By Dennis Sadowski
The Rattlesnake Island Local Post serving a privately owned island in the western basin of Lake Erie will celebrate its 60th anniversary with the release of new stamps on Aug. 27.
Dave Gill, who runs the local post as its “postmaster general,” has planned a day of festivities to mark the milestone.
stamps used by the contract air mail service set for release on Aug. 27.
The highlight will be the release of four new local post stamps during a public ceremony at 2 p.m. at the Liberty Aviation Museum, 3515 E. State Road, Port Clinton.
The triangular stamps will be issued in denominations of 50 cents, 75 cents, $1 and $2. The three lower values will provide service for post cards, first class letters and parcels, respectively. The stamps will be issued in perforated and imperforated formats.
The $2 stamp will mark the 100th anniversary of the introduction of the Ford Tri-Motor plane, which flew mail, passengers and supplies to and from the island in the 1960s and 1970s.
Tri-Motor plane, which flew to and from the island in the 1960s and 1970s.
Pilots who flew the Tri-Motor to South Bass, Middle Bass, North Bass and Rattlesnake islands will be on hand to share stories from their experiences.
“It is kind of awesome to be continuing the history of Rattlesnake Island Local Post,” said Gill, who resurrected the country’s only airmail local post in 2022 after it had been discontinued in 2010 as the health of its founder, Dr. James Frackelton, declined.
First day covers for the stamps will bear the traditional diamond-shaped RILP postmark. A second pictorial postmark commemorating the centennial of the Tin Goose, as the Tri-Motor is known, also will be used on the covers.
For Gill and assistants Aug. 27 will be a busy day. They will be on Rattlesnake Island early in the morning preparing the first day covers before making the 10-minute flight to the Erie-Ottawa International Airport on the mainland and the museum next door. There, postal workers will apply the pictorial postmark.
Around 1 p.m. Gill will take to the airways again—covers in hand—for a flyover of Rattlesnake Island in the museum’s Tri-Motor before returning for the ceremony.
All mail from the island also must be franked with first class postage, per U.S. Postal Service regulations. The local post stamps pay for the mail service to the island provided by Griffing Flying Service based in Port Clinton. Tri-Motor flights ended in 1977 after a crash on South Bass Island.
Artist Beth Lynne Gregerson of Fairport Harbor, designed this year’s stamps. It is her ninth set of designs overall: four since Gill reestablished the local post and earlier from 2007 to 2010.
This year’s designs are inspired by the first RILP stamps in 1966. The 50-cent stamp depicts a map of the island, the 75-cent value shows a Tri-Motor flying over the island, and a docked boat appears on the $1 value.
The $2 stamp shows the Tri-Motor flying low over water.
Frackelton, a surgeon, a one-time owner of a stamp and coin shop and one of the owners of the private 85-acre island, invited Gregerson to collaborate on stamp designs in 2007.
He died in 2012 at age 85, two years after the service was suspended until Gill reinitiated it four years ago.
Frackelton started the local post in 1966 after numerous failed petitions to postal officials seeking to extend mail service from the larger and more populated islands to Rattlesnake. Only when Frackelton learned about a federal law that allowed a private citizen to establish a local post where no mail service was provided was he finally successful.
The first stamps were rectangular in shape, issued in 5-cent, 10-cent and 25-cent denominations. Within four months, however, postal officials ordered Frackelton to stop, saying his stamps looked too similar to regular postage stamps and thus were illegal. That’s when he adopted the triangular design that remains in use today.
Gill said he is looking forward to welcoming people interested in aviation, philately and local history to the Aug. 27 ceremony.
“The enthusiasm and sharing about Rattlesnake Island and being the only airmail local post, it keeps me going. (It’s) the enthusiasm that other people enjoy and glean,” he said.
“It just seems like I’m keeping history alive here and doing something that is maybe memorable.”
Learn more about Rattlesnake Island Local Post and its stamps at www.rilp.org
Dennis Sadowski can be reached at sadowski.dennis@gmail.com.