Cameron Blevins, Yan Wu, & Steven Braun, Gossamer Network (2019)

This series of interactive maps, built to accompany Cameron Blevins' book, Paper Trails: The US Post and the Making of the American West, tells a story of U.S. westward expansion that was aided by the fast-moving construction of U.S. Post Offices throughout the West into a "Gossamer Network." Users can scroll through a series of maps, accompanied by narrative, that allow them to (1) hover over areas of the map and see the loss Indigenous land and growth of reservations between 1848 and 1877, (2) see the growth in post offices across the West between1848 and 1895, (3) view the total number of post offices that were established over the entire period of time, as well as the total number that were discontinued, and (4) compare the number of post offices with the number of other federal entities, such as military posts and courthouses. This map illustrates hundreds of post offices being built throughout the late nineteenth century, though several remained open for only a few years, and that they were the fastest growing and widest spreading government institution of the time, operated in far more places than any other government entity. The establishment of these post offices enabled Americans to build settlements further into the West, infiltrating Indigenous lands and creating a web of American settlements connected by the Gossamer Network.