“Wish You Were Here” Program on July 30 to Showcase History of National Parks in Stamps, Letters and Postcards

Date: July 21, 2016
Contact: Barb Maynes, 360-565-3005

Olympic National Park will host a special program on Saturday, July 30 at 7:30 p.m. at the Olympic National Park Visitor Center. The program is free of charge and is part of Olympic National Park's celebration ofthis year's National Park Service Centennial.

Daniel A. Piazza and Calvin Mitchell, both curators from the Smithsonian Institution's National PostalMuseum in Washington, D.C. will give a one-hour presentation called "Wish You Were Here: Mail and the National Parks". The program highlights the NPS Centennial and showcases the surprising ways mail flows to, through, and from the national parks.

"We are honored and excited to offerthis program with the Smithsonian Institution's National Postal Museum," said LeeTaylor, Acting Superintendent of Olympic National Park. "This promises to be a fun and interesting evening,with stories of a Grand Canyon village that eats most of its mail, a national park site that was once so secret that it sent and received mail at an undercover address."

Everyone who attends the program can create their own collection of ten vintage National Park Service-themed U.S. postage stamps in a commemorative folder and leave with a free 16 × 20 exhibition poster

The July 30 presentation will share elements of the National Postal Museum's current exhibition about the firstcentury of national parks. The exhibit will be on display through March 2018 in Washington, D.C. and can be previewed online at http://postalmuseum.si.edu/trailblazing/index.html.