Susanville Street Signs & Mail Delivery

Lassen County Courthouse, 1926

While I have addressed this topic before, it will be new to others. However, I recently acquired the above photograph and this earliest dated photograph where a street sign appears at the intersection of Lassen and Mill Streets.

By the early 1920s, with a tremendous increase in population, the Susanville Post Office had a lot of work to do. There being no home delivery of mail, the post office would get swamped for people picking up their mail. To institute home mail delivery was not as simple as it seemed.

On April 16, 1923 the Susanville City Council passed an ordinance for the numbering of houses and businesses, too. This was the first step towards residential mail delivery. It was a slow process, that took two years. In November 1925, Postmaster C.D. Mathews ordered street signs to be installed to assist the mail carriers. For many residents it was not only a novelty, but not everyone knew of the name of the street they resided on.

On December 1, 1925, residential mail delivery was instituted with three carriers for the greater Susanville area.

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