Program on mail and parks set

Olympic National Park hosts a special program at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, July 30, at the Olympic National Park Visitor Center, 3002 Mount Angeles Road, Port Angeles.

Olympic National Park hosts a special program at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, July 30, at the Olympic National Park Visitor Center, 3002 Mount Angeles Road, Port Angeles. The program is free of charge and is part of Olympic National Park’s celebration of this year’s National Park Service Centennial.

Daniel A. Piazza and Calvin Mitchell, both curators from the Smithsonian Institution’s National Postal Museum 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.

“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,” said Lee Taylor, acting superintendent of Olympic National Park.

Everyone who attends the program can create their own collection of 10 vintage National Park Service-themed U.S. postage stamps in a commemorative folder and leave with a free exhibition poster. The exhibit will be on display through March 2018 in Washington, D.C., and can be previewed at http://postalmuseum.si.edu/trailblazing/index.html.