3338 East Adams Street

A mailbox sprouting from a steel prickly pear cactus (with a bent pole... was this an accident?):

I was there on April 6th.

2845 East Mabel Street

Petroglyph art in white on a black mailbox:

I took the photo on April 6, 2012.

6511 North Swan Road

Flying mailbox with wings, a head and tail, and a tree limb as the post:

I flew by on February 10, 2012.

6515 N. Catalina Avenue

Here's a square-fronted brass(?) mailbox, in a stuccoed "post," with a saguaro flag. (I said I wouldn't post many mailboxes with cute flags like this, but this is one of the exceptions. :)

I took the photo on February 10, 2012. (By the way, if the Location link below doesn't work, try this one.)

3241 East 26th Street

A calf, a pig(let?), and a puppy with a letter:

I took this pair of photos on the rainy November 13, 2011.

3322 East 24th Street

This mailbox has a roadrunner flag on it and what looks to me like a stylized frog underneath:

I took the photo on November 13, 2011. (That was around the time I got the idea for this blog. I've been collecting photos since then.)

By the way, Tucson has lots of plain-looking mailboxes with a flag in the shape of an animal, a saguaro, etc. I won't show all of them.

2040 East Hampton Street

You can see a sunny mailbox on Hampton by clicking there. That'll take you to the March 31 post from the Tucson Murals Project blog.

(I take photos of murals for that blog and photos of mailboxes for this one. It works out!)

2237 East 20th Street

Here's a unique mailbox. It's the circle in the middle — above the house number. The black curved and pointed metal around the mailbox made it interesting:

I took this on December 10th.

Three in the 2400 block of East Beverly Drive

These neighbors have the same taste in mailboxes: between the two supporting posts are animals, plants, a crescent moon, a cloud with a lightning bolt, and more:

2431	2437	2432

I snapped these photos on December 10th.

The other side of 2308 East Beverly Drive

A horse-drawn US Mail wagon:

Yesterday's post showed the west side of this mailbox. This is the east side.

I found this on December 10th.

What's a mailbox?

Welcome to the new Tucson Mailbox Art blog! As I was setting this up, I wrote an email to a friend in France and started to mention the blog. I realized that not all countries are the same as the US — and even some people who live in the US don't have the type of mailbox I'm describing — so she (and you) might not know what a “mailbox” looks like or how it works.

Here’s what I wrote to her:

“I don't remember whether homes I've seen in France have mailboxes at the curb (the British write kerb) on the street in front? They’ve been a fixture of US homes for decades. (Many city homes used to have a mailbox attached to the front wall, or a slot that let mail drop through the wall. For efficiency, the U.S. Postal Service changed that when I was a child. Also, apartment buildings often have central mailboxes that are different than these.) Now — in Tucson, at least — the letter carrier drives a small truck along the street, stopping at each mailbox to leave that day’s mail (or, as Brits say, the post). The mailbox also has a flag, on a hinge, that the home’s owner (or occupant) can raise as a signal that there’s mail waiting for the letter carrier to pick up.”

The mailbox above is at 2308 E. Beverly Drive. (Click the "Location" box below to see a map.) I'll show the other side of the mailbox in tomorrow's post. I took the photos on December 10th.