2024 Postal Summary

Welcome to yet another slightly late retrospective of postal travels. Turns out this is the 15th annual year-end postal tabulation post! Holy cow, how time flies. This year I visited 489 new post offices (and photographed 623 in all). My current grand total is 11,890 post offices across the U.S.

It's actually getting a little tricky to catalogue these travels, because even when I'm not visiting new post offices I often end up revisiting P.O.s I've been to previously and just taking new photographs. Oftentimes there are changes to the appearance of the facility (new signage, new siding, a new paint job, etc.), or an outright change in location, that result in a new image being added to the Post Mark Collectors Club (PMCC)'s Online Post Office Photo Collection. On several outings this year I ended up blending new post office visits with revisits. Thus I actually keep TWO counts: new post offices visited and total visited (including revisits). Revisits do NOT count toward my total counts of P.O.s visited. Whenever I give counts without specification it refers to new visits.

As always I continue to amass stories from wonderful places around the country, yet finding myself lacking the energy to write blog entries about them. My continued apologies for those who have followed this blog for a long time that it is a shell of its former self in that regard. The calendar has effectively absorbed my research and writing energies these past few years (I think of it as writing 12 mini-blog entries a year).

Back to business! I was able to take multiple, generally smaller trips in 2024, though three yielded considerable postal visits: a weeklong trip again beginning and ending in Kansas City (MO/KS/IA), wherein I visited 136 new post offices, and a weeklong, trip beginning and ending in Ontario, California (which in my case enabled a cheaper airfare and car rental than from LAX), which resulted in 123 new post offices visited (142 overall). The highlight of that trip was an afternoon at Sony Pictures Studios for the First Day ceremony of the release of the Alex Trebek stamp, featuring, among others, current Jeopardy! host Ken Jennings.

Jean Trebek speaking at the Alex Trebek First Day stamp ceremony, Culver City, CA:


A trip to volunteer for several days at the Post Mark Collectors Club (PMCC)'s National Postmark Museum Work Week led to my being able to fill in several gaps in my postal visits map for northeastern Ohio and northwestern Pennsylvania. I visited 171 total post offices on that trip, 116 of which were new.

Photo from re-visit of Fairmount City, PA post office (see how it looked, when it had a bit more character, in 2001 or 2011):


The Post Mark Collectors Club (PMCC)'s annual convention was held in York, Pennsylvania in August, and I photographed 58 post offices at that time (48 of which were new). Here's just a random scene from the event.



Visiting the American Philatelic Society's 2024 Great American Stamp Show in Hartford, Connecticut enabled me to sell a part of my father's stamp collection, and 12 new post office photos (though no actual new post office visits).



In September I fulfilled a longtime mission of visiting the Community Post Office (CPO) at the top of Mount Washington (see below), by way of the unique and historic Cog Railway. My lovely and patient wife put up with this as well as visits to 27 total post offices (21 new) as we both visited Acadia National Park and even a couple of post offices on nearby islands.



Late this spring I took two days to visit Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard (4 post offices and 6 P.O.s, respectively). In each instance I flew out in the morning, rented a car for a few hours, enjoyed the islands, and returned in the afternoon. (It was faster and honestly, less expensive than driving up, lodging and taking the ferries out.) I'd been to Nantucket as a child but never Martha's Vineyard / Dukes County.

Martha's Vineyard: Chilmark, Massachusetts—a.k.a. finally, I've been to every county in New England!



Finally, a unique trip to experience the April 8 eclipse took us across the border, where we experienced unbridled, glorious totality near the town in Magog, in the Eastern Townships region of southern Quebec, Canada. That trip included 49 postal visits (35 new), including six in Quebec. [Note: I do NOT include Canadian post office visits in my total visit count.]

Post Office at Pharmacie Jean Coutu #133, Magog, QC:


As always, he term post office for the purposes of this post should be interpreted broadly: it includes carrier-only facilities, freestanding mail processing facilities, and Contract Postal Units (CPUs).

