2023 Postal Summary

Whoops! It's not the first time a year-end postal summary has come out a little late. Alas.

When you've been at this a long time it can become difficult to encounter low-lying postal fruit. Why, I finished visiting most if not all of the post offices [near me] in New York City, Long Island, north Jersey, and Connecticut a decade ago. Getting to new post offices requires effort; sometimes days of it! This year I was able to visit 418 new post offices spanning eight states, for a total of 11,401 post offices. I also revisited several dozen post offices for updated postmarks and photographs, notably in Hawaii and Massachusetts.

My 11,000th post office was Cape May, New Jersey.



Two trips accounted for most of the postal exploration this year: a ten-day trip based out of Kansas City (MO/KS/NE), wherein I visited 201 new post offices, and a ten-day, 1,913-mile trip based out of Dallas-Fort Worth (TX/OK), which resulted in 159 new post offices visited.

The 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). However, it does not include some other sites that I nonetheless documented, such as: the Fairlawn Detached Lockbox Unit, former Westboro Station (in operation from 1951 to 1968), and Material Distribution Center—and that's just Topeka, Kansas!

Former Westboro Station, Topeka, Kansas:

Scenes from 2023 postal explorations:

Hawi, Hawaii: This post office relocated next door since I last visited it in 2010


Wichita Falls, Texas main post office [interior]:


Marietta, Oklahoma: "Chicksaw Indian Family Making Pah Sho Fah," a New Deal mural by Solomon McCombs


Liberty, MO: Hy-Vee #1384 CPU

2023 by the Numbers

I visited as many as 38 post offices (33 of which were new to me) in one day this year, in northeast Kansas and southeast Nebraska. State by state—and territory by territory:

Kansas: 109 post offices
Focus/Foci: Northeast Kansas: Kansas City and suburbs through Topeka

Texas: 105 post offices
Wichita Falls; Dallas and suburbs, out to Tyler

Oklahoma: 54 post offices
Southern Oklahoma: Ardmore through Lawton

Nebraska: 48 post offices
Southeast Nebraska; Lincoln

New Jersey: 31 post offices
Southern N.J., including Cape May County

Hawaii: 26 post offices
56 total visits (just 26 new): the Big Island of Hawai'i, Kauai (all), Pearl Harbor

Massachusetts: 1 post office
14 total visits (Cape Ann), one new operation: Beverly Delivery Distribution Center

Counting Counties:
I visited 47 new counties in 2023, spanning the areas above.



Thank you for your continued support! Have a wonderful 2024.
Evan

The 2024 Calendar of Post Offices and Places

I've been visiting and documenting post offices for 15 years now. This means I'm a bit older than I used to be. Yet, it also means I still have ridiculous amounts of fun exploring various corners of the country and collecting stories along the way. I don't really share those stories on the blog anymore, but it's not to say these stories aren't worth sharing. These years I've just dedicated my time to distilling these experiences into a dozen really great photographs and captions. So now, without further ado, I present the eighth(!) annual Postlandia Calendar of Post Offices and Places.

[Edit: The calendar has been removed from public sale.] 2024 Postlandia Calendar Cover:


This year's calendar takes us from Hawaii to New England, features post offices large and small, presents some gorgeous Deco façades and details, and shares the history behind several [gorgeous] former post office sites. The photos, as always, are high-resolution (unlike the compressed versions I post here).

I spent weeks researching the stories, searching and reviewing old newspapers, checking historical society websites and National Register nomination forms, and even calling one P.O. to make sure the captions were accurate. It's hard work but it's super rewarding. Furthermore, as of this edition the Postlandia calendar has featured at least one post office from each of the 50 states! (Not to mention Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.) I might have made a color-coded map to keep track of all the featured post offices.

... I definitely made a map.

Hi, Hawaii!


Every calendar is printed to order. My publisher of choice is Lulu. They've proven reliable for as long as I've been making these calendars, and you should find that the printing and paper quality are top-notch. You can write on them with pen, Sharpie, whatever, and the pages hold up just fine.

