USPS is celebrating its 250th anniversary.
The US Post Office is celebrating its 250th anniversary with special stamps featuring familiar faces.
Scripps News
America’s founding fathers had the foresight to recognize that efficient postal services could become an essential tool for democracy. The odds were that they didn’t imagine a mailbox filled with grocery ads, prescription drugs, and magazine Aarp.
On Saturday, the US Postal Service will serve 250 years of missions that are not squealed by rain, sleet, snow, or the darkness of the night. Important mechanisms of informed citizenship, the building blocks of US independence, and institutions, a renowned part of American culture, delivered letters faithfully across the country, regardless of geographical distance.
“The Post Office was created a year before the Declaration of Independence and was there at every stage along the American journey,” said Steve Kochelsperger, the Bureau’s postal historian. “It goes wherever the Americans go and keep us united.”
To name just a handful of people who brought mail to your door, Walt Disney. Actors Morgan Freeman, Steve Carell and Rock Hudson. Folk singer John Prin, jazz bassist Charles Mingus, vocalist Jason Mills, guitarist Ace Freely and founding members of Kiss.
However, as we did more than two centuries ago, post offices face dangers and uncertainty. This time, it faces financial and logistical challenges that threaten to privatize or merge with the US Department of Commerce. Such a merger was proposed by President Donald Trump earlier this year. President Donald Trump called the USPS “an incredible loser in this country.”
According to the US General Accountability Office, the agency has been operating in the deficit for the past 15 years, with a net loss of $100 billion since 2007. Meanwhile, costs outweigh revenues as once-reliable first-class mail has declined among other factors.
A 2024 Pew Research Center survey found that despite the issues, the Post Office only supports the National Park Service. Meanwhile, the agency’s new postmaster David Steiner assured post office employees last week at a video address that he supported him to maintain the agency in its current form.
“I don’t think that postal services should be privatized, or that it should be the assigned part of the federal government,” he said. “I believe in the current structure of postal services as an independent entity of the administrative department’s self-qualification.”
Today, according to its website, the postal service offers approximately 169 million addresses nationwide, along with staff of 640,000, the majority of its career workers, and staff of almost 258,000 vehicles. In 2024, the agency processed more than 116 billion pieces of mail. Most of them are called junk mail.
“It was conceived as a vast public service,” said Cameron Blevins, professor of history and digital humanities at the University of Colorado, Denver. “It’s changed much more than its history, but your dedication to providing service to American citizens, regardless of where you live, was there from the start.”
On Wednesday, USPS marked its milestones with two independent stamp releases, including an eternal series depicting her community round postman and an eternal series depicting the latest interpretation of the 5-cent stamp, first published in 1847.
The role of the agency is cited in the US Constitution in a clause that empowers Congress to establish the post office and its delivery infrastructure. At the time, American democracy was still an experiment in the world of monarchs and empires, relying on free exchange of ideas.
“Democracy had to notify voters, and the post office was essential to ensure they had the information they needed,” says Christopher Shaw, author of USPS, Democracy and Corporate Threats.
Notable numbers are struggling with their services. President Abraham Lincoln served as the local postmaster before pursuing law and politics. Nobel Prize-winning American novelist William Faulkner, but it wasn’t that effective.
“He liked Trump or left early to go golf,” Cochelsperger said of Faulkner.
Delivery modes, delivery, and workforce have changed over the years, but there is no fundamental mission to ensure an informed, connected public. That tradition endures as books, magazines and newspapers continue to enjoy lower shipping rates. So are mailing by other nonprofit organizations, such as charities, arts and political advocacy groups.
“Looking at the post-World War I social movements, civil rights movements, environmental movements, all the organisations — and seeing the main ways they can raise money and let their supporters know what’s going on through email,” Shaw said. “Historically, it was a foundation for democracy and information.”
The agency’s role was important from the start, Cochards Perger said.
In 1775, when the battle for American independence began, the Second Continental Congress appointed George Washington as Secretary of the Continental Army.
But how do you communicate with the military? American revolutionaries were unable to use the established postal channels in the UK for communications that would be considered rebellious.
“They needed postal services so they chose Benjamin Franklin to lead it,” Cochardsperger said.
After nearly 40 years as Philadelphia’s postmaster, Franklin had an efficiency genius, Cochelsperger said. He devised a system in which military communications were delivered by riders on foot on messengers and horses, building a great advantage of colonial forces in war with the British.
“The same order from London will take two months,” Kochersperger said. “Postal services were important to America’s independence.”
