The 2025 Calendar of Post Offices and Places

This ninth edition of the Postlandia Calendar of Post Offices and Places is dedicated to my father, long-time science teacher Robert Kalish, who passed away in January. As of the time of this writing his 78th birthday would have been tomorrow. Dad started collecting postmarks in 1960 and visited a decent nunber of post offices himself. Here's a slide of him in front of the (long-since-discontinued) post office in Wymer, West Virginia in 1966.



The direct link to order the calendar is [calendar discontinued; link no longer active].


2025 Postlandia Calendar Cover:


With this year's calendar we've now featured over 100 post offices, spanning all 50 states (as well as Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands). I think of each month's photo and caption like a condensed blog post. So while I don't write on here anymore, I still get to research and write about a decent number of postal operations each year. I have to admit, I was close to not dedicating the effort this year. It's hard work, and November is not kind to my body in general (I'm looking at you, Daylight Saving Time). But here we are, I'm glad we're back, and let's keep going, shall we?

As always, do note that the photos in the calendar are high-resolution, unlike the compressed versions I post here.

This year's efforts included a) actually visiting a couple of the sites in question; b) contacting a post office and a nonprofit; and c) reviewing more than two dozen historic newspaper stories as well as blog posts and other websites to check fun postal facts.

California King


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 or even Sharpie 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. I'm pretty sure this is the only calendar that notes under July 26 the 1775 appointment of Benjamin Franklin as our first Postmaster General.

To B. Frank(lin) With You:


Sales of these calendars help support my continued post office explorations, which this year have included trips to the heartland, southern California, and a dozen post offices on islands in New England. 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 34,000 post office photos!

Baskett Case


Again, the link to order the 2025 Postlandia calendar directly from our publisher, Lulu, is [no longer active].

Thank you for your continued support!

Sincerely,
Evan (Postlandia)

The 2019 Calendar of Post Offices and Places

Welcome, welcome, welcome! It's that time of the year again—time for a brand-new iteration of the Postlandia Calendar of Post Offices and Places [update, 2019: product no longer available; link removed]! I'm super-excited for the 2019 edition, which features 12 all-new images of wonderful post office buildings from across the country. I've taken most of these images during the course of my travels spanning all 50 states, and I'm delighted share them with you now.

The 2019 edition takes us thousands of miles: from Hawaii to New England, Utah to Appalachia, and the Northwest to the Heartland. We'll visit a dozen new post offices large and small, urban and remote, each with a distinctive story.

The images are printed in high-resolution on high-quality paper. The dates include not only U.S. holidays but dates significant to American postal history. And, yes, you can write on it! Your ink will not bleed through to next month's organic / fair trade / hand-crafted / barrel-aged post office photo.

Postlandia Calendar cover:


With Postlandia I've always brought you the stories behind the post offices and communities of America, and here you can explore another wide-ranging cross-section of the nation. These photos take you not just from time zone to time zone, but span history as you explore photos from two centuries (from more than 100 years ago to the present).

Where else can you find the post office with ten-minute parking—only for bicycles? Or the post office with a block-long light fixture? How about the 1870 Gothic P.O. that's now a restored event space? There's an archival image of a post office that Franklin D. Roosevelt had a hand in designing, as well as some New Deal artwork. There are also great images of some of the nation's smallest post offices! And more. As always, here you don't just get photos, you get the story behind what makes them unique.

Rhode Island: the post office with its own postage stamp


Kentucky: Lost Americana


Crossroads of America: Postal Gothic

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

Dozens of calendars have already been sold so far this year, and I thank everyone for their support! (It really does make a dent in my gas money bills!)

This is the perfect gift for the special USPS employee in your life; a perfect purchase for philatelist and stamp collectors; and generally speaking, just the perfect post office calendar. The calendar is available at the secure website of the high-quality printer Lulu. Everyone I know who's purchased either the 2017 or 2018 Postlandia post office calendar has loved it!

BONUS!!

Do you love those historic 1930s post offices, more than 1,000 of which house beautiful examples of New Deal artwork? This year I'm introducing a second Lulu calendar: New Deal Legacy! It starts with a bit of postal goodness from the FDR era, but goes way beyond to highlight some of the myriad of accomplishments put forth by various New Deal agencies across the country, including: the Works Progress Administration (WPA); Public Works Administration (PWA); and Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC).

2019 New Deal Legacy Calendar cover:
The projects range from massive developments, to magnificent artwork, to minor local projects that have stood the test of time.

Michigan: Art Deco goodness


Utah: State Capitol grandeur:


The high-resolution images—which range from the 1930s to the present—include the stories that make each one image significant. They are printed on thick, high-quality paper and will hold up to all of your writing-on-your-calendar needs.

Thank you for your continued support!!
Evan

Utah CPUs: University Edition

Several university campuses in Utah maintain postal operations in the form of Contract Postal Units (CPUs). I was able to visit four such operations last November. These operations, as they are in other parts of the country, tend to reside in campus student centers and campus stores. Here's a quick tour, and a map:



Salt Lake City: University of Utah
The University of Utah, established in 1850, maintains a sizable campus east of downtown Salt Lake City. Its post office (Contract Postal Unit) is located in the University of Utah Campus Store. There is clear exterior signage (rarely a given), and the operation blends into the store with great paneling.




Orem: Utah Valley University CPU
40 minutes south of Salt Lake City is the city of Orem. It and Provo make for a sizable metro area unto themselves, so much so that Provo had (and still has!) a mail processing center. What is now Utah Valley University, in Orem, was founded in 1941 and is now the largest public college in the state. Its enrollment exceeds 33,000! The post office (CPU) for UVU is located in the Sorensen Student Center. There's no exterior signage but the CPU itself is photogenic. I was in and out quickly enough that parking in... let's just say a no-parking zone... at the entrance by the Outdoor Adventure Center wasn't an issue.



