Post Office Tree

<h2 id="history">History</h2>
<p>In 1501, Portuguese navigator <a href="/facts/P%C3%AAro_de_Ata%C3%ADde/CIy2RzQ3">Pêro de Ataíde</a> sought shelter in Mossel Bay after losing much of his fleet in a storm.  He left an account of the disaster hidden in an old shoe which he suspended from a milkwood tree (<i><a href="/facts/Sideroxylon_inerme/eoh879kA">Sideroxylon inerme</a></i>) near the spring from which explorer <a href="/facts/Bartolomeu_Dias/cYLPrrXy">Bartolomeu Dias</a> had drawn water. The report was found by the explorer to whom it was addressed, <a href="/facts/Jo%C3%A3o_da_Nova/cqxeqs71">João da Nova</a>, and the tree served as a kind of de facto post office for decades thereafter. João da Nova erected a small shrine near the Post Office Tree, and although no traces of it remain, it is considered the first place of Christian worship in South Africa.
</p><p>More recently, a boot-shaped post box has been erected under the now famous tree, and letters posted there are franked with a commemorative stamp. This has ensured that the tree has remained one of the town’s biggest tourist attractions.
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<h2 id="see-also">See also</h2>
<ul><li><a href="/facts/List_of_individual_trees/L353ts0g">List of individual trees</a></li>
<li><a href="/facts/List_of_Champion_Trees_(South_Africa)/L0Bep7sm">List of Champion Trees (South Africa)</a></li></ul>

<ul><li> Media related to The Post Office Tree at Wikimedia Commons</li></ul>
<p><a href="https://geohack.toolforge.org/geohack.php?pagename=Post_Office_Tree¶ms=34.180363_S_22.141382_E_">34°10′49″S 22°08′29″E / 34.180363°S 22.141382°E / -34.180363; 22.141382</a>
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<h2 id="references">References</h2>

<ol>
<li id="fn:1"><p>"The Post Office Tree". Atlas Obscura. Retrieved 14 November 2019.
 <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-post-office-tree-mossel-bay-south-africa" target="_blank">https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-post-office-tree-mossel-bay-south-africa</a> <a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li>
</ol>

Post Office Tree open-in-new

Post Office Tree