New home found for Rural Mail Carriers Museum

A new home has been found for the artifacts of the Rural Mail Carriers Museum.

The Yellow Trail Museum has announced that it  now owns the  Arford Building on the west side of the Hope Town Square. For the last four years the museum has made several attempts to purchase that building with the intent of bringing back the Rural Letter Carriers' collection that once stood in the town square.

The former building was not climate-controlled and the small structure was demolished about five years ago.

Many of the artifacts are still in secure storage where they will remain until repairs and some renovation can take place to make the Arford Building ready for displays, The Yellow Trial Museum, that now serves as the caretaker for the artifacts, promised the community that that very important piece of Hope history would not be lost, and finally we are now on the track to make that promise come true.

Hope has the honor of having the longest continuous rural mail delivery in the state (and maybe the nation). It was chosen as a site for one of the earliest experimental rural mail routes in the nation back in October 1896 and that delivery service has not been interrupted since.

At that time, Ephriam Norman was the postmaster of the Hope Post Office. He had asked his son Raleigh Norman, and Raleigh's friend, Owen Miller, to serve as the two rural letter carriers for the new experimental routes out of Hope.

To make sure the plan would get off to a strong start, Mr. Norman sent a letter to E.O. Jones, who would become the first stop on the new Route 14, that would later become Route 2 out of Hope. On Oct. 15, 1896, the routes were begun, when that first letter left the hand of Raleigh Norman to be delivered to Mr. Jones. That first day of delivery he met the carrier at his gate, and for most of the remainder his life, meeting the mailman each morning became an important part of his daily routine.

E.O. Jones lived on East Jackson Street on the property now occupied by Ben and Ashley Harker.