In addition to the holidays you'll find on other calendars, you'll find historic tidbits and postal trivia. It's good stuff. It's even better for the loyal mail carrier or snail mail enthusiast in your life.

Nashvillage Square:


Sales of these calendars help support my ridiculous post office exploration endeavors, which included a 206-post office, two-week trip across three states in June and a 162-post office trip in September. Did I mention the 56 post offices I photographed this spring in Hawaii? Proceeds also support the time I continue to dedicate expanding the Post Mark Collectors Club (PMCC)'s Online Post Office Photo Collection, the freely available reference that recently surpassed 33,000 post office photos!

New England, old post office:


Thanks for checking this all out. I hope you give the calendar a shot if it's your first time encountering it, or, that you'll enjoy this year's edition if you're purchased other ones in the past.

Wishing you all a great and fulfilling holiday season!

Sincerely,
Evan (Postlandia)

Holcomb, Kansas

This is a modest entry, one that occurred to me only a year after I visited the town of Holcomb, Kansas and, somewhere along the same road trip that took me there, listened to This American Life: Our Town. If you've heard this episode you'll understand. Finney County, Kansas, has seen a sizable influx of Latino workers to this rural, stereotypically deep red pocket of a deep red state. But as KHI reports, "the Hispanic population has continued to grow steadily. Latinos make up nearly half of the total population in Finney County." Driving into Holcomb from the west I noticed a huge (perhaps 85-acre) meat processing facility owned by Tyson Fresh Meats... again, this is not commentary; if you're heard those episodes of This American Life, you'll understand why I bring this up.

What brought me to Holcomb originally was, well, two things: 1. When I'm in an area I visit all the post offices in said area; and I was in southwest Kansas to begin with (see previous post); and 2. Holcomb, specifically, I wanted to visit because I'd read Truman Capote's In Cold Blood back in 2015, as subway reading fodder. Thanks to the MTA you know you'll probably have some extra time on your hands. Anyway, I'd wanted to visit Holcomb and Garden City ever since I read the book.

So: just a map of what's going on in town. I've missed making some Postlandia maps!



Coming in to town from U.S. 50, you pass the schools on the way to the current post office, a generic 3,200-square-foot facility that's been in use since 1998. The entrance to the parking lot is smack-dab off the inside of a huge curve in the road. I recall it being slightly awkward.

Holcomb, Kansas post office


From here I headed toward the Clutter farm, which you can see takes me straight through North Main Street. I instantly picked out the building, on the east side of the road, that had previously served as the post office. But let's save that for a bit later. My primary destination was the Clutter farm. To get there you need to drive on an unpaved road: Oak Avenue, 1150 feet until its end. While the road curves north a dirt driveway continues on straight another third of a mile; the end of the driveway is the closest you can get to the home (alas, no trespassing signs)—gotta respect folks' privacy! I was able to snag a couple of photos at this point: 1, the driveway, with alternating trees; you can see the farm and house. Next, a telephoto of the house (this is why I love my 50x optical zoom lens!). For those who've read the book, I'll just leave these here for you to ponder.

Old Clutter farm / driveway:


Old Clutter house:


Back on North Main Street, I got a couple of photos of the La Popular Grocery Store (a.k.a. the old post office). I love it; it's got character, a sign of an evolving community; of renewal. First, here is the building as it appears as the grocery store in 2018. Second, here is the building back when it served as Holcomb's post office (a photo by Postlandia friend John Gallagher), taken back in 1994. Again, even without having seen that image beforehand the building was instantly recognizable as a standard post office design.

La Popular Grocery Store, 2018:


(Old) Holcomb post office, 1994:


You can notice a couple of changes to the front of the building, notably that the brick is now exposed whereas it had previously been covered. I like the new, bare appearance better. This comparison made possible thanks to the Post Mark Collectors Club (PMCC) Online Post Office Photograph Collection! It's currently up to 441 photos from Kansas.

'Til next time,
Evan

Panhandling in Oklahoma (or, Visiting Post Offices in Five States in One Day)

Using Albuquerque as a base, last January I was able to do something I hadn't even considered you could reasonably do outside the northeast United States: visit post offices in five states in one day, all while driving less than 200 miles. It's like the Four Corners on steroids! (Actually, the feat can be accomplished in less than 150 miles, but I went philatelically all-out.) Let me explain...

