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Mail by Mule
| Article
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20353 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
Date : |
6 / 1992 |
2,104 Words |
| Author
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Gerry Wingenbach
Gerry Wingenbach resides in Woodland Hills, California. |
The Arizona sun hangs overhead like a kite as Bud Delaney loads his pickup at the rear door of the Peach Springs post office. He grabs a paper cub of coffee and sets out on a sixty-mile drive across a fenceless desert toward Haulapai Hilltop. His cargo: five letters, several dozen boxes filled with bread and fruit, and a few hundred pounds of frozen meat. All of it is U.S. mail bound for the tiny Indian village of Supai at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.
Peach Springs is a ZIP code and a general store along historic Route 66, once the most famous highway in America. Today, interstate freeways have made Route 66 a museum case of closed motels and dried-up gas stations. Along the remaining open sections, time warps and moves slowly.
The mail route to Supai is the last mule-train mail delivery in the United States. It is a lifeline, bringing everything from food to furniture to this pastoral village, which is slowly entering the twentieth century.
"Supai is the most remote mail route in the country," says Lynn Jackson, the postmaster at the Peach Springs post office. "And the reservation doesn't want to take away that uniqueness. It's their trademark."
Shortly before 10:30 A.M., Delaney pulls his truck onto the blacktop parking lot at Hualapai Hilltop, a stunningly scenic overlook perched at the end of the road on the edge of the Grand Canyon. Pickups and dusty cars, temporarily abandoned by residents and visitors to Supai, line the lot. Several hikers who have just completed the trek out of the canyon languish on the ground. A few of them moan softly. A sign posted on a split-rail fence near a waiting string of pack mules and horses warns: U.S. Mail Delivery Zone. Leave Clear at All Times.
Delaney, a quiet man with a John Wayne physique and a wry smile, adjusts his ten-gallon hat and surveys the boxes that constitute the day's mail. He rolls up his sleeves and helps two Havasupai mule skinners transfer the mail from the truck to the backs of the animals.
Five days a week, ten to twenty mules are contracted from the Havasupai Indians by the U.S. Postal Service. In a typical week they cart more than a ton of mail to Supai. Except for what is cultivated along a thin strip of fertile land next to the village, all of the villagers' food is delivered via
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