I’m not seeing that Mare Island was an independent post. (That doesn’t mean it wasn’t!)

It’s certainly worth confirming where US mail from the base was postmarked in 1969.

Also Treasure Island, which was the naval equivalent of The Presidio, was a possibility for ‘San Francisco’ post-markage as well.

<The fact that, in at least one case, it can be shown that LE misinterpreted (misread) one of the postmarks as showing – what was it, “JB” instead of “1B” – when sending analysis requests to the FBI, this suggests to me that there is the real chance that they didn’t. Not as to the detail, at least.>

Agreed, it sounds like in that case at least, they didn’t understand the coding.

Does Graysmith mention the coding in his book? My guess is that info would have been fed by SFPD. He has an appendix where he describes the postmarks and lists some of the codes, but it’s unclear whether he examined or identified the codes.

I have some evidence that Mare Island was NOT in fact post marked San Francisco. I’m working to confirm.

https://www.uscs.org

Thanks, these are good finds, but they look like collectors’ first covers, where a hand postmark was requested in person. Clearly there was a post office on Mare Island — but we still want to establish that ordinary mail mailed in freestanding boxes on Mare Island was not typically sent to San Francisco for processing.

Likewise with Treasure Island. Also, it would be good to know how the Presidio base mail worked.

I have some evidence that Mare Island was NOT in fact post marked San Francisco. I’m working to confirm.

My own research appears to be leading to strong doubts as to this possibility, also.

To recap where the idea came from initially, it was noted that the San Francisco Sectional Center Facility processed mail not only for the geographically-located Zip prefixes 940-1,943-4, but also for a further five prefixes, 962-6, as per the following list from the 1969 Postal Directory:

These last five were then identified as corresponding to the following, where ‘AP’ denotes ‘U.S. Armed Forces Pacific’ (which I understand to include the Indian Ocean, Oceania and Asia excepting SW Asia):

• 962: AP Military Bases in Korea;[/*:m:1wl5icbq]
• 963: AP Military Bases in Japan;[/*:m:1wl5icbq]
• 964: AP Military Bases in the Philippines;[/*:m:1wl5icbq]
• 965: AP Military Pacific & Antarctic Bases; and[/*:m:1wl5icbq]
• 966: AP Military Naval/Marine.[/*:m:1wl5icbq][/list:u:1wl5icbq]

It was then wondered whether the last of these, 966, might include domestically-originating naval mail from Mare Island.

Although its hard to pin down a single definitive reference that would settle this, all my investigations to date point to the fact of ‘Armed Forces Pacific‘ being the crucial point. If I am not missing something, the 966 prefix relates to US Naval/Marine operations on deployment in the Pacific, with the arrangement enacted in the "Postal Agreement Between the Post Office Department [USPOD, predecessor to USPS] and the Department of Defense" of March, 1959. This, likewise, would include processing mail originating from vessels through arrangement with the on-board Fleet Post Office (FPO).

It also seems very like that the handling of such mail by San Francisco was processed separately from the regular civilian operation at the Sectional Center Facility, or at least as far as outgoing mail was concerned. This from a 1980 report to Congress on "How Military Postal Service Operations Can Be Improved":

The San Francisco Postal Concentration Center is responsible for processing (1) Navy and Marine Corps mail destined to mobile units in the Pacific and shore-based units in South-east Asia, (2) Army and Air Force first class mail from the southern part of the United States, and (3) most SAM [Space-Available Mail] and MOM [Military Official Mail].

The PCC for San Francisco appears to have be located, at the time, at 390 Main Street.

Mare Island appears to have (and to have had) a 945 prefix, and it seems that any mail originating from the base itself would have been processed via this – which, if the list above is not deceiving me, would have been through the Oakland SCF.

On top if this, even as regards the 966 mail, everything seems to point to each vessel having generally installed an FPO on board and hand-cancelling the mail before it leaves the ship. It is my expectation, then, that the postmarks we would be seeing for ‘AP Military Naval/Marine’ mail in 1969/70 would be of the form of the following earlier examples:







“This isn’t right! It’s not even wrong!”—Wolfgang Pauli (1900–1958)

 

Additional to my previous post, the fact that the actual Naval installation at Mare Island might have been allocated a Zip code prefix outside of the normal way in which these were divided out appears countered by the following, from the "USPS Postal Agreement with the Department of Defense," in which it is specified that:

• C. Postal Service criteria shall be used to assign ZIP Codes to military installations in the United States.[/*:m:2nxui48h]
• D. The Department of Defense and the Postal Service agree to cooperate in the assignment and use of overseas ZIP Codes.[/*:m:2nxui48h][/list:u:2nxui48h]

The above quotation is, admittedly, taken from a 1980 version of the agreement, but I see no reason to suppose that this wasn’t how it worked right from the introduction of the ZIP.

Excellent work Shaq. So do we conclude that a letter mailed in a box on Mare Island in 1969 to a non-military domestic address would have been processed and postmarked in Oakland?

Meanwhile nothing yet from our Rincon Annex expert.

Just to jump back to a possibly important point that Xcaliber brought up a short while ago – that some mailboxes for collection even in 1969/70 and, in particular, those near the main post office, were likely segregated into ‘local’ and ‘out of town’ mail at the point of being deposited. The thought then arose whether this may have led to a different processing route, possibly helping to understand the differences in the postmarks on the zodiac letters.

Well, this form of segregation appears to have begun to be introduced nationally, through trials in the first instance, as early as 1954:

In San Francisco, specifically, the introduction was trialled the following year:

Note that the introduction in SF was initially limited just to "the city’s financial district."

