Meaning, of course, that I visited post office #12,000! That would be the gorgeous Roaring Spring, Pennsylvania post office, constructed in 1940 and home to a New Deal mural.
Let's show a map. Here's my Pennsylvania (+ New Jersey) map of post offices visited. Old school AAA map goodness. The highlighted areas are ones where I've been to all the post offices. I've been to more than 1,400 in the state in all, though there are still hundreds left to visit!
Now is as good a time to any to note that sometimes the math in these entries doesn't always quite add up. Last year my tally was 11,890 post offices. Add 302 and that should yield 12,192. So what happened? It turns out I forgot to catalog a set of post office visits in Staten Island over a decade ago, meaning I had to adjust my counts. It happens from time to time, though usually it's a smaller correction due to my realizing that I missed logging a single post office during a trip or that I counted the same post office twice (generally years apart and having forgotten I actually visited it the first time). Oops. Anyway, if you notice discrepancies in the math, that's the reason why. Fun times, eh?
This year's philatelic bounty came as part of two trips: one week-long trip to the Dakotas—86 new post offices, 2,280 miles driven and covering all post offices in roughly 1.5% of the area of the continental U.S., and one two-week trip (216 new post offices) encompassing the Post Mark Collectors Club (PMCC)'s annual convention, which was held at the National Postmark Museum in Bellevue, Ohio.
My post office counts include standard post offices as well as Contract Postal Units (CPUs), carrier annexes and mail processing facilities. I visited my first standalone S&DC (Sorting and Distribution Center) this year but I don't think I'll count it because as far as I'm aware they have no postmarking date stamp devices ... which is also my policy regarding Village Post offices (VPOs). If you work at an S&DC and have a postmarking device / date stamp with the place name on it, please get in touch; I'd love to collect it on a postcard!
As part of my Dakota explorations I visited all five CPUs in Bismarck, North Dakota. Four of them were shuttered at the end of September.
Bismarck, ND: Family Fare #3128 CPU, discontinued Sept. 30, 2025:
A postal clerk in the Youngstown area kindly informed me that the post office in Rogers, Ohio was losing its lease, and I was able to visit that P.O. on its last day of operations before suspension.
Rogers, Ohio (suspended Oct. 24, 2025), plus USPS's notice of suspension:
It took some time to locate the Community Post Office (CPO) located in the side of a couple's home in Willard, Montana, one Sunday afternoon. While there aren't many buildings in this middle of the prairie Google Maps was way off, and I had to contact a friend who'd found and photographed it 15 years prior. Regardless, when I showed up at their door Maxine and Robbie Rost were gracious with their time as they watched their nephew compete in a Montana state esports competition! (It was Rocket League.)
Sometimes (and it's is always suuuuper fun when this happens) USPS doesn't actually update the data on its website / Locator tools. I encountered one CPU that had actually closed months before I visited the husk of the store in which it resided: Indiana, Pennsylvania: Bi Lo North Plaza CPU, closed mid-2025 (and which doesn't count toward my totals). Actually, that photo is so boring I'm not going to show it here.
This said, I also visited, as always, a fair number of grand old former post office buildings. This one in East Liverpool, Ohio, bearing a 1908 cornerstone, is now the Museum of Ceramics.
By the Numbers
I visited as many as 35 post offices in one day—twice!—in 2025, and visited 30+ post offices six times this year. State by state—and territory by territory:
Pennsylvania: 152 new post offices (+16 re-visits)
Focus/Foci: Rural west/central Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh suburbs
Homer City, Pennsylvania post office, pre-Halloween. This mailman was feeling kind of blue!
Ohio: 57 post offices (+20 re-visits)
Northeast Ohio to Steubenville; Put-in-Bay and Middle Bass Island in Lake Erie
Middle Bass Island, Ohio Community Post Office (CPO), located in the rear of a house; even with a blue box and sign under a tree the road, how in the heck are you supposed to find this place??
North Dakota: 43 post offices (+8 re-visits)
All SW N.D., from Bismarck south and west
South Dakota: 32 post offices (+15 re-visits)
All NW S.D., west of the Missouri River and north of Pierre / Black Hills
Ridgeview, South Dakota post office:
Montana: 11 post offices
Far eastern MT near Baker and Glendive
West Virginia: 7 post offices
Far northern panhandle; Weirton
New York: 9 revisits
Brooklyn and Queens
Minnesota: 1 revisit
St. Paul, Minnesota: Twin Cities Air Mail Facility, as photographed from the passenger terminal at Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport, during a layover.
Counting Counties: I visited 25 new counties in 2024, for a total of 1,461 (~46.5% of U.S. counties / counties-equivalent).
Thank you to those who continue to visit and read this blog, threadbare though it's become in recent years! Have a happy and healthy 2026.
Evan
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