Provo: Brigham Young University CPU
Brigham Young University is a private university operated by the [Mormon] Church of Latter Day Saints. It is located just four miles southeast of UVU, and like UVU, BYU has an enrollment in excess of 33,000. BYU's Contract Postal Unit resides in the Ernest L. Wilkinson Student Center:




BYU Print and Mail operates the CPU at the Wilkinson Center, and also has an operation a half-mile north on East University Parkway. Photos of the Mail Services operation there were taken by Postlandia friend John Gallagher, and they can be found here (ext.) and here (int.).

Price: Utah State University Eastern CPU
Head from the developed regions of the Wasatch Front, which includes all the places we've seen thus far, toward the stunning vistas of Arches and Canyonlands National Parks in eastern Utah, and you're likely to take the road through Helper and Price in Utah's Carbon County. The county is so-named for its coal deposits, though the area is also a sizable producer of natural gas. Utah State University Eastern is located in Price, and maintains an enrollment of 2,000. USU Eastern's Contract Postal Unit is informally known as "Eagle Station," and it is located just inside the N 300 E [street] entrance to the Purchasing/Police building.


Bonus—Logan: Utah State University
Postlandia friend Jimmy Emerson took a photo of the CPU at the Taggart Student Center at Utah State University's primary campus in Logan, Utah, back in 2009.



See you next time!

2016 Postal Summary

Welcome to Postlandia's seventh annual year-end summary. During 2016 I visited 866 new active postal facilities across 17 states, bringing my grand total to 7,461. This represents the most new visits since 2013. As always, for the active and curious follower, here are the summaries for 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015. Woot!

Instead of driving cross-country, as I have historically done every four years, I took a handful of flights to regions of the country I wanted to explore further. These included two weeks in the high west: Albuquerque, northern New Mexico and southern Colorado; a week in Alaska (with postal layover in Seattle); a week in the Salt Lake City area / eastern Utah and western Colorado; and a week and a half in the southeast: South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. Furthermore, Postlandia friend Kelvin and I explored the northern reaches of Maine and got some great photographs and stories along the way.

This summer I finally visited several post offices accessible only by ferry: Fishers Island, NY; Prudence Island, RI; and the Sophie C Mail Boat in New Hampshire. In Alaska I visited a handful of post offices only accessible by boat or by plane! But that's another post (coming soon!).

Perhaps most significantly this blog got an overdue "re-branding". No more Going Postal; hello, Postlandia! The idea came from the title of a story published a couple of years back. We've also got a great new calendar for you as well.



As always, this year's visits included "standard" post offices, Contract Postal Units (CPUs), and carrier-only and mail processing facilities, not to mention former sites of relocated and discontinued facilities. For example:

Bangor, ME: Broadway Hardware CPU


Portsmouth, NH Processing and Distribution Facility (P&DF)


Alamosa, CO: former post office


Columbia, SC Processing and Distribution Center (P&DC)


But postal journeys weren't all the excitement for Postlandia 2016. Devin Leonard published his great book: Neither Snow Nor Rain [link: NPR story], which tells the story of the Post Office Department (now Postal Service) through the lens of many of the distinctive people and lives who made the institution what it is today. Yours truly is featured in the prologue and epilogue of the book! Devin was gracious enough to invite me to speak at a talk he gave at the New York Public Library this summer.





That's me being highly amused by someone's question.

This followed a presentation at the once-a-decade World Stamp Show at the Javits Center in New York, wherein I got to discuss some of the interesting post offices and places of the Big Apple. And postmarks!

2016 by the Numbers

I visited as many as 34 post offices in one day. State by state, counting only new, distinct active postal locations (including CPUs) for the year:

New York: 115 post offices
Focus/Foci: Modest upstate travels: Rockland, Orange, Sullivan, and Delaware County; west of Syracuse

New Mexico: 109 post offices
Northern New Mexico; Albuquerque, Santa Fe, and numerous Native reservations in NW NM

Connecticut: 91
Northern, southeastern CT; Norwich

Maine: 79
Far north, and eastern Maine; Bangor

Colorado: 71
Southern, western Colorado; Grand Junction, Durango, Pueblo

Georgia: 70
Augusta through Macon, to Thomasville

Utah: 53
Wasatch Valley: Salt Lake City, Provo; and eastern Utah: Vernal

South Carolina: 50
Columbia area; and south toward Charleston and west toward Augusta, GA

Florida: 44
Tallahassee and Orlando areas

Alaska: 43
Anchorage, Wasilla, and the Kenai Peninsula

Pennsylvania: 40
North-central, rural PA

Massachusetts: 32
East of Springfield and east of Worcester

New Jersey: 23
Northern NJ, near NY border

Rhode Island: 22
Northwest, southern RI

Washington: 12
Seattle area

New Hampshire: 11
Southeast N.H.; U.S. Sophie C., Lake Winnipesaukee

Arizona: 1
Teec Nos Pos—closest post office to the Four Corners

Milestones

I achieved post office #7,000, as well as post office #1,000 in just the state of Pennsylvania, during the same afternoon this summer (actually, just a couple of post offices apart). Actually, I've now visited at least 100 post offices in each of 22 states. This year added New Mexico, Maine, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Georgia to that roster. Connecticut now reaches the top five, with 321 different active locations visited.

Me at post office #7,000: Crosby, PA



Me at Pennsylvania post office #1,000: Hazel Hurst, PA

Counting Counties (and States)

I've now visited all 50 states, as well as more than 1,000 counties across the U.S. This map shows the most recent extent of my travels (2016 travels in light pink). There's always so much more to see!



Hope to write more for you soon!
Evan, Postlandia