God Bless the USPS™ is an ongoing archive of the post offices of the United States with careful attention to rural and small-town communities.
The Archive
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.
Inland West
The Southwest
West Coastal
Great Lakes States
The Midwest
Great Plains States
Appalachia
The Mid-Atlantic
Ozarks
The South
Islands
The Northeast
Research
Field Work
Funded research and independent documentation across different North American bioregions and communities
Stories
Public lectures on hyperlocal postal history that cover rarities, hilarities, and conversational community research
Shows
Library
Save the economy, send more letters 💌
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
Press
Washington Post
Long before post offices became political flash points, this artist was photographing them
“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
Mary Welcome's art reflects her interest in advocacy for rural communities
"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
Post offices: Look at them a bit, and the monotony falls away
“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
A Love Letter to the USPS
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
New Art + Sounds from the Pacific Northwest
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
God Bless the USPS
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.
Save the economy, send more letters 💌
God Bless the USPS
Vernacular Post Office Archive
© Mary Welcome
Contact
Palouse, Wash.
99161-0364
godblesstheusps@gmail.com