The Storied History of the United States Postal Service

Birth of the USPS

The US Postal Service can trace its origins to the Revolutionary War, when a mail system was created as an alternate to the royal mail, which the colonists disliked for its higher rates, which they regarded as an unfair tax. In 1775, the year that the war for independence began, the Continental Congress appointed Benjamin Franklin, above, as the first postmaster general. Franklin had experience at the job; he had been the deputy postmaster general of the colonial mail system.

1847: The First Stamps

In the postal service's early years, it was not the sender but the receiver who paid for the delivery of the mail. This added to the delivery time and increased the likelihood the mail would be refused. With the introduction of the first stamps in 1847, the service was able to standardize delivery costs and provide more efficient service. The first stamps bore the likenesses of first Postmaster General Franklin, on the five-cent, and first President George Washington on the ten cent.

1850: Mailed to Freedom

Over a decade before the Civil War, Henry 'Box' Brown mailed himself to freedom in a three-foot box from Richmond, Virginia to the Anti-Slavery office in Philadelphia. The delivery took 26 hours.

1860: Pony Express

Launched as a new way to expedite west coast bound mail, the Pony Express was a vast improvement over the old route, which required a boat that sailed to Panama, a quick overland passage and then a trip northward on another boat to California. The first Pony Express journey left St. Joseph Missouri and completed the 2,000-mile journey about ten days later, arriving in Sacramento, California with their first parcel. This engraving shows the arrival of a pony express courier to a post in the Rocky Mountains. The Express stations were built roughly 10 miles apart so as the horse began to fade, the ride could trade it out for a fresh one.

1870: "Neither Rain Nor Snow..."

A wood engraving of a letter carrier in the Rocky Mountains. The famed "creed" of the U.S. Postal Service is not an official slogan, but an inscription on the James Farley Post Office building in New York. The full phrasing (which was derived from a quote from Herodotus) reads, "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds."

1910: Horsepower and the Post

The new auto truck put into service by the United States Mail for delivery of parcel post.

1911: Mail Takes Flight

The first efforts to deliver mail by air in the United States date to 1859, when a pilot attempted (unsuccessfully) to carry mail via air balloon from Lafayette, Indiana to New York. Many subsequent air mail deliveries were made, but Earle L. Ovington, above, an aviator and lab assistant to Thomas Edison, is credited with making the first official delivery, carrying a sack from Garden City, New York, to Mineola, New York. When he reached his destination, Ovington circled in the air and tossed the bag over the side of his plane, causing the sack to burst on impact, scattering the letters within.

1915: Rural Delivery

A mail carrier stands with his Wagner 4-11 motorcycle next to a postal box along his route near Newell, South Dakota. The mail is in the sacks on the rear of his motorcycle.

1922: Dead Letter Office

Established in 1825, the dead letter office was used to hold "undeliverable" mail. This photo of a dead letter office was probably taken at a post office in Washington.

1953: Postmaster General

Eisenhower's Postmaster General, Arthur Summerfield, poses in a pile of letters, 1953. The position first held by Benjamin Franklin remained a cabinet level job until 1971.

1947: Mail Room

Sacks of mail are piled atop each other and emptied into slotted bins in the large, busy mailroom of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Co.

1954: Stamp Dispenser

Vending machines for stamps are believed to date to the late 19th century, when they were developed in the United Kingdom. The machines first appeared in the U.S. in 1908, when private manufacturers began vending stamps from coils.

1955: Morning Rounds

Mailmen leave New York City's General Post Office to begin their rounds at Christmas time.

1959: MIssile Mail

Among the many technologies that the USPS experiemted with was "missile mail." With the goal of creating a faster delviery method, the service teamed up with the U.S. Navy Sub The USS Barbero, which fired a cruise missile with two postal containers in place of ordinance. Though the missile reached its target in Mayport, Florida and its package was delivered successfully, the cost and numerous failures of missile mail ultimately led it to be scrapped.

1959: Heightened Efficiency

Operators working at the new automated post office in Providence, Rhode Island. In the 1960s, the department began to use more and more high-speed equipment to handle tasks which had previously been done by hand.

Under Duress

Beginning in the 1980s, the postal service endured a spate of workplace shootings. In the public imagination, the violent acts were symbolic of the increasing pressure in American offices and factories to do more, in less time, at less cost and the term "going postal" became associated with any act of extreme anger that led to violence. The photo above was taken in the aftermath of one of the more prominent early postal shootings, in Edmond, Oklahoma in 1986, when Patrick Sherrill, a part-time letter carrier, entered the local post office and fatally shot 14 employees.

2010: Protest

Budget cuts have forced the postal service to make many difficult decisions. The USPS is currently considering terminating Saturday delivery and recently announced the closure of 3,600 postal offices across the United States. In this 2010 photo, American Postal Workers Union members and their supporters protest proposed cutes to Saturday delivery, during a Labor Day parade in Philadelphia.