(As always, my prior summaries can be found at these links: 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016. Okay, down to business!)
2017 was my most productive year in quite some time. I visited a hearty 1,261 new, active postal operations this year, the most of any year save 2012 (wherein I took a 17,000-mile, 1,400+ P.O. road trip that spanned 3.5 months). My grand total is now 8,722 post offices.
This year's travels included a two-week venture into New Hampshire, Vermont, and far Upstate New York; a 3,200-mile trek from the Bay Area to remote communities in the high Nevada desert; and a 6,000-mile, 641-post office road trip through the Upper Midwest, featuring Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
This year I had the pleasure of teaming up with Postlandia friend John Gallagher for a weekend of trekking through the northern Nevada desert, home to many of the most remote post offices in the mainland U.S. (For one thing, it pays to split the fuel costs out there!) I nabbed a couple of relaxing ferry rides to island post offices in the Great Lakes: La Pointe, Wisconsin, and Mackinac Island, Michigan.
And here's a quick note to the dozens of people who purchased the 2018 Postlandia calendar, and/or postcards! Your support is always greatly appreciated. This has always been a passion project, and I don't get paid a dime to do any of this.
Postlandia also has a new Instagram feed!
As always, the counts in this post include active 'standard' post offices, Contract Postal Units (CPUs), carrier annexes, and mail processing plants. They do not include former sites (e.g. historic post office buildings), places I've previously been to but revisited (say, to take a better photo), or previously discontinued operations.
San Francisco Network Distribution Center [NDC] in Richmond, CA
I visited a bewildering 40 Meijer [CPU] locations, across four Upper Midwestern states, including:
Springfield, IL: former post office
Fridley, MN: Carrier Annex
Earlier this year I documented the first-day WPA Posters stamp ceremony in Hyde Park, New York, and met Megan Brennan (again, though for the first time as Postmaster General):
2017 By the Numbers
I visited as many as 34 post offices in one day this year. State by state:New York: 212 post offices
Focus/Foci: Far northern tier; northeast New York; Seneca Falls region; I-81 southeast of Syracuse
Michigan: 177 post offices
Most of the Upper Peninsula; Traverse City to Lansing; Battle Creek
California: 134 post offices
San Francisco; Oakland and East Bay; I-80 corridor to Lake Tahoe
Indiana: 101 post offices
Indianapolis area up to Lafayette region; Fort Wayne to South Bend
Vermont: 91 post offices
Northeast Kingdom; Montpelier region; Burlington region
Pennsylvania: 72 post offices
Southwest PA (Washington region); northwest PA (south of Erie)
Ohio: 72 post offices
I-70 corridor, including Columbus and Dayton; Cleveland area
Minnesota: 62 post offices
Eastern tiers: Mississippi north to the Twin Cities, and MSP area to Duluth
Massachusetts: 60 post offices
Plymouth County; NW Boston suburbs
Wisconsin: 57 post offices
Southwest WI, La Crosse area; far northern WI
Nevada: 56 post offices
Most of the northern half of Nevada, including Reno/Sparks
Illinois: 55 post offices
Champaign-Urbana, Springfield, Decatur areas
Maine: 40 post offices
Southwest Maine, NW of Portland
New Hampshire: 24 post offices
Northern New Hampshire
Connecticut: 21 post offices
All remaining post offices, primarily NW of Hartford
Iowa: 14 post offices
Quad Cities area; Dubuque
Rhode Island: 7 post offices
All remaining [publicly accessible] post offices -- Newport area
West Virginia: 6 post offices
Wheeling
Here's the Elm Grove Station in Wheeling:
Milestones
8,000th post office: Hayward, CA: Bradford Station
This spring I finished visiting all publicly accessible post offices in the states of Connecticut and Rhode Island...
Goshen, CT:
Tiverton, RI:
Early this year I visited my 1,000th post office in New York State:
Actually completing Connecticut:
Earlier this month WNPR's Colin McEnroe Show (listen to the full episode here) invited me to speak about some post offices across Connecticut and the U.S., and I mentioned for the sake of accuracy that I'd visited all *publicly accessible* post offices in Connecticut, although I had not been able to visit the operation located on the Naval Submarine Base New London, in Groton. Thanks to a very generous listener, and U.S. Navy officers and officials at base, this week I was given a tour of the facility and allowed to complete my Connecticut postal collection. (The experience is worthy of a post unto itself.) Thank you all!!!
Here I am with the U.S. Post Office and military post office staff, in front of the post office:
Counting Counties:
I visited 95 new counties in 2017. They are shown in brown on this travel map:
Dear readers, thank you for your continued support! I'm looking forward to a great year of new post office photos and stories to share with you in 2018.
