My name is Cameron Blevins. Thank you for cosponsoring this event might particularly Jeffrey Engel england john phipps. Its my pleasure to introduce Cameron Blevins who braved last night whether to fly in from denver where he teaches u. S. History and humanities at the university of colorado campus in the mile high city. Before moving to the Current Ratio is assistant professor of history at Northeastern University in boston and the core faculty member at the school lab for networks. Cameron is in of the nutmeg state to does anybody know what the nutmeg state is . A number of you. I was hoping id be able to enlighten you. Although he posted palm streets and sunny skies of Southern California when he studied as an undergraduate he loved the west so much that he moved up interstate five to stand for where he his ph. D. In history in 2015. He argued boasts an impressive publication record and tonight he is here to to discuss with this his most significant accomplishment today, paper trail the u. S. The u. S. Post and the making of the American West published by university press. Cameron will be happy to take your questions and afterward signed books which are available to purchase just outside. The drill is you buy them outside and bring them back here so cameron can find them. Please join me in welcoming Cameron Blevins. [applause] can you hear me all right . Good, okay. I just wanted to make sure. Thank you so much for coming year tonight and i want to start by thanking andy in the Climate Center for inviting me along with brain function and the center for president ial history. We fan has been fabulous organizing this and i want to thank all of you for coming. Can i get a show of hands here how many folks have sent or received a handwritten letter in the last few weeks. How many folks have been to their post office in the last two weeks . Okay. How many folks like im in trouble. Re i wanted to see where free one is coming from the register here so i wanted to see what that was like. We are going to start in a slightly different place and that is the Salt River Valley in central arizonaed about 100 mils eastn and we are going back in time to september of 1886. Obviously its arizona in september so its extremely hot about 100 degrees out september 8, 1886. We are going to zoom to the house of benjamin and mary curtis in the middle of the Salt River Valley on a ranch in Benjamin Curtis is sitting there and mary is napping in benjamin sits down to write a letter. Mentioned and life to this point have involved a nomadic existence. Actually was born in ohio of the youngest of four siblings in these excuse me three siblings were orphaned at ad young age and scattered with relatives across the country. He briefly served in the civil war in agent in the navy and after the war started moving west across rowers and settled in Northern California where he time trying to open up his own store in an orange grove in Southern California eventually relocated again to the middle of arizona to start a ranch in the 1880s. Thats where he met mary. Eighboy got married after a short courtship into your later she gave birth and this is when he sat down to write the letter. The letters written to his older sisters who live in San Diego California at the time. He was basically sharing the news n saying your little nieces sleeping nicely in other is well also. Last sunday a. M. At 1 00 we were happy for the successful arrival he went to report the trying times marys posted a bravely and although his 100 here in this room shes not complaining but is as sweet as ever. And my personal favorite part its the nicest baby ever born although it doesnt take after his father. He has plenty of c hair on the p cop of his head. As you can see benjamin had a severe receding hairline. Finally he close the letter with the most what i believe is the most touching part. There we go. Mary says she thinks deli and henrietta would be nice and the letterr was addressed to deli d henrietta curtis naming their baby after her aunt. This is especially poignant. They had lost their own parents and less remain generation and this is the first first member the next generation this connection crosses arizona to Southern California and not brought family members together. This particular piece of paper was part of a collection of dozens and dozens of letters between the curtis siblings and they are housed at the Huntington Library in california pasadena. Ive read every single one of these letters and it expands in the 1840s all the way to the 1890s saw remarkable collection. Across these paper trails all the time. Everywhere often in archives like the Huntington Library and were trained to read analyze these pieces of paper right squeeze each and every one for every last bit of information. Every piece of insight into the past and rewarded with a richness of detail right letters like this one offering these intimate glimpses into past lives the experiences of long dead people. All right a new parent sitting down in the 100 degree heat. Write a letter cracking jokes about his hairline, but also sharing this deeply meaningful moment. With people he love but we historians are not necessarily as good at recognizing how these paper trails were generated. And the case of letters in particular that bread and butter the historical archive. Understanding the simple fact that these pieces of paper had to travel from point a. To point b that without this journey. Without this paper physically traveling from benjamins table and the Salt River Valley to his sisters letterbox in San Diego Post Office about 400 miles away. This scrap of paper is just a scrap of paper. That is what