The Peach Springs post office is the outside end of the mail route to Supai, the Havasupai village at the bottom of Havasu Canyon, where letters and parcels still go the last eight miles on the backs of mules. Mail leaves Peach Springs by truck along roughly sixty miles of Bureau of Indian Affairs road to Hualapai Hilltop, where the road ends and the trail begins, dropping more than a thousand feet in its first mile of switchbacks. No vehicle can use the trail. A string of mules led by a wrangler on horseback makes the sixteen mile round trip six days a week, according to a 2016 Postal Service account, and the Peach Springs post office keeps a walk-in freezer for perishable groceries waiting to go down.
Loads run to cases of water and soda, canned goods, paper goods and food for the village's businesses, and campers' gear comes back up. The Supai post office, opened in 1912, offers a Mule Mail postmark.
In July 1963 Arizona Highways described the run as the last of its kind in the American postal system. Then it was a pack horse train: Guy Marshall brought the mail up from Supai to the hilltop on Tuesdays and Fridays, and his father Foster Marshall drove it the 62 miles to Peach Springs by pickup, with Guy back in the canyon the same day. Bread, flour and fresh produce arrived by parcel post, which made the route the valley's food supply as much as its mail.
Getting there
35.5291, -113.4267
Locations are approximate and may be inaccurate, on private land, or otherwise inaccessible. Check before you travel.
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