By the Numbers

I visited as many as 35 post offices (32 of which were new to me) in one day in 2024, in northeast Ohio. State by state—and territory by territory:

Missouri: 128 new post offices (+4 re-visits)
Focus/Foci:Kansas City suburbs, Columbia, St. Joseph, NW corner

High Point, Missouri Community Post Office (CPO)—
Interior with operator Martha Foxworthy in March 2024, a couple of months prior to discontinuance:


California: 123 post offices (+19 re-visits)
Los Angeles, Long Beach, San Gabriel Valley

Pennsylvania: 82 post offices (+33 re-visits)
South central: York to Reading; Franklin area; rural western PA

Ohio: 79 post offices (+32 re-visits)
Northeast Ohio: Cleveland suburbs, Akron, Canton area

Vermont: 24 post offices (+5 re-visits)
Eastern and northern VT

New Hampshire: 12 post offices (+3 re-visits)
Northwestern NH

Massachusetts: 10 post offices (+3 re-visits)
Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard

Iowa: 6 post offices (+1 re-visit)
Southwest corner

Maryland: 3 post offices
Northern Harford County

Kansas: 2 post offices
Elwood and Wathena

Connecticut: 12 re-visits
[Various post offices with new locations or signage]

New York: 12 re-visits
Long Island

(Why revisit post offices on Long Island? Well, here's one reason. Here's me in front of the 1942 mural "Outdoor Sports," at the Westhampton Beach, NY post office. When I visited in 2010 USPS personnel there told me it was illegal to photograph it and basically read me the Riot Act. A local even told me it was illegal to photograph the building outside. All a load of crap. So I finally went back and took the photo when no one was around to tell me that I couldn't. A larger image, plus a close-up of the artist's signature, can be found here.)



Quebec: 6 Canadian post offices
Magog, Sherbrooke

New Jersey: 1 re-visit
Perth Amboy

Counting Counties:
I visited 20 new counties in 2024: Dukes County, MA (Martha's Vineyard) and 19 counties in central to northwestern Missouri

I'm glad folks continue to read this blog (and support it financially with the purchase of the Postlandia Calendar of Post Offices and Places)! Have a wonderful 2025.
Evan

2021 Postal Summary

It's hard to believe that this is my 12th annual summary of the post offices and places I've visited. Dang, I've been at this a while! According to my spreadsheets this year I visited 363 new post offices across five states, for a total of 10,558 post offices. I also visited four P.O.s across the border in New Brunswick, Canada (not included in the above tally). This year I also revisited many more places for updated postmarks and photographs, meaning I actually visited 469 post offices in all (including that handful in Canada).

When traveling this autumn I stuck to the heavily vaccinated Northeast. The bulk of my travels consisted of two week-long trips to New England in October and a week-and-a-half Maine excursion earlier this month. This meant I visited a whopping 203 post offices in Maine—nearly half the post offices in the entire state and the most in any state during a given year since I documented 212 in New York back in 2017.

As always, my use of the term post offices for these purposes should be taken broadly: it includes carrier-only facilities, freestanding mail processing facilities, and Contract Postal Units (CPUs).

I was thrilled to get to visit several of the further reaches in Maine, including Eustis, Jackman, Vanceboro, and Lubec, while making significant inroads with the post offices on Maine's only-accessible-by-ferry islands, of which I visited six this year (for a personal total of nine thus far). These trips can eat up a lot of time and the logistics can be daunting, though as you've seen from some of my previous posts (such as this one from last month) the results can be rather rewarding.

Scenes from 2021 postal explorations:

Visiting the post office in Vinalhaven, Maine (only accessible by ferry) in October:


Helen, a former postal employee, serving a customer on October 15—the last day of operation of the Georgia, Vermont Community Post Office (a Contract Postal Unit):


Albany, NY—the new site of the Academy Station post office under construction, prior to opening:


Part of the [modern, not New Deal] mural behind the retail counter of the Hallowell, Maine post office:


Saint Stephen, New Brunswick—Retail Post Office (RPO) at Jean Coutu, a Canadian chain of drugstores:

2021 by the Numbers

I visited as many as 30 post offices (of which 29 were new) in one day this year. State by state—and territory by territory:

Maine: 203 post offices
Focus/Foci: All over the state, but let's say there was a particular focus on the Downeast & Acadia region

