Uploaded July 2021 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
On May 6 Cameron Blevins discussed his new book, Paper Trails: The US Post and the Making of the American West, in conversation with historian Robert Dalton Harris.
In Paper Trails: The US Post and the Making of the American West (Oxford University Press | April 2021), Cameron Blevins argues that the US Post wove together two of the nineteenth century’s defining projects: western expansion and the growth of state power. The American postal system was already transmitting billions of pieces of mail each year; whether neatly filed away in the stacks of an archive or haphazardly piled up inside a shoebox in the corner of an attic, the historical record is littered with letters, newspapers, and postcards that traveled through the US Post. What then explains the relative absence of the US Post in the annals of western history, despite its pervasive presence in the historical archive? When something is everywhere, it can start to become invisible.
https://postalmuseum.si.edu/the-us-post-and-the-making-of-the-american-west
On May 6 Cameron Blevins discussed his new book, Paper Trails: The US Post and the Making of the American West, in conversation with historian Robert Dalton Harris.
In Paper Trails: The US Post and the Making of the American West (Oxford University Press | April 2021), Cameron Blevins argues that the US Post wove together two of the nineteenth century’s defining projects: western expansion and the growth of state power. The American postal system was already transmitting billions of pieces of mail each year; whether neatly filed away in the stacks of an archive or haphazardly piled up inside a shoebox in the corner of an attic, the historical record is littered with letters, newspapers, and postcards that traveled through the US Post. What then explains the relative absence of the US Post in the annals of western history, despite its pervasive presence in the historical archive? When something is everywhere, it can start to become invisible.
https://postalmuseum.si.edu/the-us-post-and-the-making-of-the-american-west
