About This Stamp
A 20-cent block of four commemorative stamps featuring America's first major form of mass transportation, the streetcar, was issued October 8, 1983, in Kennebunkport, Maine. The First Day of Issue ceremony was held at the Seashore Trolley Museum, which houses approximately 100 streetcars and trolleys, many of which are still operable.
Designer Richard Leech, of Orlinda, California, outlined the streetcars' evolution in this block of four stamps. One of the images is of the John Mason, the first American streetcar. An elaborate stagecoach pulled on rails by two horses, the John Mason was in service starting in 1832 in New York City. An image of trolley cars from Montgomery, Alabama, the first place in the nation to have city-wide electric transportation, represents the new era in streetcar evolution. Also featured are a streetcar that ran along St. Charles Avenue in New Orleans, Louisiana, after 1835 and the nation's last horse car, nicknamed the Bobtail, which operated in Sulphur Rock, Arkansas. Peter Cocci modeled the stamps.
The stamps were printed in the offset/intaglio process and issued in panes of 50.