Vermont: 70 post offices
Rutland and areas south; Northwest Vermont

New York: 62 post offices
Albany, with routes to the southwest and north

New Hampshire: 22 post offices
Corridor between Lebanon and Manchester, with a slew of revisits around Lake Winnipewaukee

Massachusetts: 5 post offices
Newburyport

Delaware: 1 post office
Harbeson*

* Harbeson was suspended when I first completed my run of Delaware post offices, as its former site was being redeveloped. I have now re-completed the First State with the visit to Harbeson's new site:



Counting Counties:
I visited a handful of new counties in 2021, including Schoharie and Fulton Counties in upstate New York and my remaining four counties in Maine: Franklin, Piscataquis, Hancock, and Washington.

See you next year! I appreciate all your views, shares, and support.
Evan

A Treaty of 1794, and the Canadian Post Office Accessible without a Passport

Along the far northern border of New York with Canada (Québec) lies a bit of an oddity: a Canadian post office that you, the everyday American citizen, can drive to from the U.S., mail your letters from in Canada, and re-enter the States without having a passport or passing trough Customs. This anomaly is due to a jut of land passing barely through the 45th parallel—the line that defines the border (+/- some surveying error) between U.S. and Canada in Vermont and eastern New York—causing a wee bit of Canada to be attached to the United States. Driving from this little bit of Canada to another point in Canada? Gotta pass through the U.S. first. Check out this map; you can zoom out to get a greater sense of the landscape as well:



The land, known as Saint Régis or Akwesasne, is part of the Mohawk Nation; it is a (reservation) territory that straddles both sides of the U.S.-Canada border. Our particular point of interest is located 20 minutes northeast of Massena, New York and about 75 miles southwest of Montréal. For this little spit of Canadian land, the only way in or out is through the U.S. This, combined with the 1794 Jay Treaty, which affirms that Mohawk members may pass freely across the United States-Canadian border, means that the border is not built up with Customs and Inspection infrastructure. What are you going to do, build a wall, or stop and inspect people whose houses lie on the border, who have only one means of exiting and entering a 0.2-square mile piece land in a close-knit Native community? Not a chance. The crossing is "free"; you can cross back and forth between the U.S. and Canada at this little point, and you have a choice of U.S. Post Office or Canada post office when it comes to mailing.

On the U.S. side is the Hogansburg post office, ZIP code 13655. Located just off the Akwesasne reservation and just off New York Route 37, is of a standard late-century design and is staffed by friendly personnel. It is located 2.0 miles from the Canadian border.

Hogansburg, NY post office:


Heading north you'll be hard-pressed to identify the actual border between the U.S. and Canada. The best visual identification stems from the speed limit sign seen here:



Located a few hundred feet beyond the border (and actually visible in the photo above) is the Akwesasne, QC Canadian post office (postal code: H0M 1A0). It is found in the Angus Mitchell Memorial Community Centre with an -r-e. Oh yes, you're really north of the border now!

Akwesasne, QC post office:



Here's a look back into the U.S., actually at an Akwesasne school bus stop, from just inside the Canadian border.



So there you have it. Hope you enjoyed this little slice of Canada and of trivia! (Notes: Al Jazeera provides insights into the lay of the Akwesasne land, borders, and governance here. An official, detailed map of the reservation, which also extends into Ontario, can be found here.)

North of the Border: Thunder Bay, Ontario

We haven't headed outside the States in a while. So when a friend showed me photos of the various iterations of the post office in Thunder Bay, Ontario, I couldn't resist a quick detour. There are many changes in the Canadian postal service (Canada Post / Poste Canada) these days; the price of a stamp has skyrocketed, a greater proportion of postal retail counters are being operated by private stores, and Canada Post is eliminating all home delivery—snowed-in "Community Mailboxes," anyone? (In the U.S. the term is "cluster box," though I could think of another apt word to follow "cluster" if USPS tries to put those everywhere in big cities as Canada is doing right now.)

Anyway. Here's Thunder Bay!


