Enjoy a little Rolling Stones with this post!

 

 

The U.S. Postal Service has a surprisingly well-documented past.

I found two pictures taken 10 years apart that show a tremendous change in the way mail was delivered.  The first picture was taken in 1900.  It shows the mail carriers preparing dogsleds to carry mail through the snow from Circle City to Ft. Gibson.

 

Now have a look at the postal vehicles of 1910. This is a big change from the 1900 picture, but around 1910, the government began to encourage carriers to use the Rural Free Delivery (RFD) carrier vehicles to replace horses and wagons. (This may have been the last time in history that the post office was on the cutting edge of innovation.)

This mail carrier isn’t that much different than the standard postal Jeep, is it?

The photo’s metadata says that during particularly rough winters in rural areas where the snow couldn’t be plowed, the horse and wagon were still preferred. I don’t know where the second picture was taken but I doubt it was Alaska.

Can you imagine being a postal carrier in Alaska?

If I delivered the mail up there, and my options were dogsled, early vehicle, or horse, I would definitely go with the horse.

The early vehicles wouldn’t have done too well on the icy Alaskan terrain. They broke down all the time. Can you picture being stuck out on the tundra in an early Jeep prototype with nothing between you and a hungry polar bear but a bag of mail? And who knows how fast those early postal vehicles went? Polar bears can gallop at speeds of 25 mph.

I don’t know about the dogs, but a horse has a reasonable and innate fear of a bear, and they can outrun bears. I found this video of a grizzly chasing wild horses. Grizzlies can run up to 35 mph.

 

 

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