CAVE POST OFFICES CAVE POST OFFICES Thomas Lera Cave Books www.cauebooks.com Library of Congress Control Number 2011001057 ISBN 978-0-939748-76-1 First edition February, 2011 Frontice Piece: An early picture of the Mammoth Cave Post Office and Store. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Lera, Thomas M. Cave post offices / by Thomas Lera. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13:978-0-939748-76-1 (pbk.) ISBN-10: 0-939748-76-2 (pbk.) 1. Names, Geographical—United States. 2. United States—History, Local. 3. Caves- United States—History. 4. Cities and towns—United States-History 5. Post office buildings—United States. 6. Postal service—United States—History. 7. Postmarks—United States—History. 8. Canceling machines—United States—History. I. Title. E155.L47 2011 383'.42-dc22 2011001057 ©2011 Thomas Lera All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any data storage or retrieval system without the express written permission of the copyright owner. Published by CAVE BOOKS 4700 Amberwood Drive Dayton, Ohio 45424-4602 http://www.cavebooks.com Cave books is the publication affiliate of the Cave Research Foundation Publisher: Roger McClure Book design by Greyhound Press, Bloomington, Indiana Cover design by Gary Berdeaux, Park City, Kentucky Printed in The United States of America Table of Contents Acknowledgements 3 Preface 4 A Short Introduction to Postmarks and Cancellations 5 Historical Records of the United States Post Office 19 Alabama 23 Arizona 24 Arkansas 28 California 30 Colorado 34 Georgia 35 Hawaii 38 Illinois 39 Indiana 42 Kansas 43 Kentucky 45 Maryland 53 Mississippi 55 Missouri 56 Montana 59 Nevada 62 New Mexico 64 New York 66 North Carolina 70 Ohio 72 Oregon 73 Pennsylvania 77 South Carolina 79 1 Cave Post Offices South Dakota 80 Tennessee 82 Texas 85 Virginia 87 Washington 94 West Virginia 95 Summary 98 Appendix One: Cave Post Offices 99 Appendix Two: Cave-Related Post Offices 109 References 125 Index 127 Thomas Lera 135 Acknowledgements I would like to thank Robert Hoke and the American Spelean History Association's Journal of Spelean History for publishing portions of this book in 2004-2006 in issues 126,127, 128, and 129, and J. P. van der Pas, friend and long time editor and publisher of The Speleo Stamp Collector and Speleophilately International. I am grateful to William Halliday for his insight and information on several cancellations and town names, Greg Beck and William Mixon for their constructive comments to improve the manuscript, and to Roger McClure and Cave Books for accepting and publishing this manuscript. I also thank the American Philatelic Research Library and the Smithsonian Institution Library at the National Postal Museum for opening their holdings for research on the history of each state's place names. Finally, I thank Sandy Fitzgerald for her support and dedication to editing and making sure I finally finished this work. The passion you showed for living life is what has inspired me to be so passionate in what I do. This book is every bit as much your accomplishment as it is mine. All illustrations of cancellations are from the collection of Thomas Lera or, where noted, courtesy of Speleophilately International. Preface To understand and chronicle the development of the "cave" post offices found in the United States, one has to look at "speleophilately," or the collecting of cave postal history, postage stamps, and other philatelic cave-related materials. One result of the 8th International Congress of Speleology held in 1981 at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, Kentucky, was the publication of The Speleo Stamp Collector (changed to Speleophilately International for a brief period), which has been continuously edited and updated by Jan Paul van der Pas. To date, several hundred postage stamps have been issued that in some way relate to caves and bats. Two publications containing checklists have been published by the American Topical Association: in 1996, Hand Book No. 128, Bats in Philately by Thomas Lera; and in 2000, Hand Book No. 143, Speleophilately: Collecting Caves of Postage Stamps by Ronnie L. Nixon. The checklists presented in this publication are complete through 2010 and provide collectors the information necessary to assemble a collection of cave postal history objects. Also included herein are post offices with names directly related to cave features like sinking spring, lost creek, and limestone. These post offices have been researched to insure they are in fact cave-related. Town names associated with cave minerals—like Calcite, Colorado; Phosphate, Tennessee; and Azurite, Nevada—are beyond the scope of this book and are not included. Although there are no books on cave minerals on stamps, there is ^Philatelic Mineralogy (Web site: http://mineralstamps.rbnet.net/) with a very complete list of minerals illustrated with stamps, current as of February, 2010. This book begins with an introduction to the different type of postmarks and cancellations found on envelopes and postcards, followed by a short description of what can be found by searching the National Archives, and ending with a list by state of cave post offices. A Short Introduction to Postmarks and Cancellations From the earliest days of United States postage stamp production, one of the great concerns of the Post Office Department has been the prevention of illegal reuse of stamps. This has generally been accomplished by applying a postmark to cancel the stamp. The terms "postmark" and "cancellation" each have different specific meanings. A cancellation is always a postmark, but a postmark is not always a cancellation. , N \&'\ ..4? to 4rS'J y Va Figure 1. Natural Bridge, Virginia, postmark with St rate indicating the letter traveled less than 300 miles. Postmarks were developed long before postage stamps, mostly to indicate the point of origin for a specific piece of mail (Figure 1). It was applied by the post office to identify the town of origin and any other transit markings such as FORWARDED or PAID. The postmark allowed the post office to calculate the distance the letter traveled and thereby determine the amount of payment due by the recipient, not the sender. Cave Post Offices In the 1800s, many communities were too small to have their own post offices so their mail was sent from the nearest town that had one, as seen in the letter from Cave Spring, Kentucky (Figure 2). 1 f 6*, >/^s- <KC^ 6L It /** &i /m Figure 2. Cave Spring, Warren County, Kentucky, letter dated June 21,1851, carried to Bowling Green and posted June 24 [1851]. The Red "X" indicates 10<t due upon delivery because the letter traveled over 300 miles. The first U.S. postage stamps were issued in 1847 and brought with them the concern that instead of buying new stamps, recipients might reuse the stamps from mail received. To prevent this, the postmaster marked usage on each stamp by hand, indicating it could not be used again. The envelope below illustrates handwritten post office, state, and date. This method of cancellation was very common on stamped mail in the 1840s and 1850s (Figure 3). Cancellation is a more specific term, referring only to the portion of the postal marking that obliterates a postage stamp, indicating the stamp was used. The obliteration prevented reuse. 6 Introduction j Figure 3. Manuscript cancel'from Cave Spring, Virginia, dated October IS, 1859. In 1859, Marcus P. Norton of Troy, N.Y., patented the handstamp, a hand-held duplex- style stamp-canceling device. In a single motion, this circular date stamp (CDS) imprinted both the date and the name of the sending town with a target killer that obliterated the stamp. Prior to standardization of cancelling equipment in the early 1890s, postmasters at smaller post offices were required to purchase their handstamps from private vendors, and, as one might imagine, there were many varieties of design and style. Figure 4. Horse Cave, Kentucky, CDS with target killer. Impressions made by the standardized CDS consisted of a plain circular outline measuring 28 mm in diameter, in which the name of the post office was centered at the top and the name or abbreviation of the state was centered at the bottom. The date was located in the center and consisted of three or four lines that included month, day, year, and, for larger post offices, the hour. The handstamp was constructed of a metal die attached to a wooden handle, with removable slugs for the month, day, year, and time. Inverted dates were common, as the Cave Post Offices postmaster occasionally slid the slugs in upside down and in inverted order. The style of lettering was usually block or sans-serif. The government also issued a cancel to be used with the standardized CDS. The outer ring of the cancel is four concentric rings, measuring 17 mm in diameter, called a target killer (Figure 4) because it obliterated or prevented further use of the stamp. The barrel duplex handstamps (Figure 5) were initially issued to 1st and 2nd class post offices beginning about 1895. They consisted of a single, circular ring containing the name of the post office, state, date, and time, and an ellipse with a long vertical axis as the cancel portion. The ellipse had a barrel-shaped central section from which this cancel got its name. In the center of the barrel was a number believed to have referred to a specific clerk or canceling or sorting station number. It was perhaps a way to keep track of several of these handstamps within a particular post office with several mail routes.