Cimarron County, Oklahoma is way out at the west end of the 166-mile-long, 34-mile-wide Oklahoma Panhandle. Just looking at the state I want to cook popcorn on the stove. Cimarron County makes up the western third of the region. With 1.3 people per square mile, and half the county's population residing in the seat, Boise City, the region is rather sparse.

Here is a typical landscape along Highway 325, west of Boise City.


Cimarron County is home to Oklahoma's highest point (Black Mesa) and the only community in Oklahoma that observes Mountain Time (Kenton). Google considers it so low-priority that the area hasn't been visited by Street View in nearly a decade; so if you're itching to see the latest developments—like the new interchange of U.S. 287 and U.S. 412 east of Boise City—at ground level, you're straight out of luck.

Most interesting for our purposes, however, is a bit of trivia that cannot be said for any of the 3,000+ other counties in the U.S.: Cimarron County, Oklahoma borders four other states. New Mexico lies to the west; Texas to the south; [more Oklahoma to the east;] and Colorado to the north—for 53 of the 54 miles of the county's northern border, anyway... For less than a mile the county also touches the very southwestern corner of Morton County, Kansas! Which means, it's rather possible to visit post offices in five states in a comparatively compact space, particularly out west. Here's a map of the situation:



For my drive last year I started the day in Sublette, Kansas, and ended in Raton, New Mexico. I took U.S. 56 down through Elkhart, Kansas; visited the post office in Keyes, Oklahoma; diverted north to Campo, Colorado; came back to Boise City; drove the 36 miles one way to Kenton; found my way to Felt, OK; visited the P.O. in Texline, Texas; and finally headed west through Clayton, New Mexico, toward Raton. This post will focus on the four POs in Cimarron County and the aforementioned other POs (Elkhart to Clayton).

Kansas

Elkhart: Elkhart is the seat of Morton County. This standard box of a post office has been in service since 1961.

Oklahoma: Cimarron County

Keyes: This 2,600-square-foot post office has been occupied since 1996.


Boise City: A standard design for this region of the country, in use since 1991.


Kenton: This trailer of a post office feels the most interesting because of its site-specific sign, and the wonderful background.


Felt: This cute 495-square-foot post office has been in service since 1977.

Colorado

Campo: This nicely lit post office was built in 1967.

Texas

Texline: Since 1991 the post office has been at this long'n'low structure (immediately below). Prior to that it had been at a building on E Market St., west of U.S. 87. Google Street View shows the building still had its flagpole as of 2012; as of my 2018 visit the building showed no signs of occupation.

New Mexico

Clayton: This mid-century 4,342-square-foot post office has been in service since 1965.


So, there you have it! Post offices in five (non-northeastern) states, in half a day. Hope you enjoyed!

2018 Postal Summary

It's that time of the year again... the end of it! This blog has been around since 2010, and every year I've posted a year-end summary of all the post offices I've visited that year. So, welcome to our ninth annual summary!

(As always, my prior summaries can be found at these links: 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017. Let's go!)

2018 was a comparatively modest year. I visited a hearty 565 new, active postal operations this year, my lowest new count since 2015. My grand total is now 9,287 post offices.

This year's travels included two sizable voyages out west: a weeklong jaunt beginning and ending in Albuquerque, a 2,400-mile round trip that netted 114 post offices across five states. A two-week adventure began in Phoenix and culminated at LAX, and resulted in 157 new post offices. I dedicated nearly a full day of that trip to visiting just one new office: North Rim, Arizona. (Fun fact, I was its first customer of the year!)

Thank you to the dozens of people who purchased the 2019 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 popular, growing Instagram feed. Check it out!

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. Here are some assorted photos from various operations I've visited this year:

Middlsex-Essex Processing and Distribution Center (P&DC), North Reading, Mass.


Liberal, Kansas former post office—a New Deal beaut!


