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Rural Free Delivery, 1896–1913

In the 1890s and early 1900s, the Post Office Department launched an unprecedented spatial reorganization of its postal network: Rural Free Delivery, when mail carriers started delivering mail to the doorsteps of individual homes. Chapter 7 details the rollout of Rural Free Delivery, which was put into motion through an alliance between department administrators and agrarian reformers. This initiative triggered a spatial and administrative shift in the US Post, as it altered the geography of the network while ushering in a more recognizably modern bureaucracy made up of professional civil servants. But mapping the spread of the service reveals that Rural Free Delivery did not initially extend to the rural West. There, the older agency model would continue to define mail service well into the twentieth century.