How often were post offices robbed on the frontier?
Gerald Jantzen - Okeene, Oklahoma
Robbing a post office wasn’t common in the Old West—although some stores that doubled as mail stations got hit more often. Robbers frequently hit stagecoaches or trains carrying mail pouches, since those often transported cash or bank notes. Yes, back in those days, people actually sent money in the mail.
Marshall Trimble is Arizona’s official historian and vice president of the Wild West History Ass

July 2017
In This Issue:
Features
Western Books & Movies
More In This Issue
- The Legendary West
- Phoenix Gets a Name
- Charles Stevens
- Never Wasted a Bullet
- Joseph Lee Heywood, a Northfield Hero
- A Lyrical History of the West
- How Often Were Post Offices Robbed on the Frontier?
- Get a Grip, Cowboy
- What History Has Taught Me: Bob Love
- Frontier Reveille
- Johnny Lingo: In the Land of Pronunciation Legend Rules
Departments
- Mollie’s Miracle
- Magic City of the Plains
- Just How Good Were the Good Old Days?
- Western Events For July 2017
- Trapped!
- She’s So Money
- Mark Twain’s Vittles and Viands
- Who Established the First Commercial Brewery in the Early West?
- Was “Wild Bill” Hickok’s Failing Eyesight the Result of a Venereal Disease?
- Were Bounty Hunters as Despised as Most Westerns Depict?
- And the War Begins
- Texas Captains of Cotton and Cattle