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)

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.

2017 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! --------- Welcome to the first annual Postlandia calendar. It's a small project a few years in the making, and I hope to bring you photos and stories from a dozen new and distinctive locations every year.

Postlandia—the blog, the Facebook page, and now the calendar—is really about celebrating the connections between post offices and the communities they serve. You'll find that theme throughout this year's dozen selections, from the grand New York GPO at the heart of Manhattan; to the population-100 villags with distinctive century-old general store/P.O.s; to the massive, Spanish-style mail-sorting plant in southern California; and the P.O. on stilts along the hurricane-prone Gulf Coast. The photos are from 12 different states, ranging from Florida to Alaska; from villages population 100 to New York; and taken as far back as 1900 and up to the present. Captions detail the significance of each post office. Most are of places never before shown on this blog.

Snippets:

Postlandia Calendar Cover:


Oregon: join thousands of couples and send your wedding invitations here!


Texas: German Hill Country @ 110 years old


Ohio: housing historic American artwork


I hope you'll consider this celebration of some of America's great post offices for the postal worker, historian, or philatelist in your life. The calendar is available via Lulu [update, Sept. 2017: no longer available; new version out!] a high-quality printer-to-order. Proceeds go toward bringing you more stories from across America. Thank you for your support! Yours,
Evan @ Postlandia

CPU Adventures, I: Small Stories

The Postal Station, also known as the Hollywood CPU in Portland, Oregon, is located on the first floor of an indoor mall in eastern Portland and has been around for ages. Its clashy interior setting is one of the most photogenic the author has seen.

Portland, OR: Hollywood CPU:




The operation also offers shipping supplies and copying services. The woman at the counter was very pleasant to this postal tourist.

The Community Post Office in the southern Minnesota town of Searles is as authentic as they get. The community of Searles is located a few miles south of historic New Ulm. If you didn't think the sun could bleach the the signage in such a northern setting, look no further than Searles. The interior is cramped with a handful of P.O. Boxes and a friendly contractor who serves the community for two hours each morning. Searles's population was 171 as of the 2010 Census.

Searles, MN CPO:


Ahh, El Paso. The destination of a long journey down I-20 or I-10 at the very western tip of Texas. It's the 19th-largest and of the most isolated large cities in America; Albuquerque lies a full 270 miles north, Tuscon 310 miles west, and San Antonio 550 miles southeast. Texarkana, at the other tip of Texas? 810 miles. (El Paso is keeping its mail processing operations, in case you were wondering.)

Nestled between hills and among El Paso proper is the U.S. Army's Fort Bliss installation. A security checkpoint upon entry is a given. If you include the reserved testing grounds to the northeast, Fort Bliss occupies 1,700 square miles. The populated region of Fort Bliss occupies much less than that. The population of the facility, according to 2010 Census, exceeds 8,000.

The centennial of Fort Bliss was commemorated with a three-cent stamp in 1948.

Image source.

Fort Bliss possesses a classified [USPS-staffed; not top-secret] post office operation in Fort Bliss 'proper'. East Fort Bliss sprawls northeast, and there is one primary transportation corridor connecting the two parts of the base. While the eastern portion of the base has been expanding, it only made sense to expand postal operations there as well, which USPS did in the form of the East Fort Bliss CPU. The operation opened less than one month before I arrived in El Paso -- August 2012.

Here is a map of the situation:



Here is the 'main' Fort Bliss post office:


The CPU is located in the back of the FirstLight Federal Credit Union -- a good match. The CPU features its own staffer and a fully immersive modern wooden CARS / POS layout. It looks great.

El Paso, TX: East Fort Bliss CPU:

Taste of Salem, OR

So, before I headed off to Hawai'i for two weeks back last March, I visited a friend at Willamette College in Salem, OR and revisited Portland. Driving to Portland was also good prep for renting a car.

Salem I toured one day by bus, visiting all of its stations east of the Willamette River, all of its CPUs, and its DCU. I finished off its branches and West Salem Station while visiting 24 post offices in one day, mostly in the Portland area. So, let's see what we've got:

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Salem, OR: Pringle Park Plaza Station

It was raining the day I set out in Salem. First I visited the Pringle Park Plaza Station, which had, interesting enough, a postmark that said "Pringle Park Station" and "Pringle Plaza Station". That's the post office nearest Willamette College and the Oregon State Capital (a really cool building).

In the drizzle I set off on bus #1 to the Liberty Ave. Station. I got out and caught the same bus on its return run 10 minutes later, transferring to another line to get to the Vista Station. Another bus over to the Salem MPO, where I met a friendly woman (the former philatelic clerk) who offered to mail me back my card with the Postmaster's autograph for my collection.

