Mailbox art in Roswell, New Mexico

Mail by Robert Neffson
AMoCA (Anderson Museum of Contemporary Art)
Roswell, NM

On your way to Carlsbad Caverns, or just heading to Roswell for UFO stuff? There are several great places in Roswell to see art. AMoCA is a contemporary art museum that has a lot to like even if you haven't liked contemporary art in the past… there's plenty that's fun as well as more-serious work.

(This painting was on loan from the Roswell Museum and Art Center. I took the photo on October 14, 2022.)

9054 East Calle Kuehn: Cabin

Nothin’ fancy here, folks: a small cabin with a chimney, with probably just enough room to hold the mail.

David Aber found this on February 18, 2023. Thanks for helping keep this blog going while I'm so busy, Dave!

4265 West Dakota Street: Steel mesh and roadrunner

Last time we posted the mailbox Gregg Townsend found at 4330 West Dakota St. Their neighbors at 4265 Dakota were in on the game, too:

I wanted to see the roadrunner on top more clearly. It's a long way to drive fron where I live, so I checked Google Maps Street View and found it:



Thank you, Gregg!

4330 West Dakota Street: Can't miss this mailbox!

Tucson has plenty of bizarre mailboxes. This one is near the top of the list:

Gregg Townsend emailed it yesterday. He wrote “I think the side of 4330 is covered with bicycle reflectors!” So you probably can't miss it day or night.

He also sent a photo of a mailbox nearby; I'll aim to show it sometime soon. Thanks so much, Gregg!

5515 East Hawthorne Avenue: U of A no doubt!

No question about this homeowner's fandom…

Mailbox secure from (almost) everyone: 3614 East 28th Street

You've read about mailbox theft. (Our previous post had a photo showing a mail thief caught in the act.)

Here's another answer:

These property owners can fetch their mail by drone — or maybe a 10-foot ladder.

(I'm not sure if they've given the USPS letter carrier a way to put the mail into the box, though…)

Take a look down to see the some of the rest of their front yard.

Thanks to David Aber for this hilarious photo, probably taken February 18th. (I cut it into two pieces with a photo editor.)

Mail thief caught on mailbox camera

KOLD 13 News in Tucson reports that forty-nine million Americans over the past year have had their mail stolen, according to Security.org, and 19% were from Arizona. This story includes a lot of tips… and a great video clip of the surprised thief when he sees the camera in the mailbox:

    Peoria homeowner captures mail thief on unusual mailbox camera

If you know of such a mailbox camera, please leave a comment below (you can be anonymous) or send me an email with the "Contact Us" form at the right edge of any page on this blog. I'll update this blog post. (By the way, I wonder if a different kind — a zoom camera mounted on your home, with a sign on the mailbox saying “You are on camera!” — would be more effective at preventing theft… but not as fun!)

Update (September 3, 2024): Today's post Suspected mail thieves caught with AirTag has another clever way to catch a mail theif.

4412 East 6th Street: This box is for the bird(s)

On September 9, 2022, David Aber took a photo of a mailbox with a bird nest and a bird on top. It was so amazing that I decided to go there myself and take several more photos — including one that showed this entire, uh, contraption. Thanks, Dave!

First a closeup of the nest (and the bird eating a worm!):

It looks as if the owner may have put fresh grass in the nest?! I was there on December 1; I didn't check. I also don't remember how tall it was (this next photo was taken from the ground looking up) but I'm guessing four feet:

Closer and closer views from the same side:

Wow.

Correo en un museo

I've been on the road for most of two months. (Maybe I should visit Tucson! 😁)

In December I visited MUFI (short for Museo De La Filatelia… Latin America loves acronyms) in Oaxaca, Mexico. It's the Philatelic Museum, showing stamps and money. MUFI is one of the top-rated museums in town, which surprised me until I visited. It's full of unusual and unique stamps — most fairly recent. What gave me the idea of writing about it on the blog was this buzón (mailbox):

For instance, these stamps are from Ukraine:

Even their signs are in the shape of stamps:

Oaxaca is a wonderful city to visit — even if you aren't into stamps. I took these photos on December 12, 2022.

826 North Venice Avenue: Wildlife

David Aber took these photos of a mailbox covered with desert scenes on September 9th, 2022:

As usual, I don't know how he finds amazing mailboxes like this one!

702 North Venice Avenue: Rob the Bot

David Aber named this mailbox Rob the Bot (as in RoBot, not the kind of bot you're forced to deal with online):

How can you tell that it's a male robot? He has a beard (and bad hair):

That's a zoomed-in view I made with a photo editor. David took the photo on September 9, 2022. (Thanks Dave!)

4563 East 10th Street: Box guarded by a griffin

As Wikipedia says, "Since classical antiquity, griffins were known for guarding treasures and priceless possessions." Although this box may have a factory-produced design (I couldn't find any in an online search), and we don't usually show mailboxes that aren't handmade, having a griffin watching your mail seems like a good idea to me!

Thanks to David Aber for the photo. He took it September 9, 2022.

Box by the border

On Saturday (January 7) I was on a road at the very southwest corner of the US — south of San Diego, just north of the border wall and a few miles from the Pacific. (Click on the "Location" below for a map.) It's a bizarre place, partly because the US side of the border is rural and the Mexican side has a freeway and Tijuana just behind it. This mailbox stood out:

It's a bit hard to tell, but the black band underneath the mailbox is a tire.

Last call for mail to Santa!

The Russians have been bombarding the North Pole, so Santa's email is down. This is your last chance to send Christmas wishes to Jolly Old Santa: a small plastic mailbox east of Randolph Park along Longfellow Avenue, south of Cooper.

I took the photo December 1st.

Most popular mailboxes in ten years (our 10th anniversary)

This blog started exactly ten years ago on 12/12/12 (December 12, 2012) with our first entry What's a mailbox? explaining what we'd show. (Since then, we've also posted Not these mailboxes — which shows “boring” mailboxes we'd show too many times if we kept showing them.)

So you can help us celebrate, we're showing the most popular boxes during our ten years, from highest number of views down to 10th-most views. The older boxes have accumulated more views over the years, so this skews toward older mailboxes.

You can click on title (shown in orange letters) to see the complete original post. If you do that, click or tap your browser's "back" button to return to this page.

1. Desert “air mail” along CA highway 62

March 8, 2013

2. Saguaro You Today?

December 23, 2012

3. 3322 East 24th Street

December 17, 2012

4. 4260 East Calle De Madrid

June 16, 2013

5. 2850 North Tyndall Avenue

May 31, 2016

6. 2345 East Elm Street

December 25, 2013

7. 119 South Irving Avenue

May 31, 2016

8. A mailbox full of poems

May 31, 2016

9. Marvelous Meyer #2: 551 South Meyer

May 31, 2016

10. Seldon Smith's gifts, part 1 of 4

December 7, 2020 (in the area around 4000 East Montecito Street)

Check back on 12/12/32, ten years from now!

Why this box at 11650 East Speedway Boulevard?

This blog is almost ten years old. (Look for a 10th anniversary post on December 12th.) One of my guidelines has been that I usually don't show mass-produced mailboxes, even if they're made by hand. (You can read more by clicking Not these mailboxes, there or at the top of any blog page.) When David Aber emailed some box photos on March 27, I searched using Google Image Search (go to images.google.com and click the camera icon in the search bar). Turns out that Amish people made it by hand. (Here's a Britannica article with more info: Amish: North American religious group.)

Because the blog has been online for so long, I decided to remind us that boxes (usually!) need to be unique. Next time. 😁

The mailbox is at Pegasus Veterinary.