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When Rural Free Delivery Service began, first as an experiment in 1896 and later as an official service in 1902, patrons looked around their homes and farms for anything they could find to use as a mailbox.

In 1901, after having received a fair share of complaints from rural carriers about the large number of often unsuitable assortment of mailboxes used by their patrons, the Post Office Department appointed a five-man commission to examine commercial rural mailbox designs.

The Post Office Department agreed that any company could manufacture rural mailboxes, provided the boxes were made to postal specifications. By 1903, 46 different companies were manufacturing rural delivery mailboxes.

Mailbox | Rural | Countryside | USA | Tree | Grass | Postbox | History