many of which have been presented to you on this blog. For example...

Below: Denton, Texas's former early-century post office lies across the street from its present site:
Old Denton, TX post office

Below: Cleveland's Brook Park Branch post office was discontinued as part of the 2009-2011 SBOC initiative. Photographed in October, the building is now home to The Post Office Café.
Cleveland, Ohio: discontinued Brook Park Branch post office

I also made special efforts to visit freestanding processing facilities, like the Seattle P&DC (which is way too big for one photo), partly seen here:
Seattle Processing and Distribution Center (P&DC) view

State by state, counting only distinct active postal locations:

Pennsylvania: 268 post offices
Focus/Foci: Northern Philadelphia Metro area; east-central PA.

Texas: 231.5*
Dallas-Fort Worth metro area; Austin; El Paso; Big Bend National Park
* Texarkana's Downtown Station lies square on the Texas/Arkansas border.

New Jersey: 212
West-central New Jersey and central coast

California: 167
Los Angeles and the Central Valley (e.g. Bakersfield, Merced, Sacramento)

Washington: 115
Olympia, Tacoma, central Washington (e.g. Yakima), Columbia River Gorge, Tri-Cities

Arkansas: 108.5*
Northeast (e.g. Jonesboro), northwest (Fayetteville), southwestern I-30 corridor

Oregon: 99
South central (Crater Lake), Eugene, Portland, Columbia River Gorge

Virginia: 92
Suburban D.C. (Arlington and Alexandria), I-81 corridor

North Carolina: 89
Western: Winston-Salem, Hickory, Asheville, mountains

South Dakota: 72
Central east-west corridor; Rapid City, Pierre, all of Sioux Falls

New York: 68
Southern tier; Ithaca, Binghamton

Minnesota: 67
Southwest Minnesota (New Ulm, Mankato) and Twin Cities

Nevada: 57
Las Vegas metro area. All of it.

New Hampshire: 57
Southern N.H.

Oklahoma: 57
Tulsa metro area

Montana: 43
Missoula, Helena, Billings

Arizona: 39
Tucson

Tennessee: 57
Knoxville, Cookeville, Murfreesboro

Ohio: 37
Cleveland suburbs

Vermont: 35
Connecticut River valley

New Mexico: 30
Southwestern; Las Cruces, Alamogordo

Missouri: 28
Branson area for PMCC Convention

Iowa: 25
Iowa City

Louisiana: 13
Shreveport / Bossier City

West Virginia: 12

Maryland: 11

Massachusetts: 10

Idaho: 8

District of Columbia: 7

Illinois: 7

Indiana: 2

Wyoming: 2

2012 also noted the following threshold post office visits:
#3,000: Riverside, NJ: Delanco Branch
#3,500: Timberville, VA
Timberville, VA post office

#4,000: Killeen, Texas: Harker Heights Branch
Killeen, TX: Harker Heights Branch post office

#4,500: Bingen, Washington
Bingen, WA post office

Hope everyone has a great 2013!

2 comments:

  1. Bingen, WA was # 10596 for me, last year!

    But my count for the year is far fewer than yours, at 232.

    ReplyDelete
  2. An Impressive amount of post office visited. Evan, Awesome work, as I know how much work goes into visiting each one.

    Take care,

    Post Office Freak

    ReplyDelete