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National Air Mail Week Covers of IndianaOH, both locations closely tied to Orville and Wilber Wright. All the rest of the cachets were approved by local postmasters. Because the special cachets were used during the entire week, covers are available with cancellations from each day of NAMW. Yet, Thursday, May 19th was the most important day%u2014and was designated Pickup Service Day%u2014because that was when the one-dayonly NAMW flights took off and linked all of the thousands of participating cities, towns, and localities. As a result, Air Mail service was a reality at even the most remote locations.Collectors have been pleased with the many cachets available, and their variety is considerable%u2014from the beautifully designed, to the crudely conceived and executed. However, it%u2019s their diversity that makes collecting these covers so fascinating, particularly those autographed by the pilot or local postmaster. It%u2019s been estimated that over 16.2 million letters and 9,000 parcels were mailed during National Air Mail Week. At Kitty Hawk alone, an amazing 53,233 covers were processed. And Postmaster General Farley himself received more than 150,000 letters, parcels, and cacheted covers from every corner of America. The FlightsAir Mail, of course, requires a place for an airplane to land and take off. However, many towns didn%u2019t have airports. To compensate, temporary airstrips were created in farm fields or on golf courses, and some planes took off from blocked-off county roads or the streets in front of post offices. In other cases, mail was collected locally, then taken by car or truck to a nearby airstrip, perhaps at the county seat, which acted as a mini-hub. Some communities actually constructed new permanent airports for the occasion, which were dedicated during NAMW. The creativity of local postmasters was reflected in how the mail was carried to the plane. There are records of using a motorcycle, stage coach, bicycle, buck board, oxen, horseback, foot runners, dog team, and reindeer. In Chicago an auto-gyro transported the mail from the post office to the airport. Some mailbags had to be carried as many as 50 miles to reach the nearest airplane.After taking off from one location, a flight might make a series of stops before arriving at its final destination. For example, in Indiana, the airplane leaving Fowler made a pickup in Attica, then Crawfordsville, before finally disgorging its accumulated mail in Indianapolis. Surprisingly, the weather delayed just a few flights, which were flown on the 19th or 20th. And only one airplane crashed. It involved pilot-photographer National Air Mail WeekA National Air Mail Week Poster.