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Posterboard

FriAug 0 4

Scheduled tours

Postal History Foundation

920 N 1st Ave, Tucson, AZ 85719, USA

The foundation is open but walk-in visitors may have to self-tour, as our tour guide is booked for a pre-scheduled tour. The foundation and library may be crowded at times.

SatAug 0 5

Tucson Stamp Club meeting

Tucson Stamp Club

Slusser Library

920 N 1st Ave, Tucson, AZ 85719, USA

12 noon bourse; 1 pm program: In honor of Marilyn Monroe’s birthday (today), members are encouraged to bring stamps and postal materials to share on the clothesline.

TueAug 0 8

Library closing early

Slusser Library

920 N 1st Ave, Tucson, AZ 85719, USA

Library will close at 2 instead of 3.

ThuAug 1 7

Preparing for the Tucson Birthday Party

Youth Education through Stamps

Postal History Foundation

Slusser Library

920 N 1st Ave, Tucson, AZ 85719, USA

The library will be closed to prepare for the event.

Limited library service are available in the main building.

FriAug 1 8

Tucson Birthday Party!

Youth Education through Stamps

Postal History Foundation

Slusser Library

920 N 1st Ave, Tucson, AZ 85719, USA

The winners of the Tucson Birthday Stamp Design Contest, their families, and the Mayor of Tucson, will celebrate Tucson’s birthday and their winning stamp designs.

Due to building capacity, this is an invitation-only event; the press is welcome to cover our celebration.

The library will be closed all day to accommodate the event and its preparation and clean-up.

This event is supported in part by Bookman’s Entertainment Exchange.

SatAug 1 9

Tucson Stamp Club meeting

Tucson Stamp Club

Slusser Library

920 N 1st Ave, Tucson, AZ 85719, USA

12 noon bourse; 1 pm program.

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920 N 1st Ave Tucson AZ 85719
P 520-623-6652
E info@phftucson.org

The Postal History Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to connecting people to postal history, philately, and the world of stamps to inspire curiosity and encourage the enjoyment of life-long learning.

Music Legends

Musicians

Singers and Songwriters

United States philately, 1969

Click image to enlarge.

Worldwide philately, 1969

Click image to enlarge.

Commemorations of the 1969 moon landing

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Letters from Home

“Another week gone and no newsman yet. These months—years perhaps—will to a certain extent be a blank to us. We know nothing of what is going on the states, nothing of the political maneuvers. President’s messages, doings of Congress, elections of senators and assemblymen and the thousand and one maneuvers of the day, riots, mobs, fires, rail-road accidents—in fact I shall be a kind of Rip van Winkle & it will require the first ten years after returning to learn what has taken place while away.”

–Letter from A.W. Genung in Curtissville, San Joaquin District to “Woodward,” Dec 16, 1849, from James W. Milgram’s The Western Mails.

Cover postmarked Florence, Arizona, 1876

Life in the Old West

Imagine leaving everything and everyone you know and moving across the country to live in the wilderness, hoping to make your fortune in gold, silver, or copper. Living 1000 miles or more away from home, the only way to talk to your family and friends, and the only way to know what was happening outside your immediate vicinity, was through letters and newspapers: the mail.

Postcard depicting man outside a cabin in Prescott

Promotional postcard from Globe depicting two men and a child at water pump

Image of teacher and students at Mayer school

Postcard depicting a prospector sifting with a rocker box

Mules, Wagons, and Well-Worn Routes

Mail, including letters, supplies, and goods, was often freighted in by steamship from San Francisco to the port of Yuma. From there, items either continued up river or were loaded onto wagons, coaches, and pack animals and taken out to towns and camps.

The stage lines and buckboard lines that carried mail and supplies also transported passengers on a regular basis between towns, sometimes requiring at least one overnight stay. These vehicles were extraordinarily uncomfortable, however. After making the much longer overland (cross-country) trip on stagecoach, journalist Waterman L. Ormsby famously said, “I NOW KNOW WHAT HELL IS LIKE. I’VE JUST HAD 24 DAYS OF IT.”

“Prospector on the Desert” unused postcard

Wilcox, Arizona, 1915, undated photograph

“For All Points Along the Colorado River”

Steamers left San Francisco for the Gulf of California every 20 days and then traveled up the Colorado River. The port at Yuma was a major artery in the delivery of supplies to Arizona.

The steamboats transported not only mail and goods, but also people. In 1874 Martha Summerhayes traveled on the steamboat Gila from Fort Yuma to Fort Mohave. In her book Vanished Arizona, she describes the conditions:

The staterooms “were always stuffy and noisy, and in the summer they were so suffocatingly hot.” In the dining room, “the metal handles of the knives were uncomfortably warm to the touch; and even the wooden arms of the chairs felt as if they were slowly igniting… A siesta was out of the question, as the staterooms were insufferable; and so we dragged out the weary days.”

Postcard postmarked 1910 depicting the Yuma landing on the Colorado River

Unused and undated postcard depicting the Yuma landing on the Colorado River

Colorado Steam Navigation Company advertisement

“Fastest Time and Best Stock”

Entrepreneurs from the Tucson area, such as Pinchney Tully, Estevan Ochoa, Pedro Aguirre, Mariano Samaniego, J.D. Kinnear, and William “Curly” Neal, provided much- needed services between short distances.

Tuffy Peach delivered mail on horseback three times a week between Camp Verde and Payson from 1910-1914. His route was 52 miles long, lasted 11 hours, and required one change of horse. When interviewed by the Arizona Philatelist in 1968, he described his work:

“I often had mail piled so high in front of me that I could hardly see where my horse was treading… “But, gosh, those horses knew the mail route better than the dispatch riders. We couldn’t get lost if we tried. Our horses wouldn’t let us.”

Clinton “Tuffy” Peach, Arizona Philatelist article, January 1968. Tuffy Peach delivered mail on horseback to and from Camp Verde, Arizona and Payson, Arizona from 1910-1914.

Advertisement for Walker and Kinnear’s stage company.

Photograph of stage outside Hotel Nobles.

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