The 2022 Calendar of Post Offices and Places

[Note: Direct purchase link: here.]

Well! I cannot believe this year is almost over. Postally speaking it hasn't been incredibly productive, though I still have plenty of stories to share. It has been tough to feel motivated since I've been unable to travel and experience many places first-hand; BUT, I have gotten a couple of posts out lately and I do hope that productivity continues. And perhaps most importantly, of course, there's the sixth annual Postlandia Calendar of Post Offices and Places!

Every month of the calendar features a photo and caption of a photogenic and/or historically significant post office. The P.O.s featured come in all manner of shapes, sizes, and—I kid you not—colors. It can take quite a bit of research (particularly old newspaper articles) to get to the bottom of some of their stories!

This year's calendar [← direct link to order] takes us from Appalachia to the Pacific Northwest, New England, California, and many places in between. We've got a post office surrounded with wagon wheels; a pink castle; and one of my absolute favorite post offices, in Pennsylvania (see below). We also visit what's known as the smallest post office in America: Ochopee, Florida, and I'll show it to you in a way you probably haven't seen it before.

Writing this as I usually do right around/during Thanksgiving, please allow me to publicly appreciate everyone who supports this crazy little endeavor of mine by purchasing a calendar. It both motivates to keep going and literally helps me keep going in the form of gas money! I might drive 2,000 miles over the course of a week as I visit 150 post offices on the road. It adds up!

2022 Postlandia Calendar Cover: Greenville, PA post office


I first wrote about Greenville eleven years ago, but have revisited the post office both physically (for better photos) and in terms of research. I even mentioned it on NPR back in 2011 as perhaps my favorite post office of all! I absolutely love this building and I hope you will too. More 2022 calendar highlights include:

California: The Castle


South Carolina: Take it for Granite


New York: Something Blue


In addition to (U.S.) holiday designations the calendar features notes about interesting dates in U.S. postal history. I've gotten feedback from several people saying they find that detail really cool.

Everyone I know who's gotten the Postlandia calendar in the past has enjoyed it. It's a fantastic gift for philatelists, people who love exploring off the beaten path, and current or former U.S. Postal Service employees! I've been using the printer Lulu for a long time and they always churn out consistent, high-quality calendars. The paper is thick, the colors come out great, the images are nice and high-resolution (far higher than I post online), and it easily holds up to writing in pen or Sharpie.

(For the sake of reference, here are the links to 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021 calendar write-ups.)

One fun thing I like to do, when sending out orders from family or friends, is wallpaper the heck out of the envelope with loads of cool old stamps. You can find a handful of examples here, here, and here (← definitely worth the look)!

Again, here is the link to ordering the calendar online. Thank you everybody for reading, liking posts, commenting, sharing, and for your support. Here's hoping to a happy and healthful 2022! —Evan

Postal Tour: Wheeling, West Virginia

Take I-70 from Pennsylvania toward Ohio and you'll pass through West Virginia. Though not for long—you'll be in and out in a mere 14.2 miles, a blink of an Interstate eye. You'll have driven through what's known as the Northern Panhandle of West Virginia, a 63-mile spit of land that hugs the western end of Pennsylvania out to the Ohio River. The Northern Panhandle consists of four counties, collectively housing 132,000 people. The largest population center here is the city of Wheeling, which historically straddles the Ohio. There are large hills that bound the city center to the east, though that has't stopped other communities from sprouting in other comparative lowlands to the east.

Let's have a look at some maps! Below, a map showing Wheeling in West Virginia, and a satellite overview of the Wheeling area.





Wheeling developed during the 19th century as an important stop in a multimodal transportation hub. In addition to hugging the Ohio River, Wheeling lay on the route of the National Road and the all-important B&O Railroad. As with so many Rust Belt communities, Wheeling has had to undergo economic renewal following the depletion of local manufacturing.

The city has a couple of stunning historic federal buildings and, until recently, was a mail processing hub. Here's the present postal layout, excluding one up-river site that I did not get to photograph last summer.



Wheeling houses an extremely early federal building dating back to the pre-Civil War era. Now West Virginia Independence Hall, this 1859 construction served as a U.S. custom house, courthouse, and post office. It is also the spot from which the western counties of Virginia would secede and form, well, West Virginia in 1863. (An alternative name for the state under consideration was Kanawha.) Upon completion of a new federal building in 1907, this building was sold to private interests and subsequently expanded. Most of the modifications to the original structure were reversed after the State purchased the structure as part of the West Virginia centennial commemoration. Thus, the building better reflects its original mid-19th-century appearance now than it did a century ago.

West Virginia Independence Hall can be found facing Market Street, at the northeast corner of Market St. and 16th St.



The Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse on the west side of Chapline Street, between 12th and 11th Streets, was built before the advent of what we might now call traditional federal building cornerstones. You can, however, see the date of construction (1905: in Roman numerals, MCMV) above the building's front entrance. The building has been expanded multiple times, including during the Great Depression, and most recently in 2002-4. Inside, most postal operations have been relocated, but retail operations and banks of P.O. Boxes are still present on the first floor.

Here are three photos: first, from the southeast, looking at the original construction; second, directly across from the original construction / main entrance (with date carved in stone above the front door); and third, toward the 1937-8 and modern 2002-4 additions.





In 1966 a new postal facility was built south of Wheeling Creek, about 0.9 miles south of the Federal Building. The building housed retail and delivery operations, and for decades mail processing operations as well. Wheeling Processing and Distribution Facility (P&DF) operations were relocated to Pittsburgh in 2010, a 60-mile drive away.



A few miles up the road from the main post office is a station in Elm Grove (which formerly had its own independent post office). Here's a photo; this post office site has been in operation since 1986.



