MAIL BY MULE

Neither snow nor rain nor 2,000-foot cliffs can stop them.

- SARAH YAGER

Just after 8 o'clock one spring morning, 2,000 feet below the rim of the Grand Canyon, Nate Chamberlain, wearing chaps and cowboy boots, emerged from the post office in Supai, Arizona, with the last of the morning mail. He tucked a Priority Mail envelope into a plastic U.S. Postal Service crate lashed to one of the six mules waiting outside. Then he climbed into the saddle on the lead mule, gave a kick of his spurs, and set off down the dirt road leading out of the village.

It was the beginning of what may be the country’s most unusual USPS route—the very last to deliver mail by mule. The mule train would travel eight miles along a creek lined with cottonwoods, through a narrow gorge, and up a switchbacking trail carved into the cliffside to reach a hitching post at the top of the canyon, where a sign reads US MAIL DELIVERY ZONE. There, Chamberlain would drop off the outgoing mail with a driver—who would take it another 68 miles to the next post office, in the town of Peach Springs—and pick up the incoming mail to deliver back to the village.

Supai, the only village on the reservation of the Havasupai Tribe, is one of the most remote communities in the country. It is accessible only by foot, and by helicopter when the weather allows. The mule train, which makes the 16-mile, six-hour loop up and down the canyon five days a week, is perhaps the most extreme manifestation of the USPS mandate to “render postal services to all communities.” Mail delivery in Supai involves a feat of logistics, horsemanship, and carefully placed hooves. It is slow and drudging work—starting at 3 a.m., when Chamberlain rises to feed the pack string, and continuing to sundown as fences are fixed and horseshoes are replaced—that belies an era of instant delivery, optimized everything, and “government efficiency.” It also offers a glimpse into what the Postal Service can mean for rural America, at a moment when the agency's future is uncertain.