On the trail of mail
Imagine there’s no such thing as texting or phones, and you have some important information to get to someone hundreds of miles away. What do you do? Write a letter! And for less than 50 cents, you can have someone deliver your letter to the person it’s for. That is the job of the United States Postal Service.
1775
Believe it or not, the postal service existed before there was even a United States! Before the Revolutionary War, the American colonies used the English postal system, but in 1775 as the Founding Fathers moved toward declaring independence, they established a service separate from the English system. The postal service was officially started in 1792.
Methods
In the early days, merchants, slaves and Native Americans would pass letters from person to person. Soon, however, a system was developed that included designated mail carriers who traveled by horse and stagecoach. Later, mail traveled by train and even airplane. Because the postal service is committed to delivering mail to anyone in the United States, they’ve had to find creative ways to make deliveries. For example, people who live in Supai, Arizona, get their mail by mules that travel through the Grand Canyon.
How it gets there
You’ve written a letter, placed a stamp on the envelope and put the letter in a mailbox. Your job is done, and now the postal service takes over.
First, a mail carrier collects your letter from the mailbox and takes it to a mail processing plant. At the plant, letters and packages are sorted and scanned, then sent in directions ent depending on where they’re going. For example, if you’re sending a letter from Florida to California, your letter would be placed in a tray with other letters for California and then put on a plane traveling west. When it arrives, it’s taken to another processing plant, where it is sorted by which town it’s going to. It’s then sent to the post office in that town, where it is sorted again and eventually given to the mail carrier who will take it to the person who will receive it.
If that sounds like a lot of work, know this: More than 500 million pieces of mail are sorted and delivered each day.