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Parks and Postal Services

The Stamp Collecting Report, I'm Lloyd de Vries.

To commemorate the centennial of the National Park Service this year, the Smithsonian
National Postal Museum has a special exhibit on the Parks and Mail.

“I learned a lot in the course of doing it, about all of the different and really
unusual ways that mail moves through the Parks.” RUNS :08

Daniel Piazza, chief curator for Philately, says a casual visitor to a Park might not
realize how important the mail is.

“Staff who work in the parks  —  park rangers, concessionaires, their families who live
with them in the parks — really depend on these park post offices for their mail. It’s
not just for tourists sending postcards.” RUNS :11

In putting together the exhibit, Piazza visited a number of Parks and their post offices
in the past year or so.

“At the Petrified Forest, I asked what is the number-one thing that you see come through
the post office here. The answer was the red Netflix envelopes.”  RUNS :09

The mail system is a lifeline to the outside world.

“There’s no broadband Internet, streaming is not very good and for their entertainment,
for everything, they really rely these post offices in the parks.”

At another Park, a ranger was awaiting a part for his barbecue grill.

“He had his whole family coming to a cookout in the park and he was standing there in
the post office waiting for that package to arrive, and if it didn’t, he was going to
have a two-hour roundtrip to a hardware store in town somewhere to be able to get a part.”
RUNS :13

The U-S Postal Service has just issued a set of 16 stamps commemorating the wide variety
of the National Park Service,

I’m Lloyd de Vries of The Virtual Stamp Club. For more on stamps and stamp collecting,
visit virtual-stamp-club-dot-com.

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