How has mail service changed though the years?

Post riders, the earliest postal carriers in American history, traveled along a system of post roads that the Constitution authorized the federal government to create. The roads connected small post offices, where people would wait in long lines to collect their mail. By 1789, 75 Post Offices and about 2,400 miles of post roads served a population of almost 4 million.

Stagecoach

A Butterfield Overland Mail stagecoach, the first overland mail service to California, picking up U.S. mail and passengers circa 1857 in Arizona.

A Butterfield Overland Mail stagecoach, the first overland mail service to California, picking up U.S. mail and passengers circa 1857 in Arizona.

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By the late 1700s, stagecoaches (large horse-drawn vehicles) had begun to replace individual post riders on the roads. At the urging of Congress, the post office granted contracts to stagecoach lines to help link Eastern communities with the expanding frontier. The Gold Rush opened the floodgates of Westward migration in the 1850s, and stagecoaches carried mail along new overland routes stretching all the way to California.

Steamboat

U.S. mail steamship Adriatic, circa 1850s.

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In 1813, six years after Robert Fulton launched the first viable commercial steamboat line in New York, Congress authorized the postmaster general to contract with steamboat companies to transport the mail. By the late 1820s, steamboats were ferrying mail up and down the East Coast and along the Mississippi River. Beginning in December 1848, U.S. Mail traveled by steamship to California via the Isthmus of Panama, a journey that took roughly three weeks.

Pony Express

In 1860, the Pony Express began delivering mail from the East to West Coast in a mere 10 days.

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Those looking for a speedier delivery could, for a short time, at least, turn to the Pony Express, a private service that began running between St. Joseph, Missouri and California in April 1860. Riders rode specially selected horses an average of 75 to 100 miles daily, changing horses at relay stations set at 10-15 mile intervals along the nearly 2,000-mile route; the trip took about 10 days, about half of the time of the regular overland mail. The post office contracted with the Pony Express for only a few months before the service shut down in October 1861, shortly after the completion of the transcontinental telegraph line.

Railroad

A mailman collects letters from a train mailbox, circa 1921.  

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Though the post office first transported mail via the “iron horse” in 1832, its use of the railroad entered a new era of efficiency after the Civil War, with the completion of the nation’s first transcontinental railroad. From the 1860s to the 1970s, clerks would sort and distribute mail on trains criss-crossing the country; at its height in the mid-20th century, the Railway Mail Service (RMS) would handle 93 percent of all non-local mail in the United States.

Automobiles

A U.S. Mail vehicle, circa 1910.

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In 1899, an electric automobile collected the mail from 40 mailboxes in Buffalo, New York in an hour and a half—less than half the time of a horse-drawn wagon. The use of automobiles (both electric and gas-powered) increased after 1913, when postal carriers began delivering packages as well as letters, and by 1933 only 2 percent of urban postal vehicles were horse-drawn. With the growth of the suburbs in the 1950s, city routes were motorized for the first time, with Jeeps, sit-stand trucks and small vehicles known as “mailsters” among the earliest delivery vehicles.

Motorcycle

A rural postal mail carrier stands with his Wagner 4-11 motorcycle next to a postal box on his route near Newell, South Dakota, circa 1915.  

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The post office’s introduction of Rural Free Delivery (home delivery to rural addresses, not just urban ones) in the early 1900s spurred the increased use of motorized vehicles, and postal carriers also experimented with motorcycles as soon as they became commercially available. The use of motorcycles to deliver mail peaked in the 1920s; after that, they were replaced with four-wheel automobiles and trucks with more space to hold letters and packages.

Airmail

Earle Ovington, pioneer aviator, flew the first air mail in the United States in 1911. U.S. Postmaster General Frank Hitchcock participated in the historic ceremony at Sheepshead Bay, New York when he delivered the first bag of mail to Ovington.

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