Those old 1950s films about the Post Office mentioned that mail carriers were still using horses in some places. Seemed unlikely to me, but horses were common on urban routes, both milk and mail, until 1950.
One of the new PO podcasts describes an even more improbable kind of mail service, which is still fully active. In both cases (heh) the carriers work just like urban carriers, starting their day with sorting and casing, then going out on the route.
One is the JW Westcott, a tugboat in the Detroit River. It has its own floating ZIP code 48222. For 150 years the Westcott has provided services for the excursion boats and freighters on the river, including food and supplies and mail. The Westcott pulls up next to a ship and signals. The ship lets down a container on a rope. The Westcott picks up mail from the container and puts outgoing mail into the container. “Mail in a pail.”
‘Dock to dock’ delivery by small boat may be fairly common. One of the new podcasts mentions several places including the Snake River in Idaho. An official website says that the only current boat delivery is on the Magnolia River in Alabama.
The other is even more implausible. Lake Geneva in Wisconsin has summer houses around the shore with no road access, only boat access. The Walworth services those houses, which are mainly vacation residences. The boat is part excursion and part service. In summer it hires adventurous youngsters as Mail Jumpers. Like other mailmen they start by sorting and casing, then jump off the boat and swim to the shore houses. Each one makes up to 75 swims per day.
This isn’t the first mention of unusual mail carriers in Lake Geneva. The town of Lake Geneva, next to the lake, is an ordinary city with ordinary streets. In the ’30s, the radio show ‘Strange as it Seems’ featured a blind mailman in Lake Geneva. The postmaster did the sorting beforehand, putting the letters in individual compartments in the mailman’s leather satchel.
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