gives it meaning. And i noticed in reading all of these pieces of paper. Written by the excuse me, the curtis siblings, they kept mentioning other stuff. Other stuff thats passing between them traveling through the mail. Mary and Benjamin Living on their ranch subscribe to half a dozen newspapers and magazines from across the country. In places like san francisco, chicago, new york a nearby city in globe. Benjamin subscribed to the american agriculturalists a farming magazine mary and Benjamin Living on their rants described a half a dozen newspapers and magazines from across the country places like san francisco, chicago and new york and nearby city. Benjamin subscribed to the farming magazine and mary subscribed to delineate a womens magazine. All of this stuff. And those letters they mentioned other things asking them to send fiction. Send by male. They asked her mother and fathers photo and flannel pens knocking things repents bids a bundle of san diego papers all of this material traveling across that distance. That provided all of these connections to benjamin and the importance of these more remarkable when you stop to this zoom in. And think about where they are living at the time. How remote the Salt River Valleys. This is the backcountry you see in hollywood films. When he moved there two years ago hes he is a bachelor and he wrote a letter and the complaints only had for company were his cousins horses. Mentiom sending a silks. Excuse me, silk kerchief flannel pins napkin rings 21 dollars a suitable breast pen laces ribbons bibs muslin a bundle of san diego papers all of this material traveling across that distance. And that provided all of these connections to benjamin and merritt. And the importance of these grows even more remarkable when you stop for a second to zoom at and think about where theyre living at the time. I cannot drive home to you. How remote the Salt River Valley is. This is the rugged western bat country that you see in hollywood films, right . When you moved there two years ago, he was a bachelor and he wrote in a letter that he complained all he had for company or his cows and his horses. The nearest doctor was a 30 mile horse ride away in the city of globe. He was utterly alone. Except that he wasnt the male connected him to the family that he had left behind in the wider world. Right, he was able to use the mail to stay connected. He wrote this letter on september 8th. Three days later, september 11th. He walked out his front door. And walked about 15 minutes to the nearest post office catalpa less than a mile away. Dropped it off again on september 11th. Four days later on september 15th, it showed up in the San Diego Post Office. Four days to go from the middle of nowhere, arizona to san diego, right . Traveling again 400 miles across mesa and scrubland and desert and mountains and ends up in the hands of his sister. All of this means that that had to travel across a network of post offices and mail routes that connected these two places. And it traveled across a network. There was arguably the most expansive Communication Network on the planet at the time the us post. So what id like to argue here today, and this is the core subject of my book is that you cannot understand the United States. In the late 19th century in particular you cant understand this process of western expansion that define this era. As millions of americans poured westward and all these remote places like the Salt River Valley without understanding the role of the us post. In this process so a little context for you three years later the postmaster general the United StatesJohn Wanamaker. Is basically the head of the entire us postal system. Reported that in his annual report to congress the visible form of the federal government to every community. Every citizen its talking about the us post. Its the only one that touches the local life the social interests and Business Concern of every neighborhood. And went on to share that there are 58,99 post offices. And 669,766 kilometers of male routes operating the United States. But what are those numbers mean . Right we can dismiss this as kind of hyperbole of a what his department is doing. And im willing to bet if i said 28,000 or if i said 88,000 it probably wouldnt have made that much of a difference to you. Were not that good understanding some of these numbers when theyre operating at this scale. And so in part what my research has done is try to understand what some of these numbers mean. And to do that ive turned to a method. Broadly known as digital history. This is a kind of lucy goosey umbrella term about using computers and technology to study teach or communicate about the past in some way. Now i think at this point if the last year and a half has taught us anything in many ways. I think were all digital historians, right . We are all interacting with the past learning about the past large part through screens. But in my case of this project. I was specifically using data using quantitative data to try to conduct Research Look for patterns and then visualize those patterns. About the past in this topic. So you can start to understand what the size of the us post actually was in 1889. This is showing on the xaxis here. The number of excuse me, the lengths of mail routes in kilometers and on the yaxis the number of post offices operated by Different Countries across the world. United states is a complete outlier. It has several times the number of post offices several times the length of mayor roots operating in 1889. But i was also able to use a different data set. The reason why i asked if anyone was a stamp collector, is that much of this book