Mappy New Year! Celebrate with Vintage Map Postcards

Major content update: January 1, 2018

Minor update: May 20, 2021

The formation of the Universal Postal Union in 1874 set standards for postal policies between different countries. With the establishment of standards for sizes and postage at the General Assembly of the UPU in 1878 in Berlin, Germany enabled the international mailing of postcards. Since then, the postcard has become a popular of mailing greetings from tourist spots and for special holidays such as New Years.

To celebrate the New Year, here are a couple of vintage map themed postcards.

Happy New Year Postcard from the Universal Postal Union, 1893. — Happy New Year postcard from the New York postal service to Universal Postal Union, 1893.

This postcard from 1909 of Father Time carrying the world:

Mimicking the Geography of Distance with Letter Writing

Caitlin Dempsey

Caitlin Dempsey is a geographer, writer, and founder and editor of Geography Realm. She holds bachelor's and master's degrees in Geography from UCLA and a Master of Library and Information Science (MLIS) from San José State University.

For more than two decades, she has written about geography, maps, geographic information systems (GIS), remote sensing, satellite imagery, and environmental science. Her work focuses on making geography accessible to a broad audience through articles, tutorials, and educational resources.

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