Rural Free Delivery Changed American Society

Rural families overcame strong opposition to have their mail delivered to them.

Rural carrier in an early electric vehicle, circa 1910. Rural Free Delivery improved mail service for farm families. Smithsonian Institution. Public Domain

Americans have grown accustomed to having just about anything they need delivered to them regardless of where they live. However, this wasn’t always the case.

The United States Postal Service (USPS) experimented with its first trial of Rural Free Delivery (RFD) in West Virginia in 1890. Before RFD, only those who lived within a town proper got mail delivered to their house. The other roughly 65 percent of the country’s population who lived in rural areas weren’t as fortunate.