5853 E. North Wilshire Drive

Let's start the new year at a mailbox decorated for one of places — the Orient. (It's west of the International Date Line, which means the time there is much later; it's far east of Arizona — so much that the day can be tomorrow there when it's “today” here. Think how New York's celebration at midnight in Times Square happens at 10 PM Arizona Time? And so on even farther east: midnight in London is 4 PM in Tucson.)

But enough world geography… this is a mailbox blog!

I'm not quite sure where this box is located. It's south of Park Place Mall. That neighborhood has both East North Wilshire Drive and East Wilshire Terrace. Bing Maps Streetside shows a home on E. North Wilshire, but it shows the house number as 5888 instead of the 5853 I wrote down. Hmmm.

Anyway, if you drive into that part of E. North Wilshire you'll see this mailbox on a stoneware post.

You can look forward to bunches of boxes in 2016.

Being kind rocks (but...): 6046 East 14th Street

As I ride my bike around Tucson looking for artistic mailboxes, from time to time I realize that a clever design I first spotted a while back isn't so unique. This one, for instance, looks a lot like other boxes on a pile of rocks. The difference here is the Ben's Bells “be kind” sticker.

I rolled (and rocked) by on October 26th.

Four rocked-out (or -up) boxes are probably enough. So I'm going to add them to the Not these mailboxes list. If you want to see the other boxes on rocks, click there and scroll down the list.

239 North Silverbell Road

I noticed this mailbox on October 25th, while I was visiting an artist on one of the fall Open Studios Tours. The post is made from a (former) saguaro cactus:

Just by chance, the mailbox is Christmas-green. Here's the other side:

The wall around the home is worth a look, too. You can see it in yesterday's post on the Tucson Murals Project blog.

4842 North Fontana Avenue

I spotted this Halloween-themed mailbox — surrounded by cobwebs — (naturally enough) just before Halloween. For some reason, I forgot to show it until now. I took the photo on October 25th.

341 East Burrows Place

This whale of a mailbox even has a canoeist as the flag (which you can see in the first photo below):

I floated by on October 25th.

1215 North 3rd Avenue

One side of this mostly lavender and blue-greenish box has a tidy tile number sign on the post.

The number on the other side is made with what look to me like stick-on letters.

I found it on October 23rd.

502 East Sahuaro Street

Subtle coloring makes this mailbox different from many.

I found it October 23rd.

Your story through a mailbox: Dímelo

Back on November 25th, we posted an entry about the project named Dímelo (“You tell me”): Stories of the Southwest. Watch their website — and, in January, look for the special mailboxes around town or go to the website to tell your story.

Highland Free School Rocks!

Their mailbox is on a pile of rocks, at least. :) And whenever I ride my bicycle past the school (it's between Aviation Bikeway and the U of A) it always seems like a tidy and happy place. On October 23rd, the playground was full of students. The mailbox itself is a lot of fun, too.

City of Tucson midtown mailbox

A sunny welcome to Tucson's Ward 6 Midtown Council Office:

The bottom of the other side has part of a bumper sticker, and the top of the box seems to say ART ART:

This box brightened an otherwise cloudy Sunday afternoon, October 18th.

2013 North Swan Road

If you're moving like a snail today after a big Thanksgiving dinner yesterday, this mailbox is for you:

I actually found the mailbox on October 18th. It's just north of the mailboxes we saw last time.

Update (March 8, 2021): The mailbox has been repainted.

Dimelo's Story Mailboxes (and more)

Here's a entry from the Limón y Sal blog that's partly about a story mailbox project. Click the “this one” link, underneath the photo of artist Rudy Flores, to see one of the wild mailboxes he's planning. There are more mailbox photos at the left side near the bottom of the page — though none as wild as the story mailbox.

Here's the blog entry: Downtown: Old Pueblo Studios.

2005 and 2007 North Swan Road

As you're headed southbound on Swan past Grant, just to your right — or headed northbound past Pima, across the road on your left — is this double-headed set of mailboxes. Behind is (what I think is a) kachina dancer.

[By the way, the website kachina.us says “The word kachina (kah-chee-nah) has long been used by outsiders to refer to any of the hundreds of spiritual beings central to Hopi religious life as well as to the dolls that depict them. However, according to the Hopi, katsina (kahts-ee-nah) is more correct and preferred. In English, the plural of kachina is kachinas, but in the Hopi language the plural of katsina is katsinam.”]

I rolled by — and stopped! — on October 18th.

Update (March 15, 2021): Today's entry What's behind 2005 and 2007 North Swan has the story of the mailboxes and people who lived in the building behind.

4401 East Glenn Street

What happened to this mailbox? Is that duct tape around it? I didn't make a note about it when I stopped by on October 17th.

The big attraction, anyway, is the post covered with multicolored rocks.

4349 East Glenn Street

We've got bountiful boxes now, so I'll start posting two a week.

I think this might be a ladybug mailbox: red with black spots and two antennae!?

I buzzed by (do ladybugs buzz?) on October 17th.

12550 West Manville Road

This flag-covered mailbox is just in time for Veterans Day. Although the address is on Manville Road, I spotted it a bit farther north on Sanders Road, October 25th.

The door is held (mostly) closed with a thick rubber band. You can see that better in the photo of the other side, below. It faces south and has probably been blasted by the Sun for years.

1821 North Calle El Trigo

Here's another of Emily Mann's creative custom-made mailboxes. She just sent a photo and wrote:

It is over in La Cebadilla at the end of Tanque Verde/Reddington. ... I wish it had its own post. The other boring boxes either steal from or add to its ownership of the perch.

