I’m in Vernal, Utah. It just so happens that this city of 10,000 or so souls was the scene of the greatest ever U.S. Postal Service exploit capers. #usps

The thing about Vernal is that, unlike most of Utah, it wasn’t actuall founded by Mormons. The Mormons came into the valley but rejected the place as unfit for anyone but bandits and Injuns.

It’s a beautiful place but pretty far away from “civilization” and extremely barren, at least so it seemed in the middle of the 19th Century.

The place was known to the first white settlers as The Bench. Some folks called it Ashley, after a fur trader who entered the area way back in 1825. The story of William Henry Ashley is really fascinating but a tale for another time.

Eventually, because of troubles with Native Americans in Colorado that became known as The Meeker Masacre, a fort was built in Ashley Valley. When the people living around the fort tried to apply for a Post Office under the name Ashley Center, they were told it was already taken.

It’s still not clear who decided to call this desert town Vernal but you have to admire the hutzpah. It’s on par with Greenland in terms of misleading and place names.

It doesn’t work all that well. Enters are hard. Herding sheep is hard. The place is full of snakes, lizards, scorpions, and antisocial “rugged individualists.” The population grows from 799 in 1880 to 836 in 1910.

Of course, things change when the bankers get involved and the U.S. Postal Service changes a long standing policy of not carrying parcels over 4 pounds. In 1913, this limit was raised to 11 pounds through a service called Parcel Post.

Then it goes up to 20 pounds in the summer of 1913. And 50 pounds in 1914. Then 70 pounds! This was the thing that led to an explosion of orders from Sears, Roebuck and expansions of department stores outside the eastern seaboard. It was the digital revolution of its day.

So this banker in Vernal, a guy named William H. Coltharp, figures out that it would be cheaper to buy bricks to build The Bank of Vernal from Salt Lake City than to have them made locally because he can have 50 pounds of bricks shipped for 54 cents.

The way the #USPS calculated shipping fees was by “as the crow flies” distances. Vernal is just 150 miles and was in the next postal code to SLC. But in reality, the bricks had to travel 400 miles, by two railroads, and then wagons.

Parcel post shipments to Vernal averaged two tons per day in 1916. Coltharp was building a bank by mail!

This fueled not only a banking boom but a building boom. Even though the Postal Service tried to crack down—limiting shipments to 200 pounds per sender—by 1921 over 3 tons of parcels were arriving in Vernal *every day.* The population doubled.

The Vernal Bank is still around. It was acquired by Zion’s Bank in 1974. It’s still called “The Bank that was sent by mail” and “the Parcel Post Bank.” You can visit the building on West Third in Vernal.

Here the bank in 1920.

Here it is today.

The obviously frustrated Vernal Post Master telegrammed Washington, D.C. to complain that “Some S.O.B. is trying to ship a whole building through the U.S. Mail.”

Well, that SOB’s bank is still here. And so is the Postal Service. /fin