Mail delivery in the opening years of the 20th Century was a new and still experimental service for the New City and surrounding area. Delivery routes to rural neighborhoods posed a serious challenge and particularly so in winter and spring when road conditions bowed to inclement weather and often meant many miles of impassable surfaces. There were no paved roads and the numbers of bridges was severely limited. Some stream crossing were possible only via fords that often were covered with running water. The surface of unpaved and undrained roadways in that era saw few if any ditches or other drainage efforts. These crossings were barriers in periods of rain or snow and the roads themselves featured deep water-filled ruts that added to the difficulty of passage. Some postal carriers were mounted on horses and others made their journeys aboard 2-wheel carts or 4-wheel buggies. Each route was a daylight-to-dusk experience and some were completed only a few times weekly or even monthly when the weather was especially bad.
 

All this was true in spite of the fact that Jasper County in that era was said to have the finest, most modern and most serviceable system of roads and bridges of any county in Missouri. That was the case primarily because of the unusual efficiency of the members of the Jasper County Court with a major bridge-building endeavor beginning as early as the 1880s and continuing into the new century.
 

The Carthage Press in March 1903 offered an account of a somewhat typical problem of the times, however:
 

“One day this winter, Joe Manlove, carrier of Carthage Route 2, northwest of town, drove into a swollen stream and had to set on top of the seatback of his buggy and hold the mail up with one hand while the whip and lines were in the other hand. The water ran over the horse’s back and into the rig.”
 

The same day, while the downpour continued, a visiting concert band used umbrellas for cover while presenting a concert on the lawn of the Jasper County Courthouse. During the program, a nervous buggy horse reared up in the mud, plunged into the center of the band and created a major crisis for both the musicians and the audience, according to a subsequent issue of The Press.
 

In that issue readers were told:  “Postmaster Tuttle relates postal carriers from the Carthage post office have had many trying experiences of late. However, he said they never missed a route, even though there were times when they had to hand out the mail with one hand while holding the reins with the other and deposit it in the hands of farm customers who were standing knee-deep in mud and water at the time.”
 

This writer’s maternal grandparents, Albert Reiley and Grace McMurphy Reiley, both were postal workers in rural areas on and near the Jasper-Barton County line, due north of Carthage. They remembered many similar incidents and also told of doctors and veterinarians risking their lives making calls to farm sites where their services were in critical need and reaching their destinations only by virtue of the strength of horses and mules successfully swimming through flooded fords on the North Fork of Spring River, Dry Fork Creek, Deer Creek, ’Opossum Creek, Coon Creek and other streams in the Spring River tributary system.    
 

Early automobiles, incidentally, existing in small numbers at the time generally remained parked in home shelters during heavy rain and floods, being quite incapable of making their way through flooded crossings and along unpaved roadways.