I am putting ceramic “eggs” with the street address in the nest [after they are fired] later this week.

If you'd like to see more of her work, she's the owner of Solaz Designs Metalworks. They'll be one of the stops along TPAC's Fall Open Studio Tour November 14-15. Here's their tour web page. This mailbox isn't far away, so you could also stop by and see the “eggs.”

(By the way, in case you haven't been keeping track of all the studio tours this fall, there's another one this coming weekend: Heart of Tucson Art. It showcases artists in central Tucson.)

Mystery mailbox #2

Unlike the first mailbox in this series, whose artist will remain anonymous (for now, at least), this wild box is by Emily Mann of solaz.biz. The owner would like the location kept private… but we can tell you that it's somewhere in the Tucson Mountains.

The photos above came from Emily's Instagram feed — which shows a lot more of her creative metalwork.

Mailbox fronts wild sculptures (in Kansas)

OK, so I keep insisting that this is the Tucson Murals Project, but I've also been showing a few out-of-state mailboxes in the last few months. What's up? Well, I've been traveling a lot — and I'm also almost out of mailbox photos. I'll get out on my bike and snap more photos as soon as I'm back in Tucson! In the meantime…

In the middle of nowhere in southeast Kansas — or almost anywhere in the US — the website Roadside America (and some others like it) will lead you to out-of-the-ordinary sights. (If you like mailbox art, I bet you'll like Roadside America.) That's part of what led me to drive down lonely Kansas highway 99 through the town of Howard. It's the site of…

…Hubbell's Rubble. If you park on the north side, the first thing you'll see is that mailbox. It's actually for donations, not mail; there's a slot in the door. (It looks like you can open the mailbox to take out the donations, but disturbing the mail is a federal offense. :) Behind the mailbox is a grassy street block filled with all kinds of welded sculpture. Here are two examples:

Next week? It's back to our regularly scheduled mailboxes.

1201 South Palo Verde Avenue

That's the second of two mailboxes that aren't (yet) permanent. Last week's box was on a stack of blocks. This week's rusted black mailbox is standing on the spike at the bottom of its pole, next to a gate, leaning on the wall.

The gate also looks like it's seen better times. (And the house number on the other side of the gate is missing some numerals.) Hmmm: I wonder what happened here?

I spotted this scene, just south of Reid Park, September 24th.

3321 East 23rd Street

This week and next, we'll check on the progress of two under-construction mailboxes. This plain black one is mounted (or just set? :) on a stack of cinder blocks with rocks inside.

It was August 13th when I saw it standing there.

5176 East Alberta Drive

It looks like this home gets a lot of mail! Their mailbox is a regular US Postal Service mail-deposit box, with peeling brown paint.

I wonder if they ever get mail from passersby?

I passed by on July 2nd.

5235 East Alberta Drive

Two sunny scenes on July 1st:

The mailbox is mostly green, with a pond with fish, the sun and cattails on one side — and, on the other, a bird in a tree, a butterfly, and some flowers.

Good mornin' from Vermont!

Once in a while, I like to post a mailbox from somewhere outside Tucson. This is one of those times...

This happy pair was at 155-156 River Road near Quechee, Vermont, in September, 1978. (The box on the right even has a smiling face on its flag.)

Mystery mailbox #1

This plain black mailbox is mounted on a not! plain steel sculpture of a horse that the artist told me is “a bucking Sicilian Donkey! Just the right height for a mail box.”

As you can tell from the photo, the mailbox hadn't been installed yet. The artist asked me to keep the location anonymous, and I'm glad to. I might find more like that sometime — say, really exquisite mailboxes on dirt roads on the edge of town, where I'd ask the owner's permission before posting a photo. So I'm starting a series of “mystery mailboxes.”

240 North Cloverland Avenue

A white mailbox with floral designs in (mostly) reds, oranges and browns:

The other side has some of what looks like peeling:

I spotted the box on July 1st.

6142 East Beverly Street

This udderly fun mailbox shows a cow with its back left leg (and udder!) half-falling-off:

I moooved by on July 1st.

(Sad) Mailbox news from Michigan

This article is from the Arizona Daily Star on August 5th:

Community mourns Michigan man who waved at passers-by

Mailboxes are more than the kind of art we show here. Like (the slowly disappearing) post offices, they can be places for people to stay in touch with each other.

Air mail in Idaho

I used to do a lot of road trips. Back then, in the days when folks could pay extra to send a letter by Air Mail, quite a few families put Air Mail boxes sky-high as a joke. Here's one east of Filer, Idaho. I didn't get an exact address, but it's on US Highway 30 near the junction with US 93.

I was cruising by on May 14, 1976.

2514-2516 North Orchard Avenue

An artistic mailbox on an artistic post, from April 25th...

Closer on both sides:

2501 North Orchard Avenue

That's the second box I found along my April 25th trip up this part of Orchard Avenue past Grant. It's purple with white topped by a candy-striped flag.

2444 North Orchard Avenue

The next three mailboxes are in two blocks of Orchard Avenue between Grant and Glenn.

This is one side of the box at 2444. It's painted green, blue and white, and mounted on a piece of wood over a steel plate. The post is a brighter, more saturated blue.

But that's not all. The mailbox is painted in the style of the walls that run between the home's front yard and the street:

I took photos of the mailboxes on April 25th. We'll see the next one, a bit north, next week.

2102 North Madelyn Avenue

This mailbox has scenery (a Native American pueblo, maybe?, at the left side, with hoodoos at the right side and a flag that's a US flag:

Here's a closeup of the box:

And the other side:

The photos are from April 18th.