Sunday, September 25, 2005

Post Office behind bars

According to the Associated Press, a tiny post office inside the Menard Correctional Center is the oldest Illinois post office still in use...and perhaps the only such postal facility in America.

Dating to back to 1884, it is barely the size of a big bedroom. While it is not open to the public, it does sell stamps and money orders to the prison's 3,450 inmates and 860 employees.

Postmaster Tony Hughes said may be the nation's only one behind a prison's walls.

The article quotes, Nancy Pope, a historian with the Smithsonian Institution's National Postal Museum as saying she's unaware of any research done on post offices behind bars.

To read the entire article, click here.
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posted by Don Schilling at 12:01 PM