[puzzlr]

In June, 2015 DNR announced the installation of a robust new Mailbox on a cemented-in pedestal on Mailbox peak with plaques thanking the groups contributing to the new trail thus far (the upper part is still unfinished)

August, 2015

Facebook photo of new mailbox on April 23

So the new official mailbox lasted all of 9 months, not unlike its many predecessors except for the first two mailboxes which lasted 47 and 11 years respectively. This is why we can't have nice things.

[tigermn]

Maybe it was the Angry Hiker removing some litter...

[RichP]

I can't imagine they carried it down so it must be off the side somewhere where others have been tossed in the past.

[puzzlr]

[RichP]

It looks like somebody already put up a new one.

[puzzlr]

Yeah, it is a brand new white one, but the photo isn't very hi-res. It looks like it's tied on with cable ties. It's really fast turn-around for a mailbox to be gone, be discovered, and replaced in only 2 days. There was a photo of the old one on the 21st, then this new on one the 23rd.

[captain jack]

Whatever crowns Mailbox peak will be static. That's the beauty of it. It should always be a surprise what you find up there. Mailbox/s, ladders, fire hydrants. Its all good. Pile of stuff to let you know you made it to the top.

[Bernardo]

Of all the garbage hauled up to the summit, that advertisement is the worst.

[Slugman]

A Facebook group devoted to hiking did a calendar at the end of 2014, and about half the pictures entered showed the stupid mailbox. I am glad that so many pseudo hikers go there, leaves the real hikes for people who know something about hiking. Crowds, a freeway, and trash are what they want, let them have it.

[wolffie]

Mailbox attracts a lot of novice greenhorn types, and I fear the mailbox sort of thing gives them the impression that that sort of intrusion is OK (witness all the graffiti -- so now I have to carry my bear spray, just in case I meet any vandals... or maybe my trail saw will do... or I could just feed them to Al...).

[Hutch]

[fourteen410]

One of the mailboxes lasted 47 years? I had always thought the mailbox appeared [relatively] recently, i.e. just before the turn of the century.

[Randito]

[puzzlr]

Nathan and Jeremy Barnes (the brothers of Hiking With My Brother) do a great job digging up the history of many of the trails they write about. Their information on Mailbox matches everything I've found out. In addition I heard there was a cross mounted on the small flat at ~1600' on the trail, a remnant of the moraine that still forms the large flat area on the north side of the valley. The cross was visible from Valley Camp and most campers hiked up to the cross and returned, while the ambitious ones kept going all the way to the mailbox at the top. Other early hikers have speculated that the earliest trail up the ridge was a fire trail, as both side of the peak were burnt off in the early 1900s.

[Bernardo]

It would have been natural for the campers to also do some work on the trail so it probably wasn't just boots.