Mail delivery- In one month—October 1949 13,362 letters and 15,571 newspapers arrived from New York State alone. Long lines formed at the post office in San Francisco with the arrival of each steamer. Some men would stand in line all night when a delivery was scheduled; late comers would offer a packet of gold dust in return for a place near the beginning of the line. The mere word that a mail steamer had entered the Golden Gate could provoke pandemonium.

The hunger for mail was so insatiable that it led to the establishment of an institution unique to gold rush San Francisco: letter bag operators. For a small fee these entrepreneurs would deliver a letter to the next outgoing steamer (contract or noncontract), thus bypassing the bottleneck (and monopoly) of the United States Post Office. Some letter bag operators required senders to bring the letter to their offices; others set up mail boxes around town and picked up outgoing mail on a regular schedule. Their fees were added to the legally established postage (forty cents per half ounce), but they did a brisk business with San Franciscans who wanted their letters to go out as soon as possible.

Good or ill, the news that letters contained linked the recipient with the daily life he or she had left behind. A letter was an intimate talk with an absent friend or a longed-for spouse. A letter was like holding in one’s hands a piece of home. Very quickly mail became more precious than gold.

From A Year of Mud and Gold—San Francisco in Letters and Diaries 1849-1850 Edited by William Benemann



Quotes from various Gold Rush Letters, pertaining to mail:



"P.S. Your package of three letters and envelopes cost me $1.65. Put on a thin envelope. You will get them at the bookstore." Jonathan F. Locke 1849



"Dear Brother. . .I heard all about your love scrape long before I received your letter containing the news. Charles Mintum came into the store and told all he knew about the affair-- and he with the help of Arthur Ebbits have continued to spread it among all of our aquaintances. In fact, Arthur appears to know more about it than I do." Henry DeWitt 1850



"We are looking daily for the arrival of the Steamer Unicorn, which is expected to bring the mails up from Panama. . . When this mail shall have arrived, I shall begin to prepare letters for home. Sometimes I feel disposed to sit down and write to each and all of my dear friends, and it is only the fact of there being such enormous postage on letters between here and the United States is that deters me from this." Anne Willson Booth 1849



"I received [a letter] under the date of October 16. These letters announce to me the afflicting and mournful news, in the loss of two dear children. . . Oh, how bitterly have I wept and with what poignancy of grief have I lamented their loss, to feel and know that on the twelfth of March last I bade an eternal adieu to them, that they have gone without resting their eyes on their Father. . . Tis this, My Brother, that has grieved me, and caused me to regret that I left my humble but happy, happy Home." Josiah Griswold 1849



"I was up this morning at five o'clock. The morning was bright and but little wind. I with others took my stand at the [post] office to get my letters, but after standing there till 8 1/2 o'clock, I was informed there were no letters for me and I left really disappointed. I had occasion to go to the post office about noon, when to m y delight I was delivered two letters from home, of the 7th and 12th of February." John McCracken April 1850



"The mail which arrived on the 8th inst. brought but a few bags, and I little thought when I presented myself at the "Bone Office" I should receive letters, and how my heart thumped with joy as I searched my pocket for a small gold piece. How insignificant seems the postage, if it were ten dollars an ounce for every letter, how readily would I pay it to hear from the dear ones in my own distant home." John McCrackan May 1850



"I cannot help telling you the offer made me for my chance at the [post] Office. I was within one of the delivery [window] when a person presents himself and offers me sixteen dollars for my place, but I noticed his remark only by saying as many hundred [ie: sixteen hundred dollars] could not keep me from my letters ten minutes, and he turned back to make an attack upon some one behind me. There must have been six hundred persons in my line from K to Z, and about the same number in the A to K line. So, as you may imagine, my breakfast this morning was a very sweet one." John McCrackan June 1850