About the Authors

   Joseph Francis Macdonald was born in the Midwest in 1934. In 1958 he moved to the Northwest and became interested in the area's early history of transportation. He started as a collector of photographs, books, and documents. In 2004 he self-published volume one of Macdonald's Steamboat & Steamships of the Pacific Northwest covering Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, Alaska, Yukon, and Idaho, followed by volume two in 2005. In 2009 his book Macdonald's Stage Coaches and Stations of Eastern Oregon 1850-1920 was published by Western Places. Since then he has completed a similar book for Western Oregon, as well as books on both Eastern and Western Washington State Stage Coaches.

John Gallagher's work career was as a physicist for the National Bureau of Standards, but his passion in life is collecting photographs of post offices, preferably going there and taking the picture himself.  His collection is world-wide but concentrated in the United States, where he has a number of states complete or nearly complete.  John Gallagher and Alan Patera collaborated on compiling and publishing postal history books for 16 states.