Book ID: CBB121158714

Paper trails : The US post and the making of the American West (2021)

unapi

Cameron Blevins (Author)


Oxford University Press


Publication Date: 2021
Physical Details: 232
Language: English

There were five times as many post offices in the United States in 1899 than there are McDonald's restaurants today. During an era of supposedly limited federal government, the United States operated the most expansive national postal system in the world. In this cutting-edge interpretation of the late nineteenth-century United States, Cameron Blevins argues that the US Post wove together two of the era's defining projects: western expansion and the growth of state power. Between the 1860s and the early 1900s, the western United States underwent a truly dramatic reorganization of people, land, capital, and resources. It had taken Anglo-Americans the better part of two hundred years to occupy the eastern half of the continent, yet they occupied the West within a single generation. As millions of settlers moved into the region, they relied on letters and newspapers, magazines and pamphlets, petitions and money orders to stay connected to the wider world. Paper Trails maps the spread of the US Post using a dataset of more than 100,000 post offices, revealing a new picture of the federal government in the West. The western postal network bore little resemblance to the civil service bureaucracies typically associated with government institutions. Instead, the US Post grafted public mail service onto private businesses, contracting with stagecoach companies to carry the mail and paying local merchants to distribute letters from their stores. These arrangements allowed the US Post to rapidly spin out a vast and ephemeral web of postal infrastructure to thousands of distant places. The postal network's sprawling geography and localized operations forces a reconsideration of the American state, its history, and the ways in which it exercised power. (Publisher)

...More
Reviewed By

Review Michael A. Amundson (2022) Review of "Paper trails : The US post and the making of the American West". Environmental History (pp. 376-378). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB121158714/

Similar Citations

Article Daniel Zizzamia; (January 2019)
Restoring the Paleo-West: Fossils, Coal, and Climate in Late Nineteenth-Century America (/isis/citation/CBB674010923/)

Book Arreola, Daniel D.; (2013)
Postcards from the Río Bravo Border: Picturing the Place, Placing the Picture, 1900s--1950s (/isis/citation/CBB001452014/)

Article Lindsay Schakenbach Regele; (Spring 2018)
Industrial Manifest Destiny: American Fire- arms Manufacturing and Antebellum Expansion (/isis/citation/CBB013435909/)

Article Felix Lüttge; (2019)
Whaling Intelligence: News, Facts and US-American Exploration in the Pacific (/isis/citation/CBB399584588/)

Book Sara Dant; (2016)
Losing Eden: An Environmental History of the American West (/isis/citation/CBB832367208/)

Book Thomas G. Andrews; (2015)
Coyote Valley: Deep History in the High Rockies (/isis/citation/CBB660491584/)

Book Eric Perramond; (2019)
Unsettled waters: Rights, law, and identity in the American West (/isis/citation/CBB328997487/)

Book Patrick Dearen; (2016)
Bitter waters: The struggles of the Pecos River (/isis/citation/CBB122189904/)

Book Henkin, David M.; (2006)
The Postal Age: The Emergence of Modern Communications in Nineteenth-Century America (/isis/citation/CBB000930100/)

Book Lorenz P. Schrenk; Robert L. Frey; (2010)
Northern Pacific: Pioneer steam era (/isis/citation/CBB057031982/)

Book Adam Arenson; Andrew R. Graybill; (2015)
Civil War Wests: Testing the Limits of the United States (/isis/citation/CBB116361332/)

Article Ron Goldfeber; Peter A. Hansen; (Spring-Summer 2019)
The Pacific Railroads: U.S. Operating Companies in Alphabetical Order (/isis/citation/CBB873515283/)

Book Virginia Scharf; (2015)
Empire and Liberty: The Civil War and the West (/isis/citation/CBB673053590/)

Authors & Contributors
Hansen, Peter A.
Kathke, Torsten
Robert L. Frey
Graybill, Andrew R.
Goldfeder, Ron
Paul J. White
Concepts
Environmental history
Land transportation
Railroads
Territorial expansion
Mail delivery
Firearms
Time Periods
19th century
20th century, early
20th century
Reconstruction (U.S. history, 1865-1877)
Modern
Medieval
Places
United States
Western states (U.S.)
New Mexico (U.S.)
Pecos River
Nevada (U.S.)
Pacific Ocean
Institutions
Northern Pacific Railroad Company
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
United States Exploring Expedition (1838-1842)
Comments

Be the first to comment!

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}

Log in or register to comment