The history of Alamogordo's post office and mail delivery

In a time of near ceaseless progress, it is interesting to think about the things in our day-to-day life that have not changed much in the last few generations.

The coffee we drink in the morning, though more exotic and perhaps presented in a nicer dish, is still the same dark and uplifting brew that has existed for centuries. The coins in our pockets that bear the likeness of former presidents are identical in purpose, and nearly identical in appearance to those that were minted in the time of the Roman Empire.

The age of an item or service often times denotes its importance, and highlights the desires of the people that it serves: the humble post office is such an item.

The first recorded postal delivery in the Tularosa Basin started in 1868 and delivered mail once a month via horseback from Mesilla, just south of modern day Las Cruces. The route lasted 18 months.

Five years later a stage route from Las Vegas to Mesilla passed through Tularosa three times a week, and when it did it brought the mail. Within the decade there were postal routes and offices established in modern day Mayhill and Weed.

By the time the Tularosa Basin became part of the newly established Otero County in January 1899, the railroad carried the mail throughout the basin and Sacramento Mountain communities.

Shortly after the first plots of former ranchland were assessed and staked into the town of Alamogordo, in the spring of 1898, the town received its first postmaster, Frank M. Rhomberg, a jeweler and merchant, formerly of La Luz. A corner of Rhomberg’s new store served as the town’s first post office, located on the corner of Pennsylvania and 10th Street.

Over the next few years there would be a series of postmasters that served the town, and with each change of leadership the location of the Alamogordo post office changed locations to follow suit.

In the early years, Alamogordo’s post office would have two acting female postmasters (postmistress was the title at the time), Catherine O’Reilly from 1918 to 1920, and Frances Burch from 1933 to 1935, at which time Washington, D.C. formally appointed Burch as postmaster of Alamogordo.

1938 proved to be a boom year for the town’s postal service. In mid-May, the U.S. Postal Service held National Air Mail week to highlight this new method of mail delivery, and Alamogordo was on one of the scheduled routes. On May 19, at 9:30 a.m., a plane landed at the Alamogordo airport carrying mail from El Paso, and was greeted by a sizeable crowd, as well as the town’s high school band.

The plane promptly crashed on landing, though the pilot emerged uninjured and gave a brief speech to the awaiting crowd. All outbound mail for El Paso that day was sent by truck.

That same year Washington, D.C. approved both the funding and location for a new federal building in Alamogordo, at the corner of New York Avenue and 11th Street, that would house the town’s new post office, along with several other federal agencies. The region, still racked by the Great Depression, was given a bit of a windfall by the sourcing of labor and materials to build this new structure.

Additionally, as part of the New Deal work program, the WPA, artist Peter Hurd from San Patricio, New Mexico painted a stunning pair of frescos in the lobby of the building, titled Sun and Rain; Sorgum; Yucca, which remains to this day as a testament to the talent and spirit of the times.

While both ubiquitous and somewhat antiquated by modern standards of communications, the postal service in the Tularosa Basin has developed in lock step with the people that chose to eke out a life in and amongst the enchanting and unforgiving desert plains of southern New Mexico.

Jeffrey A. Weiler is a volunteer docent at the Tularosa Basin Historical Society Museum of History who has a very strong background in history.