In 1849, after traveling through the Isthmus of Panama via steamship, John T. Little arrived in California. He settled in Coloma and opened one of the first general merchandise stores on the north side of the river. 

 

El Dorado County’s first “official” post office was established in Little’s store on November 8, 1849, by the Post Office Department in Washington, D.C. A post office had previously been functioning, as a postmark has been recorded with a date of October 20, 1849, from “Culloma, Alta, California.” When California became a state in 1850, “Alta, California” was dropped; and in January 1851, the name of the post office changed to Coloma. 

According to Little, Postal Agent R.F.P. Allen appointed him postmaster, “against my own desire. It cost me ten thousand dollars for I had to pay a clerk four hundred dollars a month and give the office rent, and in addition carry the mails at my own expense from Sacramento.”

 Little held the position of postmaster until 1851 when Stephen S. Brooks was allotted the title. In April 1851, Little traveled East to settle his accounts with the Post Office Department. Per Little, “The Department at home did not know anything about the extraordinary expenses of this coast and were not disposed to make any allowances for them and wanted to put my office in the basis of these in New England towns.”

Little left for Washington carrying $5,000 in postage and government funds, fortified with letters from collectors, including the postmaster of San Francisco and a special agent of the department. He also carried endorsements from Senator Grim and the Resolute Congressional Delegation, but to no avail. His planned trip of two weeks turned into a year of wrangling with the Department. In the end, they claimed all the money—leaving Little with “a balance of one dollar and forty-five cents in my favor having allowed me but a small profitication [sic] of expenses and I was about ten thousand dollars out of pocket.”

According to the Placer Herald of 1853, Coloma was the principal post office in California. It was a hub for postal service to surrounding towns with six “Pony Expresses” delivering mail and charging one dollar for each letter. In 1854, the Empire County Argus, a Coloma-based weekly, noted that over 4,000 letters and packages left the Coloma post office bound for the East Coast. 

Many of the letters that reached Coloma, however, ended up in the Dead Letter Office in San Francisco, as the addressee had either moved on, passed on, or never even made it to Coloma. 

Little may have been appointed postmaster because he had a well-established store and a head for business. He also had the first ferry service across the American River connecting the mining camps on the south side with his store on the north. In 1850, he partnered with Ed Raum to build the first wagon bridge across the river. The partners charged a toll to cross and recouped their expenses within three months. Little eventually moved to San Francisco where he became a real estate broker.

Mining camps came and went, as did the post offices associated with them, but the Coloma Post Office has lived on for over 165 years; some claim it’s the oldest continuously running post office west of the Mississippi. 

Article by Jerrie Beard // Head photo courtesy of Owen Byrne. Bottom photo courtesy of goldcountrygirls.blogspot.com. Stamp printed in the U.S. showing Sutter’s Mill photo courtesy of Borislav Marinic. Letter to Coloma from 1883 photo courtesy of stampauctionnetwork.com.

Sources

Ref. John T. Little—Statement of Events—Written in 1878
Manuscript in Bancroft Library C_D_111-122
CAL B10 MSS Reel 16
Museum records, Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park
dougstepsout.com/2014/01/30/post-offices-of-el-dorado-county-part-5-c-e/

Mountain Democrat, May 3, 1890; November 1, 1999; March 16, 2015