Special Delivery! – 250 Years of the United States Postal Service

This week marks the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States Postal Service (USPS), which the Second Continental Congress established on July 26, 1775. The service was formalized as the United States Post Office Department (POD) through the Postal Service Act of 1792 and would finally become the independent agency we know today in 1971. Over the past two and a half centuries, the USPS has consistently gone above and beyond to deliver a letter or package from one location to another. To better understand and appreciate how far our postal service has come, let’s take a dive into Record Group 28: Records of the Post Office Department.

Since the development of a formalized postal system, mail deliveries in the United States have grown tremendously. Letter deliveries more than doubled after Congress voted to cut postage rates in 1845, jumping from 24.5 million to well over 62 million by 1849. By the turn of the twentieth century, technological advances led to a new method of delivery: air travel.

With the Civil Aeronautics Board’s admission of autogyro deliveries in the 1930s and helicopter deliveries in the 1940s, air travel revolutionized the way mail was delivered. The film Postmen of the Sky (Local ID: 28.38) shows a flight along a helicopter mail route across Chicago, Illinois. Beginning in August 1949, mail carriers would relay their cargo from the Midway Airport to the roof of the Chicago Post Office. The small orange helicopters, provided by Helicopter Air Service, Inc., would transport large amounts of letters and packages across the city in ten minutes.

Another area of growth can be found in the way mail is handled within the post office itself. Developed at the Detroit post office in 1956, the Mail-Flo Letter Processing System uses a series of conveyor belts to move mail around a mail facility to its destination.

The film The World’s Most Mechanized Post Office (Local ID: 28.42) showcases the use of the Mail-Flo System in the main Washington D.C. post office building (which would later become the National Postal Museum). With conveyor belts to provide motion and mechanical arms to divert mail to its intended destination, the overall system stretched six miles from start to finish.

Having been around for so long, the American public’s view of the USPS has grown especially. One such time that the postal service shines is during the winter holidays, delivering millions of packages in some of the roughest of weather conditions. In the 1921 film titled Mr. Santa Claus (Local ID: 28.10), the titular Saint Nicholas is likened to his “modern counterpart,” an average postal service worker.

Another notable PSA, Zip Code: With the Swingin’ Six (Local ID: 28.104), teaches about the history, purpose, and intricacies of the Postal Service through cheery songs and skits.

From horseback to railway, to truck, and airplane, the USPS has maintained its goal of getting the public’s mail from one destination to another. This year (and every year for that matter), be sure to give your thanks to the people who handle your mail: you never know what they’ve gone through to get it to you!

For more on the USPS, please check out some of our other posts in the Unwritten Record here, as well as the Record Group 28 page on the National Archives Catalog here.