Trans-Mississippi Exposition Issue

The Trans-Mississippi Issue is a set of nine commemorative postage stamps issued by the United States to mark the 1898 Trans-Mississippi Exposition held in Omaha, Nebraska. The finely engraved stamps depict various scenes of the West and are presently valued much by collectors. This was only the second commemorative issue offered by the U.S. Post Office and closely followed the pattern of its predecessor, the Columbian Exposition series of 1893: both sets appeared in conjunction with important international world’s fairs; both offered a wide range of stamp denominations; both adopted the double-width stamp format to accommodate pictorial tableaux.

An important factor in the creation of this series was that the Director of Publicity for the Exposition—- Edward Rosewater, publisher of the Omaha Daily Bee—- was something of an expert in stamps. Rosewater, nationally prominent in Republican politics, had been selected by President McKinley to preside over the U.S. delegatation at the 1897 Congress of the Universal Postal Union (the international convention responsible for securing efficiency in the flow of mail from country to country, tasked that year with securing cheaper international postage). On December 13, 1897, Rosewater suggested that the Post Office issue special stamps commemorating the Trans-Mississippi Exposition (as it had for the Columbian Exposition), and 10 days later Postmaster-General James A. Gary agreed, promising a series with five denominations ranging from one cent to one dollar. Gary asked Rosewater for his ideas about stamp subjects, and the latter, in response sent handsome wash drawings on tracing paper for the five values: 1¢, bison herd (dusky orange); 2¢, Indian on horseback (deep orange-red); 5¢, ploughman and plough horse (dark yellow); 10¢, train rounding a steep mountain pass (dusky blue); $1, torchbearing goddess (Columbia) perched upon a globe (deep orange yellow). These stamps would have been of the large Columbian size but rotated in orientation, with the short sides at the top and bottom. (Curiously, the U.S. would not issue a "vertical commemorative" of this sort until 1926, when the Erickson Memorial appeared.)

Gary’s announcement of the series prompted protests from stamp collectors, who were still unhappy about the high price of the Columbian Issue of 1893 ($16.34, a princely sum at the time), but the Postmaster said he decided on the issue "because I wanted to help the people of the West." Indeed, Gary subsequently made the set even more expensive by adding four more stamps to the series, including a $2 denomination, raising its price to $3.80.

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