The United States Postal Service has approved a pictorial oyster festival postmark honoring the 68th annual Urbanna Oyster Festival, which is this Friday and Saturday, Nov. 7 and 8, in Urbanna.
Urbanna Postmaster Dana Longest said that the postmark, which is a group of oyster knifes, an oyster shell and a slice of lemon, was designed by local artist Lisa Wiggins Reitdorf.
Customers and collectors who want the postmark can get them at the Urbanna Post Office on Nov. 7 and 8 in person and afterwards on a 30-day mail request, said Longest. The post office will sell the postmark souvenirs on a post card for 69 cents.
“The Urbanna Oyster Festival has become so much a part of our community that I felt we needed to honor it with a pictorial postmark,” said Longest.
The postal service in June approved an Urbanna pictorial postmark celebrating the first official United States post offices in the country. The postal service was founded in 1775. Urbanna Post Office was one of 69 community post offices founded at the beginning of our nation.
The first Urbanna Oyster Festival was conducted in 1958 as “Urbanna Days.” The name was changed in 1961 to the Urbanna Oyster Festival and the popularity of the festival took off. The festival has grown from a small town affair into one of the largest festivals in the region.
“The oyster festival brings thousands of people to town and we felt that this (pictorial postmark) was our way of reminding people that we are celebrating the importance of the oyster to our past,” said Longest.
After the Civil War, the oyster played a dynamic roll in bringing back the local war-torn economy. During the winter oyster seasons from the 1870s into the 1970s, the harvesting of oysters from the Rappahannock River was a mainstay for the town’s economy.