Easton, PA: Lafayette College CPU


Yeso, NM former post office


I continued documenting the U.S. Postal Service's New Deal treasures as well, for example:

Northampton, PA: "Physical Changes of the Postman through the Ages", a cast stone relief by Maurice Glickman, 1939

2018 By the Numbers

I visited as many as 35 post offices in one day this year (in southern California), and post offices in as many as five states (specifically, KS, OK, CO, TX, and NM) in one day. State by state:

New York: 117 post offices
Focus/Foci: Western Hudson Valley, the Catskills

Pennsylvania: 83 post offices
Northeast corner

Arizona: 83 post offices
Eastern Phoenix area, I-40 from Kingman to Winslow, the Grand Canyon, and Flagstaff to Page

California: 50 post offices
I-15 from Baker to San Bernardino, San Bernardino Mountains, Route 91 around Anaheim

Massachusetts: 44 post offices
Western Worcester County; Salem/Beverly; Reading

Texas: 42 post offices
Western half of the northern panhandle, incl. Amarillo

New Mexico: 35 post offices
Northeast New Mexico: Clovis to Clayton

Utah: 25 post offices
Southern Utah: St. George area to Big Water

Kansas: 24 post offices
Southwest corner

New Hampshire: 24 post offices
Southeast New Hampshire

Maine: 16 post offices
Southwest Maine; Portsmouth Naval Shipyard

Oklahoma: 12 post offices
Western panhandle

Nevada: 11 post offices
I-15 corridor, excluding Las Vegas; new Vegas CPUs

New Jersey: 11 post offices
Northwest Bergen County

Rhode Island: 2 post offices
Naval Station Newport

Colorado: 1 post office
Campo

Here's the Campo, Colorado post office (southeastern-most in Colorado):

Milestones

9,000th post office: Wittmann, Arizona

Last year I finished visiting all publicly accessible post offices in Rhode Island...

Actually completing Rhode Island:

Last year 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, not only was I able to complete my Connecticut postal collection, but this year I got to visit the Naval Station post office of Newport, Rhode Island (the one P.O. in the Ocean State I had not been able to visit), as well as the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard post office in Kittery, Maine! Thank you all!!!

Here I am at the Naval Station Newport post office:



Special thanks to Navalog (the base's magazine) for highlighting my visit in its April 19 issue, and for "A Time and a Place" magazine from the Catskills for featuring my travels in their December 2018 edition!

Navalog:


A Time and a Place:


Counting Counties:
I visited 43 new counties in 2018. They are shown in dark blue on this travel map:



Dear readers, thank you for your continued support! I'm hoping to share many more new post office stories and photos with you in 2019.

The 2018 Calendar of Post Offices and Places

Please check the newest entries in this blog for the most current link to the most current Postlandia calendar! ---- It's that time of the year again—that time I somewhat shamelessly inform you of the amazing and fantastic new Postlandia Calendar of Post Offices and Places! This year's [the 2018] iteration features 12 all-new and unique images, from a dozen different states. And these are really good ones!


Cover snippet

With Postlandia I've always brought you the stories behind the post offices and communities of America, and here you can explore a wide-ranging cross-section of the nation. This year's offerings transport you across the United States: Alaska, the South, New England, the Upper Midwest, California, and the vast and empty West. These photos take you not just from time zone to time zone, but span history as you explore photos from two centuries (taken from 1900 to the present).

Where can you find a literal 'floating post office' that rises with the tides? How about a vintage Vermont general store (and post office, of course) that appears today just as it did 100 years ago? The calendar also features the 1910 New Ulm, Minnesota post office, which was so distinctive that its construction essentially forced the government to re-write its design standards. And then there's the post office on a ranch in the middle of nowhere, and I guarantee it will floor you. (This particular location took me an hour and a half to find as I drove through the high desert this summer; for you it will have definitely been worth the wait.) And there's more. Much more. As always, here you don't just get photos, you get the story behind what makes them unique.

All images in the calendar are full-page and high quality. And, with each photo, there's full text at the bottom that explains exactly what's going on. Here are peeks at just a few of the images (which have been cropped to show detail on your screen)!