Now off to the eastern Salem CPUs: Southeast Station, which I got to by walking and got some photos nearby of crews working on power lines; and the Oak Park Station (the subject of another post), next to the Oak Park Lockbox [P.O. Box] Unit, which I got to using yet another bus. The Oak Park CPU had seen another collector six months prior to myself, whom I can only assume is another member of the PMCC.

I then walked two miles to the Hollywood DCU [Detached Carrier Unit], which does indeed have its own cancel. On the way I chatted with a crew that was installing a red light camera system. They explained to me that not only does the camera take photos of your car entering and exiting the intersection from the back, but it also does so from the front, along with video cameras that monitor the driver and speed of the vehicle. There are no excuses when this thing catches you. A ticket in Beaverton, OR could cost $400, and could also entail a moving violation -- two of which negate your license.

Another bus later and I was getting drenched near the Hollywood Station, so I went in and got a sandwich at a newly decorated Subway. The clouds had not left, but diffuse afternoon light enabled some nice photography of the Oregon State Capitol and Salem's flowering cherry trees.

Like I've always said, good things and interesting adventures happen when you Go Postal.

What's in a Name: Brooklyn

The author of the blog has been busy working full-time, working more hours, rectifying incorrect policies at some unnamed regional post offices, and preparing to move to Pennsylvania for graduate school later this summer. Hence why I haven't been posting much.

For this post, several post offices I've visited around the country, named Brooklyn.
Portland, OR: Brooklyn Station

Visited March 2010. One of 40 post offices I visited in five days in Oregon before flying to Hawaii. When I was there a lawyer was buying 40 panes of the Supreme Court Justices stamps.

Brooklyn, Wisconsin

The first post office photographed on my 2008 cross-country road trip! Most likely the first post office I have ever photographed, in fact. This office was closed by the time I visited it on a Saturday.

Brooklyn, Iowa

Visited, and photographed (rather poorly, I know), October 2008.

My family has long visited the Brooklyn Museum [of Art] in New York. Brooklyn, Iowa had the Brooklyn [Historical] Museum, and featured a venerable globe's worth of flags outside. Indeed, the town bills itself as a "Community of Flags."

Brooklyn, New York: General Post Office
February 2011. It's big. 'Nuff said. Capisce?

The Invisible Post Office; Portland, OR

Add one more to the DPO files. You might notice I've made a lot of posts lately memorializing post offices that have been... lost. I make an active effort to seek them out, especially if I can find out about them in advance. Sadly, they are all too many of them. Despite the fact that there are only 36,000 post offices in the United States, compared with about 115,000 at the postal service's peak, thousands will continue to close.

Ironically, those closings will mostly occur in the communities that need them most: small rural towns and depressed urban neighborhoods.

In any case, I've always said that I consider the post office to be the embodiment of many a community. So I think an article is a fitting tribute. And besides, I've not yet 'posted' about my visits in Oregon!

DPO'd (my coined verb for 'discontinued post office'): Solomon Courthouse Station; Portland, OR. It's yet another 'Hit List' facility. Date of visit: March 2010. Last day of service: 1/28/11. See the USPS News Release here.

Why was it closed? My suspicion is that nobody knew about it. It's not that the post office was incredibly difficult to get to; it's just that nobody knows where it was or even that it existed. As this fantastic article from 2004 notes, the building chosen for this downtown Portland post office is a protected national historic landmark. Meaning? It's incredibly difficult to, say, mount any signs on the exterior of the building.

That issue was known back at the opening of the facility in 2004; yet in 2010 there was still no signage of which to speak. See for yourself:


Beautiful building, no? It would be a shame to deface it, I suppose. It seems they might have had sidewalk signage, as seen here, but I sure never came across any.

I arrived at the post office toward the end of lunch. (It was a one-man operation, meaning the post office closes for a lunch hour or two.) By the time it reopened, there were five people in the line -- myself included, for postmarks, of course.

Footsteps in the hall echoed with grandeur; the Gus J. Solomon United States Court House was a public work built in the early 1930s. A post office had resided in the Pioneer Courthouse, a few hundred yards away. That lasted for over 125 years until 2003. Solomon, too, had a previous iteration of its own post office; it was replaced by University Station in 1984; now University Station has once again absorbed its operations. Reputedly (or, according to the article above), University Station has some long lines.

Noting that photos of the Solomon Courthouse post office already appear in multiple places online, I'll publish my own here!:



Below is the facility replacing it, University Station. I arrived there just before closing on a Saturday. (Okay, technically, AFTER closing on a Saturday, so there was no line. They were friendly enough about giving me a cancel for my collection, anyway. I'm just good like that.)