An important part of Western expansion
In 1848, as part of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Mexico bequeathed half of its territory after a war of attack on its southern neighbors. The US has now acquired most of the other four states: California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico and Arizona.
Hundreds of thousands of people have flowed into the American West, CU Denver’s Blevins said many are pursuing newfound gold in California, thousands of miles from communities and population centers in the eastern region.
With the aim of returning communication with family, neighbors and business peers to their homeland, the US relied on the post office to do its job. The agency excluded the duties of contractors for the work of such contractors as the famous Pony Express, who delivered mail on horseback from Missouri to California between 1860 and 61.
As contracts and communications moved back and forth between miles, postal services served as connective tissue for Western expansion, carrying news of engagement, growing families, business booms and busts.
“It didn’t discriminate on the basis of distance,” said Blevins, who focused on the role of the federal government in the American West in the 1800s. “A gold miner who went to a field in southwestern Colorado, thousands of miles from his Ohio family, was able to send the letter back home for the same price as his cousin, who lives in Ohio.”
Many early post offices were not familiar, independent government facilities with uniformed workers familiar to people today. Instead, businesses such as general stores collected fees in exchange for receiving and outgoing mail distribution.
“You’ll go in and buy some flour or coffee,” Blevins said, “and ask if you have an email.”
Sleigh dog and hovercraft
In the 1890s, former retail wizard postmaster John Wanamaker promoted the postal service to expand its free mail delivery service to rural areas, coming up with the concept of commemorative stamps that people could collect and not necessarily use.
The mail was delivered by stage coaches, steamboats and railroads and sorted by mobile trains. Other modes of delivery include sled dogs, mules, reindeer and hovercraft, but airmail development took place in 1918 when the agency’s most transformative upgrade occurred, with airports still being a budding concept.
“The post office had to build runways, install radios and train their own pilots,” Cochars Purger said.
In the 1920s, postal services once again relied on contractors to provide many of these services, and formed the foundation of today’s aviation industry as some providers decided they could make a profit by transporting people.
“It really helped Kickstart Airlines in this country,” Shaw said. “The majority of the early revenue before passengers came from transporting mail in the US.”
Introduced in 1963, the ZIP code allowed emails to be sorted more efficiently. Ultimately, American consumers and voters could be categorized and introduced. “Try doing something that doesn’t involve a zip code today,” Cochars Purger said. “I can’t even order pizza without a postcode.”
Postal workers over the years face varying degrees of danger. Franklin’s innovative post office faced capture by British soldiers. Frontier carriers avoided burglars and robbers. The weather, terrain, and broken equipment have caused fatal obstacles to me. The flight accident claimed the lives of 34 aircraft pilots between 1918 and 1927.
Today, the most common danger is dogs. According to USPS senior spokesman David Coleman, more than 6,000 dog bites incidents were recorded nationwide in 2024.
“The highest ideal of American democracy”
He said until 1971 that the post office was a federal division that had historically operated at a small deficit. Postage charges accounted for a large portion of revenue, he said, and U.S. Treasury funds made up for the difference.
Under the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970, the sector was rebuilt as an independent federal agency, the U.S. Postal Service, with the idea that it was self-funded. The recent decades have brought financial struggles, particularly the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006. Both have restricted the way agents make money and demanded that billions be paid to fund retirees’ future health care obligations.
Then came the financial recession and the rise in online bills.
“All of these things hit at once,” Shaw said. “On the other side, expanding e-commerce means new revenue. There will be fewer emails delivered, but there’s a bit more packages being delivered, so it’s a bit more balanced.”
The post office still exists to provide information and communication, but doing so in Congress is under more intense financial pressure than it will no longer offset that shortage. It prompts the story of privatization, and the fear of the show will hamper the institution’s ability to adapt to the times.
“The post office offers a lot of financially inefficient services,” Shaw said. “For-profit businesses don’t want to deliver mail to the most rural Americans. But since the mission of the post office is to unite the nation, they provide universal services to everyone.”
In that sense, he said that part of the post office’s ongoing legacy is that whatever its flaws are, it still embodies the country’s democratic ideals.
“Through the Postal Service, the federal government is committed to serving everyone equally, whether you live in Alaska or New York, whether you’re rich or poor, rural or city,” he said. “It is an expression of the highest ideal of American democracy, demonstrating the government’s ability to actually fulfill its promises… It’s still around, and for it to exist for 250 years, there’s a reason it exists, and it shows that it’s doing the right thing.”