A further point that jumps out from both extracts is how the aim was to "save an entire Post Office operation" (or "skip a handling step"). So, although this is clearly just a statement about not needing an initial sort from between the two letter types, it still indicates that even before the mail hit Rincon the two were destined for different processing routes. How different – and whether, on Sundays, this could have made the difference between hand- and machine-cancellation – remains the question.

viewtopic.php?f=48&t=1494&p=16893&hilit=Sunday+postmarks#p16893

Per my suspicions, it seems that it is quite possible to drop a letter in a mailbox on a Friday or Saturday and then have it sorted, processed, and postmarked on Sunday.

http://zodiackillersite.com/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=1494&p=16893&hilit=Sunday+postmarks#p16893

Per my suspicions, it seems that it is quite possible to drop a letter in a mailbox on a Friday or Saturday and then have it sorted, processed, and postmarked on Sunday.

Am I perhaps missing something Chaucer? I’m not seeing any reference in this short thread to the idea of mail being late-postmarked in this way, least of all any evidence. I see the question raised, but that’s all. Admittedly, it’s late here. So I might just be being slow.

USPS does not deliver mail on Sundays. But postal workers DO in fact work on Sundays. The mail keeps running, it is just that the deliverymen do not deliver on Sundays.

-glurk

USPS does not deliver mail on Sundays. But postal workers DO in fact work on Sundays. The mail keeps running, it is just that the deliverymen do not deliver on Sundays.

-glurk

But we know that Postal Workers work on Sundays, from the fact that we have three examples of Sunday postmarking in just the Zodiac mailings alone (two from the ‘authenticated’ letters, both hand-cancelled; one on the ‘Concerned Citizen’ mailing, machine-cancelled.) We also know that they don’t do deliveries on Sundays. I still don’t quite see how this means that they are processing mail from Friday and Saturday in their Sunday operation.

Friday, certainly, has to be out, because there are Saturday collections, and a postmark is legally defined to give the date when a piece of mail comes into the possession of the Postal Service. Remember, postmarks are used in legal cases as proof of, for example, the date of a tax submission or payment of a bill, so there’s no conceivable way that first class mail is permitted to lie around for a day or two at the SCF prior to postmarking; and back-dating postmarks is a definite, written-in-law no-no. So the very earliest that a letter can have been dropped in any mailbox to get a Sunday postmark must be after the last collection on a Saturday from that particular box. But then, Sunday collections would have been very limited, unless we get confirmation otherwise, and likely just from drop boxes outside the major post-offices (Rincon, in our case). But then – and this is the really crucial bit – how else do you get a hand-cancelled Sunday PM postmark?

We have an example in the case of the ‘Concerned Citizen’ mailing (out-of-town, heading to Vallejo) of a machine-cancelled Sunday PM postmark, and we know that machine-cancelling was the norm across the week. We also know that local post-offices were closed on Sundays, so they can’t have been hand-cancelled anywhere other than at Rincon.

So, you’ve got mail collected on a Sunday that is postmarked for the Sunday, with the ‘local’ mail examples all being hand-cancelled and the ‘out-of-town’ example (CC) being machine-cancelled and Rincon having drop-boxes outside for pre-sorting into these two. Couple this with the fact (which remains to be confirmed) that Sunday collection was likely limited just to these boxes, and I’m struggling to see any clear alternatives to how this doesn’t just mean that the Rincon local mail for Sunday, likely relatively little, wasn’t just dumped on a table, hand stamped and bagged for the morning.

I realise that I am not in the US, but this is how we’ve always done it here for decades. If you miss the last post collection from mailboxes on a Saturday, all you do is drive down to the letter box (mailbox) at the local ‘Sorting Office’ (as they’re called here), either Saturday evening or Sunday, and your mail is off on its way to its destination Monday morning with a Saturday/Sunday postmark. Otherwise, you have to wait till Monday for it to even be collected.

I know that we’ve put up a number of questions, gathered from plausible counter-arguments that various people have raised, that we would like expertly answered – and it right that we are seeking these answers – but, for my money, the only question that I am concerned about is the one as to the extent of Sunday collections. It’s certainly possible that I’m mistaken, but I’m personally fully expecting these to be limited to just the immediate Rincon mailboxes. Like the example I gave from my experience in the UK, I would expect this form of Sunday collection to have likewise been available in the US as a ‘last-ditch’ chance of getting mail that missed the last Saturday collection on its way Monday morning. I don’t think it would be heavy, as it probably isn’t here, and that’s why the local mail probably gets to skip the production line.

<and a postmark is legally defined to give the date when a piece of mail comes into the possession of the Postal Service. Remember, postmarks are used in legal cases as proof of, for example, the date of a tax submission or payment of a bill, so there’s no conceivable way that first class mail is permitted to lie around for a day or two at the SCF prior to postmarking;>

Shaq, I agree that we’re veering off the central topic, but if someone mails a tax submission in a mailbox on the cut-off date (April 15th), there is no guarantee that that piece of mail will receive an April 15th postmark.

It very well may, but if the processing doesn’t take place until April 16th, it will receive an April 16th postmark (as opposed to a postmark that reflects when the letter was deposited in the box.)

I read that for that reason, on each April 15th, Rincon Annex set up curbside mailing, where people in cars could hand their tax returns to special outdoor clerks until midnight, and the clerks would hand-postmark the returns on the spot.

<and a postmark is legally defined to give the date when a piece of mail comes into the possession of the Postal Service. Remember, postmarks are used in legal cases as proof of, for example, the date of a tax submission or payment of a bill, so there’s no conceivable way that first class mail is permitted to lie around for a day or two at the SCF prior to postmarking;>

That’s one of the problems it’s very conceivable that letters mailed on a Sunday were back dated on a Monday for a number of reasons.