Discontinued post office facts for kids
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A discontinued post office or DPO is a special name for a post office in the United States that has closed down. These old post offices can be found in many places. Some are in ghost towns, which are towns that people have left. Others closed because mail service changed, or because a city grew bigger.
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What is a Discontinued Post Office?
A DPO is simply a post office that no longer operates. It might have been a small building in a tiny village. Or it could have been a larger office in a growing town. When a post office closes, it stops handling mail.
Why Did Post Offices Close?
Many things caused post offices to close. One big reason was the growth of cities. As cities expanded, smaller, nearby post offices were no longer needed. Their services were taken over by larger, central post offices. This is called consolidation of mail service.
The Rise of Rural Free Delivery
A very important change happened in 1902. This was the start of Rural Free Delivery, or RFD. Before RFD, people in the countryside had to go to a local post office to pick up their mail. There was no home delivery outside of big cities.
RFD meant that mail carriers would deliver mail directly to homes in rural areas. This was a huge change! It made life much easier for people living far from towns. However, it also meant that many small, local post offices were no longer needed. They started to close down. In fact, the number of post offices reached its highest point in 1901, with over 76,000. After RFD began, many of them closed.
Exploring Postal History
Old letters, envelopes, and postmarks from discontinued post offices are very interesting. People who study postal history love to find these items. Postal history is the study of how mail was sent and delivered over time. It helps us understand how people communicated in the past.
Collecting Old Mail
These old mail items are often called covers. A cover can be a letter, a wrapper, or just an envelope with a postmark. Each cover tells a story about where it came from and where it went. For example, in Saguache County, Colorado, there are more than 50 places where post offices used to be. Finding a cover from one of these old Colorado DPOs would be a cool discovery for a postal historian!
