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.

An Interesting Alternative: Post Office Express

USPS is keen on expanding its Alternative Access options no matter what, with the ultimate plan of reducing its full-time staff and brick-and-mortar infrastructure. The best Alternative Access channel USPS has is a CPU, though other options include VPOs, Office Max things, Approved Shippers, and partners (read: every large retailer) that sell stamps on consignment.

One alternative that splits the difference between diminished infrastructure and reductions in staff are Post Office Express (POE) operations, whereupon a USPS-staffed finance unit takes residence in a large supermarket operation. The store gets increased foot traffic and the Postal Service gets a prime location in a well-visited location. The option never really took hold and there are but a few of these operations in the country. The only active operations lie in the Las Vegas area and Albuquerque. This post focuses on the former.

The program was conceived and introduced by USPS Headquarters in the mid-1990s, with most POE operations opening for business in 1995 and 1996. In Las Vegas the program served to mitigate the loss of two large Contract Postal Unit contracts: a set of Hallmark franchises and Smith's Food & Drug.

The original Post Office Express locations in Las Vegas, of which there were about a dozen, appeared in Lucky Stores, a local chain of supermarkets. The chain underwent two buyouts and its operations since became Albertson's supermarkets. Several POE operations have since closed during store relocation or renovations; four POE operations in the area, all in Albertson's supermarkets, remain.

According to the fourth edition of the PMCC Post Office Directory for Nevada, there were eight POE locations in the Vegas area as of October 2005; one closed earlier that year. Address information regarding the old Lucky's POE locations bleeds through by way of the Payphone Project's collection box database for Las Vegas, which claims to have last been updated during 2007. Here are the locations that are not active today:

4420 East Bonanza Rd., 89110: "POST OFFICE EXPRESS"
6140 West Lake Mead Blvd., 89108: "POST OFFICE EXPRESS"
4801 Spring Mountain Rd., 89102: "IN FRONT OF LUCKY'S POE (INSIDE)"
2300 East Tropicana Ave., 89119: "POST OFFICE EXPRESS"

The author has visited the four active Post Office Express operations in Las Vegas, and anyone can find out more information about the facilities using USPS's Leased Facilities Report. The best part is that for these operations USPS pays nothing in rent. Okay, sometimes it pays $1 a year. Building maintenance is handled by the landlord, not by USPS itself.

Below is a photo of one such operation, POE #683 (a.k.a. Warm Springs POE). You'll observe that the postal space can be fully closed off from the rest of the store using a sliding / accordion metal barricade. A blue collection box rests outside the door. An exterior photo of the Albertson's is also shown; three of the four operations are signed by USPS Sonic Eagle logos outside.

Las Vegas: POE #683:



Here are the data for active POEs from the Nevada Leased Facilities Report:

Henderson, NV: Horizon Ridge POE (POE Henderson); 2650 W Horizon Ridge Pkwy., 89052.
    1,100 sq. ft., $0.00 rent.
Las Vegas, NV: West Cheyenne POE (POE #695); 8350 W Cheyenne Ave., 89129.
    570 sq. ft., $1.00 rent.
Las Vegas, NV: West Flamingo POE; 10140 W Flamingo Rd., 89147.
    923 sq. ft., $0.00 rent.
Las Vegas, NV: Warm Springs POE (POE #683); 7271 S Eastern Ave., 89119.
    751 sq. ft., $1.00 rent.

(USPS also leases a 110-square-foot APC-only site at another Albertson's location for $1.00 per year.)

By contrast, Las Vegas's Airport Retail Unit occupies 1,056 square feet with a rent of $21,360. Most leased facilities in the Las Vegas area are leased for $15 to $21 per square foot. Freedom of Information Act requests are fun.

The primary costs of operation for Post Office Express locations lay with staffing, and there are two concerns in this regard: 1) the hours of operation are long and (in three cases) continuous, a situation which calls for multiple employees. 2) Customer traffic fluctuates throughout the day. At the West Flamingo Post Office Express operation, the line was out the door at opening time. At POE #683, southeast of McCarran, I arrived after 5 p.m. on a Saturday afternoon, and I was definitely the only patron. At post offices with full carrier operations, there is other work a clerk could do during customer traffic lulls; not so at POE locations.

The hours of operation for Las Vegas-area POEs are extensive, and in two instances they are even open Sundays:
POE #683 and #695:
    Mon.-Fri.: 10:30am—7:00pm
    Sat.-Sun.: 11:00am—7:00pm

POE Flamingo:
    Mon.-Fri.: 11:00am—3:30pm, 4:30pm—7:00pm [6:30 on Friday]
    [Closed Sat. and Sun.]

POE Henderson:
    Mon.-Sat.: 11:00am—7:00pm
    [Closed Sunday]

Now, here are some photos!

POE Henderson:


POE #695:



The newest Post Office Express location, POE Flamingo, also houses an Automated Postal Center:



Albuquerque's three Post Office Express locations are not free of rent; in fact, the locations (at Smith's Food & Drug stores; sound familiar?) are rented for about $29 per square foot, about $21,000 to $34,000 per year.

