page_title: Postage stamps and postal history of the Canal Zone
section_title: Postage due
hierarchical_section_title: Postage stamps and postal history of the Canal Zone / Postage due
caption_attribution_description: English: Canal Zone overprints -- postage due U.S. Regular Issues of 1922-1925 overprinted with CANAL ZONE
context_page_description: Postage stamps and postal history of the Canal Zone is a subject that covers the postal system, postage stamps used and mail sent to and from the Panama Canal Zone from 1904 up until October 1978, after the United States relinquished its authority of the Zone in compliance with the treaty it reached with Panama.
  The Canal Zone was a strip of territory 50 miles long and 10 miles wide across the Isthmus of Panama, and was ceded to the United States for the purpose of constructing and operating the canal which connected the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Upon the establishment of the Canal Zone in 1903, seventeen Post Offices had also been established and were operated by the U.S. Government. The Canal Zone and its post offices, with the main distributing office in Cristobal, operated as an independent government agency under the direct authority of the President of the United States. In the towns where there were railroad stations, the station agents of the Panama Railroad functioned as postmasters. Along with ships and freight, domestic mail and mail from around the world moved through the canal.
context_section_description: For several years after the United States assumed authority of the Canal Zone and its post offices no postage due stamps had yet been issued. Letters that were lacking in sufficient postage when received at the office of delivery were simply hand stamped "postage due", with the appropriate amount due indicated. Prior to its delivery, any such letter was affixed with a postage stamp in the amount of the postage due and then cancelled in the standard fashion. Then in 1908, Gerald D. Bliss, the postmaster at Pedro Miguel post office conceived the idea of precancelling entire sheets of stamps with the Postage Due cancelling stamp. This was not official method and was done simply to save time. To save time it soon became necessary to print and use specific Postage Due stamps without having to stop and treat every such letter lacking in sufficient postage. The ten cents stamp was the one most used but all of the denominations of the 1906, 1909 and 1910 issues were precancelled in such a manner. By 1914, Postage Due stamps were finally issued. These were the current Postage Due stamps of the United States, consisting of the denominations of one, two and ten cents overprinted with the words "canal zone" in one line, diagonal fashion along the bottom area of the stamps. The regular issue of U.S. Postage Due stamps were overprinted again in 1925, with a variation in the overprint, with CANAL over the word ZONE. Postmasters in the Canal Zone received strict orders not to sell any of these stamps to the public in unused condition. These orders were apparently followed as none of the unused Postage Due stamps had surfaced.
  In April, 1915, these stamps were replaced by a set of Postage Dues supplied by the Panama Government, and those remaining in
  the Post Offices were called in and destroyed. The new stamps had a pleasing appearance, consisting of three values: one, two, and ten centesimos de balboa; Printed by the American Bank Note Company all three of these stamps were of the same color, olive brown.
caption: U.S. Regular Issues of 1922 overprinted for use as Canal Zone Postage Due
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