Wish You Were Here

Free Rural Delivery

Today it is difficult to envision the isolation that was the lot of farm families in early America. In the days before telephones, radios, or televisions were common, the farmer's main links to the outside world were the mail and the newspapers that came by mail to the nearest post office. Since the mail had to be picked up, this meant a trip to the post office, often involving a day's travel, round-trip. The farmer might delay picking up mail for days, weeks or months until the trip could be coupled with one for supplies, food or equipment.

John Wanamaker of Pennsylvania was the first Postmaster General to advocate rural free delivery (RFD.) Although funds were appropriated a month before he left office in 1893, subsequent Postmasters General dragged their feet on inaugurating the new service until 1896. The first experimental rural delivery routes began in West Virginia.

Critics of the plan claimed it was impractical and too expensive to trudge over rutted roads and through forests to deliver mail in all kinds of weather. The farmers, without exception, were delighted with the new service. The impact of RFD as a cultural and social agent for millions of Americans was even more striking than its impact on improved roads, bridges and culverts in rural areas. Rural delivery is still a vital link between industrial and rural America.

http://www.usps.gov/history/his2.htm#ROLE