Carson City, NV also housed a Post Office Express location by way of a Super Kmart Center store (at 3456 N. Carson St.) that was discontinued May 2003. (The POE closed Feb. 23, 2003.) One old Geocities page documents this fact. (Ah, GeoCities. Remember those days?) Declared "the busiest K-Mart Store [storewanderer] had ever seen," the location "had no other competition on its side of town other than an Albertsons and a Safeway." The store advertised its POE on its large exterior signage. The POE, storewanderer declared, "was another thing lost by North Carson upon closure of this store."

The L.A. Times noted in 1995 that this was not the only Kmart to maintain a Post Office Express; "In Fresno, Carson City and Lincoln Park near Detroit, full-service post offices are inside Super Kmart stores. Called "Post Office Express," they are open whenever the store is open, seven days a week. More will open soon in Nashville supermarkets."

It should be noted that not all locations possessing "Post Office Express" signage are a USPS-staffed locations. Occasionally such is used at a standard Contract Postal Unit, as with the Student Unit operation at UCLA. (See photo here.)

USPS's Inaccurate Annual Compliance Data: CPUs

The U.S. Postal Service provides to the Postal Regulatory Commission data regarding all parts of its operations. While there are lots of fascinating tidbits all around, my primary interest as the 'postal tourist' involves information regarding USPS's physical infrastructure. To me this includes Post Offices, classified stations and branches, carrier annexes, and mail processing facilities. I also track contract postal units (CPUs) which, even though they are not staffed by postal employees, are the closest "Alternative Access" channel USPS possesses to formal post offices. CPUs, ideally, supplement USPS's 'formal' network. Tracking them enables greater understanding of access to postal services in a community, and so it is important that accurate information be made available to the public for further analysis.

A PRC Chairman's Information Request requested that USPS provide a list of post offices suspensions, offices formally closed, data regarding all collection boxes in the country(!), identification of all Contract Postal Units (including CPOs, a subset of CPU), and identification of all active Village Post Offices. On January 17, 2013 USPS responded to each of these requests.

This is the Chairman's request (see link above):

Please provide an Excel spreadsheet including Office Name (or other appropriate identifier), Unit Type (Community Post Office (CPO) or Contract Postal Unit (CPU)), Location (City and State), and 5-digit ZIP Code for the following:
a. CPUs and CPOs in existence at the beginning of FY 2012;
b. CPUs and CPOs newly established in FY 2012;
c. CPUs and CPOs closed in FY 2012; and
d. CPUs and CPOs in existence at the end of FY 2012.

USPS responded [see page 4]:
Please see USPS Library Reference USPS-LR-FY12-45, ChIR2.3.xls.

The author has, and he concludes that the data provided by the U.S. Postal Service to the Postal Regulatory Commission regarding CPUs is incomplete and inaccurate. How do I know? Because I've visited locations around the country during FY 2012 that are completely unaccounted for by the response documentation provided.

Save The Post Office analyzed the overall data, and concluded that a net of 500 Contract Postal Units closed during FY 2012, leading to a nearly 15% reduction in contract operations. I do not believe this assessment to be correct. Rather, I'm convinced that the data provided by USPS are incomplete and otherwise misleading.

The U.S. Postal Service, in replying to a similar request for its fiscal year 2011, responded with an Excel file with three sheets: "Closed FY 2011", "Opened FY 2011", and "Open_End FY 2011". There is no reason it should not be able to create a nearly identical product for 2012. Heck, the response to "List the CPUs open at the beginning of FY 2012" should be just about identical to the "List the CPUs open at the end of FY 2011," right? Instead, USPS has responded with a one-sheet Excel file that addresses none of the questions at hand.

Las Vegas

In analyzing a 3,000-row spreadsheet it helps to check a region of entries against information you know. I found it helpful to sort the data first by state, and then by ZIP code. My first test region is the Las Vegas metropolitan area, an area in which I spent five nights and visited every active classified and contract postal operation last spring. I've made a photographic map of all these operations available. There were 21 CPUs in operation within the Las Vegas metro area (which, here, includes Las Vegas, Henderson, and North Las Vegas) at the beginning of May 2012.

(A screenshot of the map:)


My first observation about the Postal Service data (which is easier to see if you sort the spreadsheet by ZIP code) is that there are 12 duplicate entries: There are 11 gas stations in the region that were previously known as City Stop, each of which possessed a CPU. The chain was bought out by 7-11, and it's likely the CPUs have been converted to that name. In the USPS list, each operation is thus listed twice: once as a City Stop and once as a 7-11. You'll observe that the 7-11 operations occupy sequential contract numbers: 15597 to 15607. This is because they were converted at the same time. In any case, the entries:

11452 CITY STOP #7 CPU LAS VEGAS NV 89131
15606 7-11 #39599 CPU LAS VEGAS NV 89131
are the same, as are:

11468 CITY STOP #5 CPU LAS VEGAS NV 89144
15604 7-11 #39600 CPU LAS VEGAS NV 89144

... and so forth.