Minnesota: there's no place like New Ulm


Montana: last looks at a ghost town P.O.


Vintage Vermont


Again, there's so much more where these came from. I hope you experience as much enjoyment with this calendar next year as I enjoyed piecing it all together this summer. Remember, I've trekked to thousands of post offices—across all 50 states—to document as many post offices as I can, so I bring you some of the very best, anywhere.

I really do believe this is the perfect calendar for USPS employees, a great gift for the mail carrier in your life, a perfect purchase for philatelist and stamp collectors, and generally speaking, just the perfect post office calendar. The calendar is available [Nov. 2018 edit: link removed], at the website of a high-quality printer called Lulu. The calendar even has the honor of being on the printer's Holiday Gift Guide! Again, you can find it here, and everyone I know who's purchased either the 2017 or 2018 Postlandia post office calendar has loved it.

Thanks, Lulu!

100+ Post Offices Celebrated the Eclipse with a Souvenir You Can Mail for

... And the Word from Wyoming

From Lincoln City, Oregon to McClellansville, South Carolina, post offices from—literally—coast to coast commemorated the eclipse of a lifetime last week with limited-time pictorial cancellation stamps for application to letters and postcards. Most of these post offices were in communities that experienced eclipse totality.

Post offices in more than 125 communities have special postmarks that are still available, for the 30 days beginning August 21. Idaho is best represented, with 29 post offices offering the cancellations, every single one of which was in the eclipse's path of totality (100% total eclipse by the moon). Oregon ranks second with 23 post offices, all but one of which experienced totality. (Union, Oregon, according to my sources, experienced a "mere" 99.4% sun coverage.) In Missouri and Wyoming 17 post offices have special cancels available, and Nebraska ranks next with 12. Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Kansas, and Illinois are also represented among 'totality' post offices.



A handful of other post offices, dispersed around the country, experienced the eclipse more modestly but joined in the fun. Of these, a postmark available in San Diego represents the "least eclipsed" post office to make an offering. (To be fair, it is on behalf of a science center.) Among other outliers is Union Pier, Michigan, at 86%, among the closest to the eclipse in the state's far southwestern corner (a mere 283 miles from totality). In Mississippi a postmark representing Stennis Space Center (77%) can be had by mailing to the Postmaster in Jackson (84%). And this time around, what happens in Vegas (71%) doesn't have to stay there; mail your envelopes or postcards to: Postmaster, 1001 East Sunset Road, Las Vegas, NV 89199-9998 for their commemorative cancellation.

The Postal Bulletin from Aug. 17, 2017 provides a list of [nearly all] operations offering the cancellations; link here. It includes instructions for submitting your items for cancellation as well.

About 70 post offices are offering a 'standard' pictorial cancellation of this design:



However, many different designs are available. Some of my favorites include maps, featuring the eclipse's geographic arc, that tie the event more to the place. For example, Dawson Springs, Kentucky; Herculaneum, Missouri; and Stapleton, Nebraska:



Others highlight local scenes or monuments, for example: Jefferson City, Missouri; Hyannis, Nebraska; St. Joseph, Missouri; and Gering, Nebraska:



[Note: Please excuse the image quality above. The images stem from the Postal Bulletin, which never offers a very good resolution for these.]

In Nebraska several offices opened temporary units in parallel with nature's festivities: In Beatrice the postmark was "available Aug. 21 from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Temporary Post Office at Homestead National Monument of America." In Gering: "8 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Temporary Post Office at Five Rocks Amphitheatre." Scottsbluff: "8 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Temporary Post Office at Landers Soccer Complex." And Seward: "Aug. 21 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Temporary Post Office at Junto Event Center."

The Word from Wyoming

Perhaps my favorite set of cancellations comes from Wyoming, where many participating offices made a special effort to marry the celestial with the terrestrial by including their community's particular location on the planet by way of latitude and longitude coordinates, and time and duration of totality. Simple and to the point, many of these daters resemble a post office's "standard" four-bar cancellation device—literally, as illustrated below, a date stamp with four solid bars sticking out the right side for the purpose of cancelling a stamp. For these special postmarks, the bars are replaced with four lines of text featuring specific eclipse information for the community: the time of totality (in Mountain Daylight Time); the latitude; the longitude; and the duration of totality.

