In the 21st century, the US Postal Service is starting to seem like an anachronism, but in the 19th and 20th centuries, the Post Office knit the country together, and the establishment of rural free delivery made mail service available to farms and rural areas. In the late 1800s, rural post offices, often located in country stores, did not deliver mail out of town, and farmers had to make a trip to the post office to pick up mail. In 1896, the post office began implementing free delivery to rural areas. The rural routes were based on how far a man could travel by horse and buggy in a day.
Parcel post delivery was begun in 1913, and rural citizens were no longer cut off from the rapidly changing trends of the 20th century.
On October 22, 1896, Palmyra was the first post office to establish rural free delivery in Virginia. Palmyra is located in central Virginia east of Charlottesville.
RFD: To The Country is an excellent short video from the Smithsonian Institute's National Postal Museum which tells the story of rural free delivery with many period images and film clips.
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