As you can see on the map, the closest metropolitan area to the population-100,000 Thunder Bay is Duluth, Minnesota. The closest cities in Canada (Winnipeg, Manitoba and Sault Saint Marie) are each an eight-hour drive. It's a 15-hour drive from Thunder Bay to Toronto. This means that Thunder Bay must have a federal building or two as well as a mail processing facility.

In the United States mail processing facilities go by a few names: "Processing and Distribution Center (P&DC)," "Processing and Distribution Facility (P&DF)," to name a couple. Canada's facilities go by the term "Mail Processing Plant" — MPP for short. Like some mail processing facilities in the U.S., there is retail service at the Thunder Bay MPP, which also serves as the community's main post office. This is located in the north side of the city along Harbour Expressway. Here's a photo from 2014.

Thunder Bay, Ontario: Mail Processing Plant / Main Post Office


The rest of the post offices in Thunder Bay are essentially what we'd call Contract Postal Units (CPUs) in the U.S.; they're retail counters located in stores, in this case branches of Shoppers Drug Mart, a large Canadian chain that you could think of as Canada's CVS. Here's a map from the Canada Post site showing its locations in Thunder Bay.



The Thunder Bay MPP didn't always house retail operations. For a long time after it was built in the 1970s, the facility was processing-only. Retail has only been added in very recent years. And this brings us to what makes Thunder Bay's postal history interesting: Thunder Bay was only established on Jan. 1, 1970, a merger between two other fledgling communities: Port Arthur and Fort William. The name Thunder Bay was chosen by a vote of its citizens; its name could just as easily have been Lakehead. (The Lakehead was also an option.)

Which brings us to the post offices. Both Port Arthur (north side of now-Thunder Bay) and Fort William (south side) had their own grand federal building / post offices. Postal retail operations were phased out as the counters in drug stores opened.

Old Port Arthur post office (32-3 Court Street S.):


Old Fort William post office (address unknown to GP):


Of further interest is Thunder Bay's Federal Building, at 130 Syndicate Avenue South (Port William side), which you can view on Google Street View here:



The Beaux-Arts building was designed and constructed under "the 1934 Public Works Construction Act (PWCA), which was designed to stimulate the economy during the Depression and to relieve unemployment." In other words, it could be considered a cousin of the hundreds of historic post offices constructed in the United States at that time under FDR's New Deal.

Stay warm, everyone! Thanks to Skip A., who contributed the photos in this entry.

A Tale of Two Antlers

On my 2008 cross-country road trip, I couldn't decide how best to get from Minneapolis to Yellowstone. So I took what was obviously the most straightforward route, jutting north 250 miles up to Winnipeg, crossing Manitoba and tipping into Saskatchewan (collecting some Canadian postmarks along the way -- and let me tell you, they were the FRIENDLIEST about it -- every single office), and diving south back to Bismarck, to the Black Hills of South Dakota, and eventually over to Yellowstone.

My AAA/CAA map showed me a cute little pairing -- a town in Saskatchewan and a town (60 miles south) in North Dakota called Antler. So, I stopped at both and got each postmark.

Here's a map:

View Larger
The Antler, SK office was in the back of a woman's house, and had no signage except for hours in the window. It was fantastic!

As all the roads in Saskatchewan were gravel, I headed back into Manitoba for the crossover back to the States. After all, it was the middle of nowhere, how long could it take to get back into the country?

As it turns out, A LONG TIME. Apparently it's uncommon to see solo 21-year-old males from New York City crossing back into the country in the middle of absolute nowhere (this is what it looks like from the Manitoba side -- note how Google Street View turns off near the security-sensitive border crossing), and so they took the liberty of inspecting every single item in my car over 45 minutes. To their credit, they packed my trunk more nicely than I'd had it prior!

It's a good thing they shut my car engine off, or it would've run out of gas. (It was more expensive in Canada, so I saved up to buy back in the States.) Finally, a couple of miles down the road was the town of Antler, ND -- population 55 (and gas $3.99⁹). It featured a Standard Oil gas station and, of course, the Antler post office. Shannon, the Officer-in-Charge, was getting promoted to Postmaster the next day, and to celebrate I took her photo in front of the office. Here's a photo I took from the gas station (with the PO in the background):