Here is an illustration of four-bar cancellations in regular use, and as interpreted by way of two of these eclipse postmarks, from Lander and Powder River, Wyoming:



Curious as to how this set of designs came to be, I checked in with Corporate Communications for USPS's Western Area and Colorado/Wyoming District, which did a nice job of promoting their impressive assortment of pictorials. Here are stories they posted re: Oregon, Idaho, Nebraska, Wyoming.

They referred me to Antoinett ("Toni") Benthusen, Postmaster of Powder River, Wyoming post office (a PTPO, for those who are into that kind of thing). Powder River, located 40 miles west of Casper, has a population of "approximately 17 (not counting the dogs and cats)." The community is located on U.S. 20/26, one major route for those traveling between the Black Hills of South Dakota and the Yellowstone / Jackson Hole area.

Here is the Powder River post office, photographed in 1997 by Postlandia friend John Gallagher. (We also have another photo, taken last year, by Jimmy Emerson.)



Toni provided some insights into the pictorial design process:

"I got the idea for my design from Julie Greer, Postmaster of Upton, WY. She suggested using the four-bar dater and replacing them with the Coordinates for Powder River..." Coordinates and other eclipse information came from eclipse2017.org.

One step in the pictorial creation process is copyright management, by way of artist's release: "When I went to fill out the paperwork there was an Artist Release form which either I needed to fill out as the Artist, or have the person who created the artwork fill it out. So, I called Julie and asked her if she would sign the form as the Artist. She said no, that I was the Artist; she only gave me the idea and then I ran with it, making me the Artist. WOW was I blown away, me an Artist?! I couldn't believe it!!!!!"

At this point "other offices (7 in all) started calling me and asking if they could use my design." And they needed help by a bona fide artist. "Would I help them with the paperwork since I had already done mine, and gotten approval to use the design for my stamp? I was so honored that they wanted to use my design and that" Corporate Communications specialist "David Rupert thought enough of it to use on a release." [See links, above.] "He then asked me to create a flyer with all the [participating] offices in Wyoming, and their addresses," for distribution to their customers. Here's a snippet from the flyer featuring several of the unique designs representing the state:



Toni recounts her experience at the Powder River post office last Monday:

[W]e sat just a few feet north of the center of the path of totality. This gave us a crystal clear view of the Eclipse, and what a spectacular event it was! The 20 or so people who chose to park off the edge of the highway were ecstatic about their choice! Immediately after the event a lady from Italy, who is currently living in California, came in to mail a backpack full of extra things she didn’t want to haul along on her trip. When she saw that I was selling the Eclipse Stamps and sleeves and doing the Special Cancellation she went outside and spread the word to everyone out there who all came in and bought me out of sheets of stamps and sleeves, and then bought envelopes to collect and send. I did 160 special cancellations that one day, which for my office is Huge!

I have since restocked my office with Eclipse stamps and sleeves so anyone interested can still purchase them from me or any other offices who still have them in stock. And it’s not too late to get the special cancellation postmark until September 21, 2017. Just send your cards and/or envelopes bearing First-Class postage stamps inside another larger self-addressed stamped envelope to any Post Office who are doing the special postmark.

I was very impressed by how calm and nice everyone was during the days before and after the event! ... The business people in Casper and Riverton interviewed on TV said ... they were very pleased with the amount of customers they had. So...

THANK YOU EVERYONE FOR MAKING THIS ONE OF THE FONDEST MEMORIES IN MY LIFE!

Finally, here are three photos from the day in Powder River, courtesy Postmaster Toni: getting ready for the big day, with glasses and special shirt for the occasion; viewers in from out of town, in front of the distinctively Wyoming cowboy-signed post office; and an image of the eclipse in progress, through a pinhole projected against the blue collection box.







See USPS eclipse photos at USPS Link. Data for the Postlandia map, top, from Vox.