(Additionally, there is another station, not mapped, 3.8 miles up the road: Warwood Station, that is under the jurisdiction of the Wheeling postmaster. Hopefully I'll get to visit that the next time I'm in the area.)

Hope you enjoyed the tour! And, for the record, Postlandia's 300th post!

2017 Postal Summary

Wow, I've been at this a while now. 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 eighth annual summary!

(As always, my prior summaries can be found at these links: 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016. Okay, down to business!)

2017 was my most productive year in quite some time. I visited a hearty 1,261 new, active postal operations this year, the most of any year save 2012 (wherein I took a 17,000-mile, 1,400+ P.O. road trip that spanned 3.5 months). My grand total is now 8,722 post offices.

This year's travels included a two-week venture into New Hampshire, Vermont, and far Upstate New York; a 3,200-mile trek from the Bay Area to remote communities in the high Nevada desert; and a 6,000-mile, 641-post office road trip through the Upper Midwest, featuring Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

This year I had the pleasure of teaming up with Postlandia friend John Gallagher for a weekend of trekking through the northern Nevada desert, home to many of the most remote post offices in the mainland U.S. (For one thing, it pays to split the fuel costs out there!) I nabbed a couple of relaxing ferry rides to island post offices in the Great Lakes: La Pointe, Wisconsin, and Mackinac Island, Michigan.

And here's a quick note to the dozens of people who purchased the 2018 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 new Instagram feed!

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.

San Francisco Network Distribution Center [NDC] in Richmond, CA


I visited a bewildering 40 Meijer [CPU] locations, across four Upper Midwestern states, including:


Springfield, IL: former post office


Fridley, MN: Carrier Annex


Earlier this year I documented the first-day WPA Posters stamp ceremony in Hyde Park, New York, and met Megan Brennan (again, though for the first time as Postmaster General):

2017 By the Numbers

I visited as many as 34 post offices in one day this year. State by state:

New York: 212 post offices
Focus/Foci: Far northern tier; northeast New York; Seneca Falls region; I-81 southeast of Syracuse

Michigan: 177 post offices
Most of the Upper Peninsula; Traverse City to Lansing; Battle Creek

California: 134 post offices
San Francisco; Oakland and East Bay; I-80 corridor to Lake Tahoe

Indiana: 101 post offices
Indianapolis area up to Lafayette region; Fort Wayne to South Bend

Vermont: 91 post offices
Northeast Kingdom; Montpelier region; Burlington region

Pennsylvania: 72 post offices
Southwest PA (Washington region); northwest PA (south of Erie)

Ohio: 72 post offices
I-70 corridor, including Columbus and Dayton; Cleveland area

Minnesota: 62 post offices
Eastern tiers: Mississippi north to the Twin Cities, and MSP area to Duluth

Massachusetts: 60 post offices
Plymouth County; NW Boston suburbs

Wisconsin: 57 post offices
Southwest WI, La Crosse area; far northern WI

Nevada: 56 post offices
Most of the northern half of Nevada, including Reno/Sparks

Illinois: 55 post offices
Champaign-Urbana, Springfield, Decatur areas

Maine: 40 post offices
Southwest Maine, NW of Portland

New Hampshire: 24 post offices
Northern New Hampshire

Connecticut: 21 post offices
All remaining post offices, primarily NW of Hartford

Iowa: 14 post offices
Quad Cities area; Dubuque

Rhode Island: 7 post offices
All remaining [publicly accessible] post offices -- Newport area

West Virginia: 6 post offices
Wheeling

Here's the Elm Grove Station in Wheeling:

Milestones

8,000th post office: Hayward, CA: Bradford Station

This spring I finished visiting all publicly accessible post offices in the states of Connecticut and Rhode Island...

Goshen, CT:


Tiverton, RI:


Early this year I visited my 1,000th post office in New York State:

Actually completing Connecticut:

Earlier this month 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, this week I was given a tour of the facility and allowed to complete my Connecticut postal collection. (The experience is worthy of a post unto itself.) Thank you all!!!

Here I am with the U.S. Post Office and military post office staff, in front of the post office:



Counting Counties:
I visited 95 new counties in 2017. They are shown in brown on this travel map:



Dear readers, thank you for your continued support! I'm looking forward to a great year of new post office photos and stories to share with you in 2018.

Stamp Issue: New River Gorge Bridge

(Click for larger view. Copyright USPS, of course.)

On April 11, USPS introduces a new Priority Mail stamp commemorating the New River Gorge Bridge in rural West Virginia. If it weren't for the recent completion of the Mike O'Callaghan – Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge (that bypasses the Hoover Dam connecting Nevada and Arizona), this would still be the highest vehicular bridge in the hemisphere. (It crosses at 876 feet above gorge level.)

I came across the site while randomly exploring rural West Virginia (... for its many small post offices) during my first cross-country road trip in 2008. How could one resist stopping and taking in the sights when the sign says "Western Hemisphere's Longest Arch Bridge"?

I explored for a couple of hours, visiting the NPS's New River Gorge Visitors Center, and driving the old route across the gorge, which the Bridge then bypassed. (See below.)



The closest post office to the bridge is that of the small town of Lansing. Its USPS Locator Tool listing is by no means accurate; it's helpful to either ask for directions, or, read this blog! This map is a result of Google Maps satellite view and my memory of my visit to the office:

A is the location of the post office, and B represents the NPS Visitor Center.


View Larger Map

Here are two photos of the Lansing office:

• 
• 

Lansing, WV post office; generic signage

The First-Day ceremony of the stamp will actually be held in Fayetteville, across the bridge from Lansing. Yes, I visited that, too:



P.S. Here is one of my own photographs from the bridge: