ADKX-tra Credit
ADKX-tra Credit
The Mail Never Fails
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Here in the Adirondacks, it can take a little extra time to send and receive mail. Many years ago that was even more true! Before the days of well paved state highways, mail carriers in the Adirondacks had to get creative when delivering the mail. Listen to this episode of ADK-Xtra credit to learn about some of the unique ways Adirondackers once got their mail.
Introductory Segment
Do you like getting mail? I know I do. Whether it’s a letter or a package, getting things in the mail is always exciting. Today we use the mail for important things like bills, fun things like magazines and packages, and sometimes even annoying things like junk mail! This time of year especially the United States Postal Service, or USPS, and other delivery services like Federal Express or FedEx and United Parcel Service or UPS get super busy because lots of people send gifts through the mail. A lot of different holidays include gift-giving traditions, and many of those holidays happen during the winter. Today when we send letters and cards through the mail, it's mostly for fun, because it feels special. But what if instead of being able to text or call your friends and family who live far away, you could only communicate by sending letters through the mail?
TRANSITION - ADKX Podcast Intro - Ready to earn some extra credit? You are listening to ADKX-tra Credit, a podcast for students about the history of the Adirondack Mountains and the people that have lived, worked, and played here. The Adirondack Experience, the Museum on Blue Mountain Lake, is located in the heart of the Adirondack Park of New York State.
CONTENT
Did you know the telephone was invented in 1876? That's about 150 years ago! But hardly anybody had telephones for quite a while, especially in rural areas like the Adirondacks. In 1945 less than half of all households in the U.S. had telephones! And here in the Adirondacks telephones were even more rare, so people relied on the mail service for even longer.
In the days before the telephone, communication took much much longer. Today, I can text my mom 80 miles away anytime I want, and she usually texts me back in just a few hours. I can call a friend who lives across the country and hear their voice from thousands of miles away. I can get online, watch TV, or listen to the radio and get news about something the president did a few hours ago, or even listen to a speech as it is happening! These seem like normal, obvious ways to communicate and get information, but many years ago none of this was possible. Instead, if I wanted to talk to my mom, I would write her a letter, send it out, wait a few days for it to get to her house, wait for her to write a reply and mail it back to me over another few days before I got to know anything. It could take anywhere from a few days to several weeks to communicate with someone by mail. Edna West Teall, an Adirondack artist and author who grew up in the 1880s, remembers that the mail often only came to her childhood home once a week!
Getting the news took much longer too! If you lived somewhere with a newspaper service, you could learn about the news in a day or two, but for Adirondackers, newspapers didn’t arrive quickly, if at all. Sometimes it would take many days to learn about even the most important national news.
An Adirondack farmer and hotel owner Juliette Baker Rice Kellogg kept a meticulous diary from 1865 to 1887, recording every day what she did, sometimes what the weather was like, and what was happening in the world.
On April 14th, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, here is Juliette's diary entry from that day.
April 14,
Wesley went out today. We are not doing much. Commenced me a sun-bonnet to day.
She didn’t mention anything about the president at all! Because of how much slower communication was in those days, Juliette didn’t even hear the news until 6 days later.
April 20,
Made me a waist today like my sun-bonnet. Rainy and cold this afternoon. Evening. Wesley came about 8 o’ clock. Told us about the “Presidents death.”
That is all she had to say! Today diaries are often used as a place for us to write about our thoughts and feelings, but many years ago they worked more like records. The important thing was to note what happened, not how you felt.
TRANSITION - sounds
Today there are few different ways mail gets delivered. In my town, there is a mail car, and the mail carrier drives from mailbox to mailbox dropping off mail, or, if you don’t have a mailbox at your house, you can take a trip to the post office and pick your mail up directly. In some towns, the mail carrier might walk on foot to deliver the mail, or perhaps drive a special mail truck. If you send or receive a package that has to travel a long way, like across the country, it might get put on a mail plane to go most of the way, before being delivered like normal on foot, by car, or by post office pickup! Now that all probably sounded pretty familiar. It's how most people get their mail, even here, in the remote Adirondacks.
But it wasn’t always that way! Do you remember the episode where we learned about Anne Labastille and her remote cabin on Black Bear Lake? If not, give it a listen! Anne’s cabin was Boat Only access, which meant no roads went past her property at all, and no cars could get there. That’s how many many camps and homes were in the Adirondacks many years ago. Many of our Adirondack lakes were only accessible from the road at one or two places, so people used boats to get around. Today that is much less common, but there are still boat access only homes and camps in many places.
Many years ago, when the mail was the biggest way people communicated with those far away, especially in the remote Adirondack wilderness where even as late as the 1960s and 70s installing telephones was impossible in many places, the USPS had to find ways to deliver the mail even to places that mail cars could not go. One common way the mail got delivered in the summer was by boat!
In the 1950s through the 1970s, a school teacher named Beulah Newton, from Endicott NY, researched all about Adirondack Mailboats. Her research is in our research library here at ADKX, we have her to thank for a lot of what we are going to learn about ADK mailboats! In 1961, the mail boat on Raquette Lake delivered mail to 22 camps and hotels on a 2 hour, 35 mile route, once a day from July 1st until labor day. In addition to carrying the mail, many mail boats also worked as public transportation, taking passengers from camp into town, or from town into camp!
Mail boats began appearing in the ADKs in 1890, this was soon after the tourism boom took off, and long before most camps and hotels were accessible by road. A mailboat named “Doris” delivered mail on lake placid from 1899 all the way to 1949, 50 years! At one time the “Doris” mail boat made 3 trips every day, because this boat carried much more than just mail. The “Doris” carried passengers and groceries to the hotels on the lake, and even collected their garbage! That’s a lot of work for one little mail boat.
Well maybe not so little. The Doris was 77 ft long, That's about as long as 2 school buses!
Some camps and hotels put mailboxes on their docks, just the same way many of us today have mailboxes at the end of our driveways. More often though, a few special leather mail bags did the job a mailbox usually does. You can see a picture of a mailbag on the webpage for this podcast! Someone from each camp or hotel would stand on the dock with any mail they wanted to send carefully packed into a mailbag and wait for the mail boat to arrive. When it did, any mail that was being delivered would be packed up in a different mailbag, and the mail carrier would take the outgoing bag, and give the person on the dock the delivery! If there was no outgoing mail, the person on the dock would simply hand over an empty bag, because the mail bags belong to the residents, not the USPS, so if you did not give the mail carrier a bag, they could not deliver your mail! If there was no outgoing mail AND no delivery, the mail boat would simply sail past, and the mail carrier would yell out to the person waiting on the dock that there was no mail that day.
The mail routes could get a little boring for the mail carriers who sailed them nearly every day, so sometimes, they would play jokes on people on their routes! One time, a summer resident of Old Forge was hosting guests who were real city-slickers, and not used to being outdoors. The Old Forge resident contacted the mail boat pilot, a man named Seth Youmans, and said he would pay Mr. Youmans to splash his guests as he sailed by. Mr. Youmans agreed, and the city dwelling guests got completely soaked! Luckily they found the whole thing funny in the end.
After listening to many stories about the mail boats, Buelah Newton wrote a poem about taking a ride on a mailboat operated by two people named “Red” and Slim” in the 1960s, here is a small piece of that poem!
A doctors family greets Red and Slim at the boats next place,
They give Slim mail, he gives mail back, each has a happy face;
They ask Slim about his baby boy, Slim grins from ear to ear
“Oh he’s fat and well, and thank you, sir,” is the reply we hear.
Slim tells that some of the woodsy camps have no telephones or lights,
People don’t seem to miss them, they get along alright.
TRANSITION - sounds
Mail boats weren’t the only unusual way Adirondackers many years ago got their mail. In the winter time, the snowy conditions and limited traffic meant that even for residents who lived along roads, getting the mail was no easy task. Instead of wagons with wheels that would get stuck in the drifts, the mail was delivered on sleighs that could easily glide through the snow.
Sometimes though, even sleighs could not get through the snow, and in the days before snowplows, it took a long time to clear the roads, often many days! Here is an excerpt from a poem by Jeanne Robert Foster about one such time in an Adirondack logging camp.
When I think back to the old logging days,
One winter at “The Blue” comes to my mind.
The roads were blocked; it might be several days
Before the mail stage could dig through from North Creek,
Or bring mail and medicines from Raquette Lake.
The ice was glare, and three guides volunteered
To skate down to the Raquette for the mail.
It was an all-day trip; I watched the lake
And caught them as the broke into “The Blue,”
Their pack baskets full up with all the mail,
Bending to keep their balance–three as one–
Searing the ice with their long racing strokes.
TRANSITION
We have some super cool photographs and objects related to mail in the Adirondacks here at ADKX! In our temporary rustic furniture exhibit, Natural Beauty, there is a beautiful rustic mailbox from Brandreth Camp. Natural beauty will be open throughout the 2026 season, but if you missed it, there is a photograph of the mailbox in the webpage for this podcast!
TRANSITION - ADKX Podcast conclusion - Thank you for joining us for an episode of ADKX-tra Credit. This podcast is brought to you by Adirondack Experience, the museum on Blue Mountain Lake. Our mission is to expand understanding of Adirondack history and the relationship between people and the Adirondack wilderness, fostering informed choices for the future. If you want to learn more fun Adirondack history visit our website theadkx.org