đ Paper Trails đ
Paper Trails: The US Post and the Making of the American West argues that the US Post wove together two of the eraâs defining projects: western expansion and the growth of state power. Between the 1860s and the early 1900s, the western United States underwent a dramatic reorganization of people, land, capital, and resources. As millions of settlers moved into the region, they relied on letters and newspapers, magazines and pamphlets, petitions and money orders to stay connected to the wider world. Paper Trails maps the spread of the US Post using a dataset of more than 100,000 post offices, revealing a new picture of the federal government in the West.
The western postal network bore little resemblance to the civil service bureaucracies typically associated with government institutions. Instead, the US Post grafted public mail service onto private businesses, contracting with stagecoach companies to carry the mail and paying local merchants to distribute letters from their stores. These arrangements allowed the US Post to operate what Iâve termed a âgossamer network,â rapidly spinning out a vast and ephemeral web of postal infrastructure to thousands of distant places. The postal networkâs sprawling geography and localized operations forces a reconsideration of the American state, its history, and the ways in which it exercised power.
-
Winner of the 2023 Vincent P. DeSantis Book Prize, Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era
-
Winner of the 2022 Western Heritage Award for Outstanding Non-Fiction
-
Winner of the 2022 National Postal Museum Award for Scholarship in Postal History
-
Runner-Up, 2022 Outstanding Western Book Award, WTAMU Center for the Study of the American West
-
Explore the companion website âGossamer Networkâ to see the spread of thousands of post offices across the western United States.
-
Read more about the underlying dataset behind the book.
-
Paper Trails is available for purchase through Oxford University Press, Bookshop.org, or Amazon.
-
Contact me if you are interested in scheduling a talk, interview, or conversation about my work.
Reviews
âA stunning work of scholarship.â â Joseph M. Adelman, The New England Quarterly
âPaper Trails elegantly employs digital history tools and spatial analysis methods to explain how the United States extended federal authority over the American West.â â Tona Hangen, Journal of American History
âA wonderful example of digital history built on information technology and archival research.â â Marc Levinson, Wall Street Journal
âPaper Trails represents the leading edge of digital history.â â Sean Fraga, American Historical Review
âCameron Blevins has produced a study so methodologically and empirically rich that it sets a model for disciplines beyond history.â â Daniel Carpenter, author of Democracy by Petition: Popular Politics in Transformation, 1790-1870
âPaper Trails will make you see state power in entirely new ways.â â Rachel St. John, University of California, Davis
âWith the intensity and range of Blevinsâs research, the clarity and vigor of his writing style, and, most of all, his distinctive perspective on the relationship between the history of the American West and the history of the federal government, this book gains the status of a fresh appraisal of the arrangements of power and population in the West and in the nation as a whole.â â Patricia Nelson Limerick, author of Legacy of Conquest
âIn the hands of Cameron Blevins, isolated post offices become windows into life in the American West. With great skill, Blevins portrays the expansive growth of the American state in an original, surprising, and persuasive way.â â Edward L. Ayers, winner of the Bancroft Prize
ââPaper Trailsâ offers a timely reminder that the post has always been politicalâŠ.One of the most striking aspects of âPaper Trailsâ isnât in the book. Mr Blevins is a digital historian, meaning he uses data science to analyse historical trends. He built an accompanying website replete with interactive maps to show readers how, within a generation, the postal service helped colonise a continent. These online dispatches beautifully illustrate the formative power of snail mail.â â The Economist
âThe most satisfying dimension of this impressive research is the persistent quest to integrate history and geographyâŠforcing us to see the American West in new terms.â â Susan Schulten, The Journal of the Civil War Era
âBy combining modern digital mapping techniques with traditional archival research, Blevins shows how postal policy can help us better understand the rise of the modern American state.â â Richard R. John, author of Spreading the News: The American Postal System from Franklin to Morse
âPerhaps not since Miracle on 34th Street extolled the United States Postal Service for exonerating Santa Claus has an in-depth examination of post office history been so interesting as Cameron Blevinsâs Paper Trails.â â Michael A. Amundson, Environmental History Review
âOf particular note is his use of digital history documentation to compile original and thought-provoking computational models of dataâŠ.Equally effective is the personalization of the postal narrative through detailed accounts of how the U.S. Post was vital to individuals and families caught up in the complexities and uncertainties of westward expansion.â â Dan K. Utley, Southwestern Historical Quarterly
âA product of the relatively new subfield of digital history, this study also draws on extensive data sets, maps, and scores of archival records to create a remarkable textual and visual record based on spatial analysis of an immense and sprawling federal apparatus.â â Keith Egerton, Choice
âPaper Trails is an essential contribution to our understanding of the machinery of nineteenth-century settler colonialism as a spatial phenomenon and of cartography as an imperial state-building enterprise,â Jesse R. Andrews, Historical Geography
âCameron Blevins has crafted a shining masterpiece of interdisciplinary scholarship.â â Robert OâDell III, The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era
âPaper Trails reads mostly as narrative history, but Blevins pauses strategically to explain his theory of power and why it matters. He does this effortlessly, which is a testament to the bookâs prose and its considered conceptualization.â âEmma Teitelman, Western Historical Quarterly
âThe value of Paper Trails extends far beyond its lessons about state power.â âDavid Henkin, The History Teacher
Coverage
âCameron Blevins - The U.S. Post And The Making Of The American Westâ KALA Radio (January 14, 2023).
âHow the Postal Service Helped America Conquer Its Western Frontierâ Mailinâ It: The Official USPS Podcast (January 3, 2023)
Dax Jacobson, Cameron Blevins (Historian and Author) on His Book âPaper Trails: The US Post and the Making of the American Westâ The Rural Towns Project (April 17, 2022).
âPaper Trailsâ CSPAN: American History TV (November 11, 2021).
George Spencer, âWestward POâ Pomona College Magazine (September 30, 2021).
Hillary Predko, âA conversation with Cameron Blevins on the operational history of the USPSâ The Prepared (August 11, 2021).
ââPaper Trailsâ Explores How The U.S. Postal Service Helped Shape The American Westâ Colorado Public Radio (July 21, 2021).
Mark A. Kellner, âBook Review: Paper Trailsâ Washington Times (June 16, 2021).
âThe postal service enabled Americaâs westward expansionâ The Economist (June 5, 2021).
âHow the west was won. Not by guns, but by the Postal Serviceâ Federal News Network (May 28, 2021).
David Luhrssen, âPaper Trails: The US Post and the Making of the American West,â Shepherd Express (May 27, 2021).
âHow Should the US Post Office Function in 2021?â Keen On Podcast (April 28, 2021).
Laura Bliss, âHow the U.S. Postal Service Forever Changed the Westâ Bloomberg City Lab (April 21, 2021).
Dan Cohen, âHumane Ingenuity 37: Data and the Humanitiesâ Humane Ingenuity (April 7, 2021).
Tyler Cowen, âWhat Iâve Been Readingâ Marginal Revolution (April 6, 2021).
Next With Kyle Clark, âWhat did the postal service have to do with colonialism in Colorado?â Denver 9News (April 6, 2021).
Marc Levinson, ââPaper Trailsâ Review: Go West, Young Mailmanâ The Wall Street Journal (March 24, 2021).
Elizabeth Lindqwister, âWhatâs the Big Deal About the Post Office?â Stanford Magazine (March 2021).
âDigital and spatial history are brought to bear on the settlement of the Westâ Kirkus Reviews (February 2021).