basically is due to this man right here richard hellbach. He is a prolific was a prolific stamp collector and also postal historian. And he actually passed away in 2011 before i had a chance to actually discover a lot of his work, but he spent decades of his life collecting information about nearly every post office that operated in the United States. Throughout its history. And he created a data set of about 166,000 post offices. And i stumbled upon his work when i was a graduate student i sent about excuse me sent eighty dollars to his widow at the time who mailed me a cd. And then i was able to basically receive all of the data for my entire research agenda. So, thank you richard. At best 80 bucks ive ever spent and i obviously owe him quite a bit. So what he did was he went back into the archives looked at microfilmed reels the us postal system captured a lot of information at the time they recorded basically information about every post office and he transcribed this. Into a spreadsheet of data right having the name of the post office the state and county where it operated and the years when it was opened and then closed. Incredibly rich data set now. His goal was to provide a kind of standardized list of post offices for stamp collectors to try to evaluate. How rare a particular letter or cover as theyre known was if it originated at a particular post office. I am less interested in stamp collecting i have to admit but this is an incredible Historical Data set. And so what i do is i took this data and then im not going to go into the details, but basically had to use kind of Computer Programming to try to figure out where those 166,000 post offices were located and again, im not going to go into all this. I was 70 just walk through 300 lines of computer code, but ill spare you that that torture. The end result though is what 166,000 post offices looks like on a map . Again, roughly speaking not complete but most post offices that operate in the United States. Over its entire history and what we can do to also now that we have these post offices is start to drill down into specific years to see what it looked like at different points in time. So this is what 58,999 post offices operating in 1889. Looks like so in postmaster general John Wanamaker said basically, its the only entity that touches the Business Concern and social life of every neighborhood every community. It wasnt really exaggerating with some exceptions. There was a post office in nearly every community in the United States. And so you can start to understand how this individual post office that was serving in this case Benjamin Curtis connected at him into these National System of information spread across the country gave him access. All of these different places so again continent spanning information network. It was huge. It was expansive. But we can also use this data to look and study how this network got to this point. Because if benjamin had moved to the Salt River Valley even 10 years before he would not have been able to send letters to his sisters. That connectivity that depended on the us posts ability to expand into distant places in lockstep with american settlers like Benjamin Curtis. And youre about to see that with really finegrained detail. This is the expansion of the us postal system starting on the east coast. Obviously a kind of narrow band. And then again moving in conjunction with americans. And in the 1840s you start to see this kind of explosion of post offices in the far west lining up with a seizure of territory violence easier of territory from mexico during the mexicanamerican war and the eventual occupation of that land by settlers. So this system is able to move incredibly quickly across this vast territory and again into these distant distant corners of the west. But also what i started to notice, which was even more remarkable to me. Was that it wasnt just expanding. It was also contracting from those same areas almost simultaneously. This is showing a map of post offices in gray and then on top of them in Red Post Office that either change names or locations or in discontinued entirely in 1884. And if you go through each year, youre seeing hundreds and hundreds of post offices shutting down. Across the western United States and really the entire country. In fact if you compare just in a 25 year quarter century leading up to 1889. Post offices that were newly opened versus post offices that were shut down it almost looks like a kind of ghostly skeleton of the other one, right . So this process of expansion is also extremely unstable or its opening up in all these thousands of places, but also withdrawing from many of those places almost simultaneously so over 25 years 48,000 us post offices either closed. Change names or moved locations across that time period roughly 1,900 post offices every year. If you look at some of these offices it is remarkable how quickly they shut down. This is an example from arizona. Esperanzas open on february 26th october 9th shut down. What is going on . Well, if you also look at the people who are running these post offices. Its just as unstable. In the late 19th century during this period about one out of every six postmasters across the country was either removed. Resigned or died in office every single year one out of six. But this followed particular patterns in this case. Im just showing post office. Excuse me postmasters who were removed from office by the administration. What youre seeing . Is that the post Office Department is operated by the executive branch the presidency . So whenever the presidency changes Political Parties from republicans to democrats . You s