By Dr. Curtis Varnell
The holiday season is the busiest time of the year for the U.S. Postal service and most of that delivery is Christmas cards. Going to the mailbox to pick up the letters, mail orders, newspapers, and catalogs was once a high point of the day. Since the advent of the internet and messaging, fewer and fewer letters arrive in the mail and most of those are bills and unsolicited trash. Most of our children little recognize the joy of receiving a hand-written message from a relative or friend nor how important letters were to connecting us to the outside world.
Even before we became a county, the founding fathers realized the necessity of establishing a means of communication between the various colonies. In 1775, during the meeting of the Second Continental Congress, Benjamin Franklin was elected as postmaster general with the express duty of developing routes to deliver information across what was to become the United States. From the earliest days of our history, mail was to be delivered at a reasonable rate by wagon and horseback to various established mail stations which would serve as a center where locals could pick-up letters. Newspapers, felt to be vital to protecting our democratic system, was delivered as a lesser rate.
Mail routes developed as the country grew westward. Early in our nation’s history, the mail system proved to be primitive, slow, and unpredictable. Roads were often just muddy paths and swollen streams and unpredictable weather often caused delay, yet, living up to their motto, the mail would eventually be delivered. In 1831, Alex de Tocqueville described his experiences while traveling on a mail wagon;
“We traveled through part of the frontier districts of the United States in a sort of open cart called the mail coach. We went at a great pace day and night along roads that had only just been cleared through immense forests of green trees; when the darkness became impenetrable, our driver set fire to branches of larch, by whose light we continued our way. From time to time we came to a hut in the forest; that was the post office. The courier dropped an enormous bundle of letters at the door of this isolated dwelling, and we went galloping on again, leaving each inhabitant of the neighborhood to come and fetch his share of that treasure.”
The first post office in Arkansas was established in 1817 at Davidsonville, just south of modern-day Pocahontas. Mail went back and forth on a regular basis from Monroe. Louisiana through Davidsonville and on to the territorial capital at St. Louis. From there, the mail entered the national route which would deliver it to the east coast and Washington D.C. Adam Ritchey, the first postmaster, had the mail delivered directly to his home and people would come to his home, pick up their mail, and pay the post fee.
As Arkansas grew, additional routes developed. One of the first was along the Old Southwest Trail which ran along the edge of the Ozark and Ouachita Mountains and southwest to Texarkana. Searcy, Little Rock, Malvern, and Arkadelphia were some of the major towns along the path. Another major route was the old military road, established in 1836, which ran from Little Rock along the Arkansas River to Fort Gipson, Oklahoma. Later the route was expanded to Memphis and became the southern route followed by the famous Butterfield stage and mail company.
As the population of the state grew, other side routes were developed to service the smaller towns along the way. Virtually every small community had a store or business that served as the post office where locals could pick up their mail. Frederick Morshbach of Magazine Mountain would walk six miles to the Millard post-office and six-miles back up hill several times a week to pick up his mail and his German newspaper. Before television, radio, and telephone, mail was the only communication with the outside world.
Rural Post office direct delivery to the home was first established in Clarksville, AR., 10/19/1896, Russellville03/15/1900, Dardanelle 08/15/1900, Springdale 08/15/1900,Stuttgart 08/15/1900 Newport 10/15/1900, and Fort Smith 10/01/1901. By 1904, rural service was established across the state. Today, there are 577 post offices in the state and countless dedicated employees delivering the mail to every home within the state.
