The American Bison stamp from the U.S. Postal Service pays tribute to our national mammal. The species Bison bison is commonly called the buffalo, and is uniquely tied to American history.

For millennia, the ways of the Native Great Plains peoples were intertwined with the buffalo’s. Tribes crafted hides into clothing and tipis and bones and horns into tools. As settlers pressed westward throughout the 1800s, millions of buffalo were reduced to hundreds. Since the early 20th century, passionate efforts have replenished herds at Yellowstone National Park and other parks and refuges, and tribal nations are also restoring wild herds.

The engraved 1923 American Buffalo stamp served as a starting point for art director Greg Breeding, who adapted the artwork of the vintage 30-cent stamp to reflect today’s Forever® rate. Breeding sought a contemporary buffalo photograph to accompany the engraved design. Finding just the right image proved trickier than expected.

“Tom Murphy’s photo has the kind of reproducible detail that so many other photos lack,” says Breeding. Murphy’s photograph captures a bull bison at Yellowstone National Park, where the largest wild buffalo herd flourishes today. The photo, says Breeding, “also happens to have a background of clean sky and pretty magnificent grass,” elements that echo the 1923 stamp image.

“Bleeding the image over the edges of the stamp instead of putting a border around the photo,” says Breeding, “helps the buffalo feel more out in the open, less constrained. This also creates a better background for the vintage artwork.” Seamless blending of the prairie grass between the stamps serves another of the designer’s goals — for the grass to flow in a continuous pattern across each row of the 16-stamp pane.

The inset is Breeding’s intaglio-printed adaptation of the 1923 American Buffalo stamp, originally designed for the Bureau of Engraving and Printing (BEP) by Clair Aubrey Huston. Closely referencing Charles R. Knight’s buffalo drawing, Louis Schofield engraved the vignette for the early stamp, and fellow BEP employees Edward M. Hall and Joachim C. Benzing engraved the ornate frame.

The American Bison stamp is being issued as a Forever® stamp. This Forever stamp will always be equal in value to the current First-Class Mail® one-ounce rate.

Until the World Stamp Show:

Figures of the American Revolution