The 250-Year-Old History of American Mail

Over the years, mail has been delivered by the United States Postal Service via horse, stagecoach, steamboat, rail, and air. Among…other things. STEVE: Missile mail comes to mind as one experiment. It did get the mail there quickly, but not everyone wanted a missile landing near their building. In Alaska, we had dog sleds delivering the mail. At one point, we even had reindeer. Even today, there's a post office at the bottom of the Grand Canyon in Supai, Arizona. The only way to get mail down to that post office is having mules carry it down the Grand Canyon. In many ways, the story of the United States Postal Service echoes the founding of the country itself. STEVE: The United States was at war with Britain. We were fighting for independence in 1775. We needed an army to fight. So we had a general, George Washington. But we also needed a communication system to communicate with Congress and the army. And that was headed by another general, Postmaster General Benjamin Franklin. STEVE: The mail was transported by horseback, slow by today's standards, but the postage was paid generally by the person receiving the mail. There were no postage stamps. No envelopes. You would write your message on a letter, on a piece of paper, fold it up, seal it with wax. The postmaster would calculate the postage, and when you received it, you had to pay to get it. These days you can just send an email. But you can also mail a 1-ounce letter from Chicago to New York in one day—with just one stamp. …one stamp that could’ve taken 10 years to make! ANTONIO: The way the stamp development process starts is we have a group called the Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee. And they meet every quarter to review all the submissions made by the public. Thousands of ideas are reviewed and sorted into themes like science, literature—and American history. ANTONIO: At that point, the Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee had selected, “Well, let's do a stamp that commemorates the 250th anniversary of the United States Postal Service.” ANTONIO: Some of the design principles that I consider when working on a stamp, of course, is how very small the stamps will appear. Most people are not used to working on such a small canvas. After many meetings, sketches, and reviews, the end result is… A stamp like this! ANTONIO: The new sheet, 250 years of delivering, is a small scene in an urban location that is communicating how the Postal Service really comes in contact with us every day throughout the year, throughout the seasons.