The God Bless the USPS archive contains thousands of post office portraits from every corner of the country. Galleries of some of our regional favorites are coming soon.
Funded research and independent documentation across different North American bioregions and communities
Public lectures on hyperlocal postal history that cover rarities, hilarities, and conversational community research
Mary Welcome is a rural cultural worker, community organizer, long-haul driver, and lifelong penpal hailing from the Palouse prairie. She began documenting and archiving post office portraits in 2012.
📫 PO Box 364 Palouse Wash. 99161
Washington Post
“It’s an endurance project,” Welcome says, grinning and undeterred. “In the meantime, I’ll keep taking drives and paying attention and sending letters. It’s life’s work.”
Inlander
"I realized once I started doing this research that no archive exists," Welcome says. "You can find a fair amount about the New Deal post offices, but for the most part, post offices — especially rural post offices — are a reflection of the vernacular landscape; they're like a fingerprint of the place."
Minn Post
“There was a time when there were more letter carriers in America than soldiers,” Mary counters. “I love imagining a time when that was the case, when that type of precision and discipline was in service of people talking to each other.”
The Daily Smile
Mary Welcome has loved the United States Postal Service since she was a kid writing letters to people around the country. As an adult, that love evolved into a photo project that pays tribute to an old school way of communication and the USPS workers who make it happen.
Indie Folk
Mary Welcome of Palouse, WA (population 1,028) identifies as “a rural cultural worker” and is attempting to photograph every extant post office in small and shrinking towns across America, taking to the highway with only an Atlas for a guide.
SITE Magazine
Intimacy and institution collide in the rural post office, which often serves as the social fulcrum (both publicly and privately) of remote communities. Rural communities rely on the post office to provide critical space for community news, both by word of mouth across and around the conversational space of the counter and through bulletin boards for local announcements.