The Historic Shepherdstown Museum’s U.S. Mail R.F.D. (Rural Free Delivery) cart captures visitors’ attention immediately. It is very big, and very yellow, made to catch the eyes of rural Americans when home mail delivery reached them for the first time. Up until the 1890s, the 65 percent of Americans living in rural areas had to pick up their mail in a nearby town or pay someone to deliver it. After considerable debate and opposition, Congress agreed to fund an experimental program for the Post Office to provide Rural Free Delivery in a limited number of counties. Postmaster General William Wilson began the experiment in Charles Town, Halltown, and Uvilla in his home county of Jefferson County, WV, on October 1, 1896. Many other areas followed in quick succession. Over the next six years, Rural Free Delivery expanded to cover large areas of the country. It became a permanent nationwide service in 1902. Rural mail carriers provided their own transportation, which created a quickly expanding market for mail carts or wagons. According to the Smithsonian National Postal Museum, 44 RFD routes in 1897 became 24,566 by 1904. Many businesses began to make mail-carrying vehicles. One of those vehicles was a horse-drawn cart used in Jefferson County, where Shepherdstown is located, in the early 1900s. It was donated to the Museum in the 1990s. In addition to its bright yellow color, it sports red trim, sliding doors with glass windows, a driver’s bench, a brass lamp for a headlight, an easy riding spring, and its own diminutive coal stove for heat in winter. The frame was made of wood, with painted sides displaying a handwritten “RFD No. 9” and fancy curlicues. This object is the star of a museum display of objects small town Americans used around the turn of the 20th century.