Mail By Mule Train

Mail has been delivered ever since people could write and wanted to communicate with others. If you go back far enough, you find that in Egypt around 2400 BCE, the Pharaohs used couriers to send out their decrees! The first regular courier service was established by the Persian Empire between 559 and 530 BCE.

Looking ahead about 2,500 years, you have the Pony Express in 1860, which I mentioned last year when I was writing about the speed of mail delivery ...

https://www.geraldstiebel.com/search?q=pony+express

What I did not realize, however, is that in principle it continues in this country to this very day. 

In the current issue of the Atlantic Magazine is an article by Sarah Yager with photographs by Elliot Ross (unless otherwise indicated). It explains that the challenge of universal mail service in this country is with one place which cannot be reached by any ground vehicle, and by helicopter only when the weather and wind are right. That is the town of Supai in the Grand Canyon. Why is there a town at the bottom of the Grand Canyon? Well, because it is part of the Havasupai Indian Reservation.

In 1882, the U.S. Government restricted the Havasupai tribe to just 518 acres of their former wide-ranging hunting grounds on the South rim of the Grand Canyon, in order to create what would become the Grand Canyon National Park. In a 1975 act of Congress, 188,077 acres were returned to the tribe. Though their reservation remains within the National Park, the Havasupai have retained their sovereign rights, and they are considered guardians of the Canyon.

According to the 2010 census the town of Supai had 208 inhabitants. Although the 2020 census recorded zero, the population is currently estimated to be growing. In truth there are about 500 of the 770 registered in the Tribe supported on agriculture and tourism. Of the tens of thousands of tourists every year at the Grand Canyon a few intrepid visitors reserve a stay on the tribal lands. You have to book months ahead and hike down to the lodge or camping grounds. Your stay is limited to 3 days during which you can hike, swim and visit the village to learn about their tribal culture.

Getting back to the mail, like the Pony Express, the current system relies on animals, but with mule trains rather than horse relays, to carry the packages which include food, medicines and anything that is needed for the one village store. From the Atlantic article, “The mule train, which makes the 16-mile, six-hour loop up and down the canyon five days a week, is perhaps the most extreme manifestation of the USPS mandate to “render postal services to all communities.”

Being the mailman is not for the faint of heart. Nate Chamberlain, married to a member of the tribe, did it for 25 years without a vacation and then handed it over to his nephew. The path is narrow, and one slip can be fatal for man or beast. Temperatures are extreme, and when the weather gets bad during the monsoon season, shelter must be found quickly as torrential rains wash down the canyon and there are rockslides.

"Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds," and, in the case of Supai, the old ways are the only ways!

The Speed of Mail

We recently received a printed mailer from the United States Postal Service (USPS) touting its devotion to exceptional service and warning of the December 18 deadline for holiday mailing. The online USPS Postal Facts states their mandate “to bind the nation together”.

Our mail service does indeed have a long history beginning in 1775 with its establishment by the Second Continental Congress with Benjamin Franklin as postmaster general. In 1787 the U.S. Constitution empowered Congress to establish Post Offices and Post Roads, and the Post Office Act of 1792 made the postal services an official part of the Federal Government. I remember that my father driving on the Boston Post road a mail route from New York City to Boston. It evolved into a major highway system now with names like Route 1.

The Pony Express was established in 1860 and started in St. Joseph, Missouri and could reach Sacramento, California, covering nearly 2,000 miles using a relay system of riders and horses in approximately 10 days. Wells Fargo managed the Pony Express for just 6 months during 1861 and issued their own postage stamp. Celebrating the Centennial of the Pony Express the USPS issued a 4¢ stamp that is in the same spirit.

Things change for better and for worse. According to the USPS in 2024 it takes 2.5 days for mail to arrive from one destination to another across this country. That has not been our experience. Last year we ordered tickets to a show in Santa Fe. They were mailed a week before the show, a distance of 2.2 miles, and arrived a week after the performance. Happily, the theater had a record of the tickets, and we did not miss it.

More than once, I have said to my wife that I remember when we got two mail deliveries a day in New York. I was a little boy then who was so excited to run to the door at 9 am and 4 pm every day in our apartment building to pick up the mail in front of the door. This was in the second half of the 1940s. At that time if you mailed a letter on one day in a city it arrived across the city by the next day. In 1950 the USPS eliminated two mail deliveries a day, so it depended on what time of day you mailed your letter. Since email started the contents of our mailbox is a good deal less exciting as they are most often advertising catalogs or solicitations for donations!

Rate increases are so frequent that the Forever stamp has become popular. It was only in 1959 that the cost of first-class mail within the U.S. began to climb from the 3 cents rate established in 1932. A 3¢ stamp with 4 different images of Washington D.C. was issued to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Washington, D.C. as the capital of the United States.

Even though the U.S. transatlantic airmail service began in 1939, we tend to forget that most mail from the U.S. to Europe was still carried by boat. When I started flying to Europe in the mid to late 1950’s I remember the prop airplane had to take on fuel twice, in Shannon, Ireland and Gander, Newfoundland before reaching London. Of course, then it was more expensive to send a letter by air and it depended on the weight of the envelope as well. It was quite expensive to send mail by air early in the twentieth century and costs rose depending on the distance.

A British General Douglas Gumbley who was the director of Posts and Telegraphs in Mesopotamia (Iraq) is credited with introducing the concept of the single sheet “air letter” also known as an Aerogram in 1933. The USPS introduced them in 1947. They confused me probably until my early teenage years because I could not figure out how to fold them and lick the sides to close them or open them without cutting the writing in half! In 1955 it only cost 10¢ to mail an Aerogram to Europe while a letter in an envelope cost 15¢. The service was quick, however, because in the mid-1960’s I remember mailing on a Monday and actually getting a reply from either London or Paris by Friday. No, that was not usual, but the fact that it could happen was quite startling.

My wife recalls during her research of Madame de Pompadour (1721-1764)the thrill of finding at the Morgan Library letters Pompadour sent to her brother during his travels in Italy. The missives were limited to one side of a single sheet which was then folded and addressed like an Aerogram and the enthusiastic sister continued writing up the margins to finish her thoughts.

The delivery of mail, postage stamps and their history around the world is a fascinating subject that I have barely touched upon.