Another duplicate, listed with two different contract numbers, involves the Greenland Market CPU of 89146, a contract unit located at the front a large Korean supermarket. There is only one Greenland Market.

Accounting for these duplicates, USPS has accounted for 18 of the 21 CPUs within the region. Missing are:

• Mini Mart and Smoke Shop CPU: 89147
• Sun Drugs CPU: 89101; active for 35 years(?)
• Thunderbird Mail Center CPU: 89115; active for at least 15 years

All of these operations -- including, yes, all 11 then-City Stops -- have been mapped and pictured at the map link provided above, and were visited and photographed during FY 2012. And yes, all 21 were listed in the 2011 report.

Tulsa, Oklahoma

Tulsa is the parent post office of four CPUs: the East Central Mail Center CPU (74128); American Heritage Bank CPU (74132); U.S.A. Mail Center CPU (74133); and Pryority Mail CPU (74133). As a matter of fact, the latter is among the highest-grossing CPU in the entire U.S. (In some years it is the top-grossing CPU.) Yet it is not listed among the contract units active during FY 2012. Here's a photo, taken during a lull in the otherwise constant stream of customers:



The U.S.A. Mail Center CPU is a critical operation as it effectively serves as the retail unit for the Chimney Hills Carrier Annex next door. Yet it's not listed either.

Interestingly enough, the U.S.A. Mail Center CPU and American Heritage CPU had their ZIP codes mis-listed in USPS's 2011 CPU listings.

Sioux Falls, South Dakota

The largest city in one of the nation's least-populous states is rather remarkable in that it possesses, besides its main post office, one classified station and 14 CPUs. They are designated numbered stations 1 through 14. Thirteen CPUs are locations of two regional chains: Lewis Drug's and Hy-Vee. There are six of the former and seven of the latter, respectively. USPS's 2012 CPU Directory only accounts for six Hy-Vee locations, however.

Sioux Falls, SD: HyVee CPU (Station 12)

New York City

• Multiple listings: "Mr. Mailman" and "Mr. Mailman on 53rd Inc" are one and the same. Kate's Market Place in Breezy Point is listed twice despite the fact it opened this past year.
• Better Letter, the CPU I wrote about last March, is also listed twice -- despite the fact that it was forced to shut down on May 30. (The "A&L Management" listing from the Bronx -- that is the Bathgate CPU -- and Brooklyn's Rita's Dry Cleaners CPU suffered the same fate.)
• Among the absences is Fordham University's CPU (Station #37) in the Bronx.
• JW Pharmacy in Flushing, NY is not an actual CPU, though it is listed.

Long Island

• SUNY Old Westbury's CPO is absent, as is the SUNY Stony Brook CPO which closed December 2011. (If Better Letter, which was not open at the end of FY 2012, is listed, shouldn't this be as well?)
• East Hampton's The Corner Store CPU is absent.
• Fire Island's Davis Park CPO is absent.
• Fire Island's Kismet CPO is misspelled 'Kismit'.
• Depot Stationery is misspelled "Stationary" [see below]. Stationary means 'not moving', though I suppose that is a good quality for a given postal operation these days.
• The Fair Harbor CPO is proceeded by "SEAS", meaning seasonal (as in, open only during the summer); interestingly, this annotation is not applied to the other CPOs on Fire Island, for which this is also true.

There are many more errors or inconsistencies where these came from. As such I believe this response to the Chairman's Request should be remanded for further consideration.

The Postal Service has a Lot of Exes...

Here are some former postal sites I've visited of late. Two I had the pleasure of visiting yesterday afternoon in conjunction with a visit to Valley Forge, northwest of Philadelphia.

First up is a post office that was discontinued at some point within the last ten years, a branch of Phoenixville, PA: Mont Clare. Thanks to the OIC of nearby Oaks for telling me where this former site is. Now just a residence, the former postal site is apparent by the handicapped ramp.

Former Mont Clare, PA post office


Fortunately the Phoenixville post office, a stately 1923 facility, isn't far away at all.


Phoenixville, PA post office


I just knew there had to be a grand former post office in Pottstown, PA somewhere. The 1915 behemoth I found on the south side of Main Street, which is now a library, did not disappoint. The cornerstone, bearing "Secretary of the Treasury" on it, was sufficient evidence to prove this was once a P.O.

Former Pottstown, PA Main Post Office



Gotta love when former post offices are still used for civic purposes!

The present Pottstown facility, which is just down the road, is rather bland in comparison.

Pottstown, PA: present post office


Here's a map of the situation:


The Pennsburg branch post office of Red Hill was discontinued a month before I arrived there; it closed September 9, 2011. The vestiges of its signage are still apparent on the former site:


Las Vegas's Strip Station was a casualty of the old SBOC initiative, which ended with the closure of around 160 stations and branches around the country. Google Street View shows the former post office in its pre-March 2011 glory:

Las Vegas, NV: Strip Station post office


I discovered that the site, as currently stands, is less than overwhelming. Heck, it appears to be a construction zone for a new casino parking garage or something.