I alluded to postal ZIP codes in the recent Zip Lines and I’ll carry that theme through the next couple of articles. I’d stumbled upon the United States Postal Service’s Fun Facts. Someday maybe I’ll explore what exactly makes a fact “fun” although for now I think I’ll simply steal liberally from that page and ponder some of its claims in greater detail. Today I’ll focus on post offices and in the next article I’ll shift to methods of delivery. Spoiler alert: don’t visit that USPS page unless you want to ruin the surprises.
Highest
There was a surprising amount debate about the town with the highest elevation in the United States. I explored that in something I wrote a couple of years ago. Was it Leadville, Colorado, was it Alma, Colorado or was it some poseur town that annexed an adjoining ski resort? However, there was no doubt about the post office building with the highest elevation. Clearly, that was the one in Alma at 10,578 feet above sea level, serving ZIP Code 80420.
Rocky Mountain High, indeed. I’ll refrain from making any jokes about the highest post office being located in Colorado where a certain herbal substance has been legalized. We’re talking strictly about elevation here.
Northernmost and Westernmost – 48 Contiguous States
It’s not that I don’t love Alaska and Hawaii — I do! — its that they skew anything to do with directional superlatives in the United States. I’ll give a little nod to Alaska momentarily. Even so, for purposes of northernmost and westernmost post offices I’ll focus on the contiguous 48 States.
They were both in Washington and not too distant from each other. Best of all, the preferred route calculated by Google required a ferry. That would put it pretty high on the 12MC list of sites I’d like to visit someday. I’ll bet readers in Seattle could probably accomplish this easily. Wouldn’t it be cool to tell folks that you’d been to the northernmost and westernmost post offices in the Lower 48 in a single day? Perhaps mail yourself a letter from each spot? Maybe I’m the only one who would find that even remotely interesting. I don’t know.
Northernmost
The northernmost post office served Sumas, Washington, Zip Code 98295. The ZIP Code abutted the Canadian border although that wasn’t special. Lots of other locations shared that attribute. What made Sumas different, however, was the physical location of its post office building just a stone’s throw away from the actual border.
I also wondered about the name Sumas. The City of Sumas provided an explanation. It also provided a website that looked like it had been transported through a dial-up model directly from the 1990’s. Wander over there if you’re ever feeling nostalgic about how the Intertubes used to appear including the use of 3-D buttons as links, educating people to “click here” and the placement of a site counter at the bottom of the page.
“Sumas (pronounced Soo’mass) means ‘land without trees’. Although lake and swamp once covered most of the area there was also a considerable area that because of natural flooding was a wide open grassland.”
Westernmost
The westernmost post office, on the Olympic Peninsula, serves ZIP Code 98350 in La Push, Washington. Its name also had an interesting etymology: “La Push is from French La Bouche, meaning ‘The Mouth’ of the Quillayute River, adapted into Chinook Jargon.”
Coldest
The USPS bestowed a tie for the coldest post offices, for Barrow, ZIP Code 99723 and Wainwright ZIP Code 99782, both on Alaska’s North Slope along the Arctic Ocean. The site didn’t offer an explanation for “coldest” although I knew that neither of those locations represented the lowest temperature ever recorded in Alaska. That happened that at Prospect Creek on January 23, 1971, when the thermometer fell to -80°F / -62°C. Rather, I believe the claim was based on average temperature. Barrow routinely remains below freezing for eight months of the year, often considerably below. However its oceanfront location and lack of elevation variation tends to keep its very cold temperatures relatively stable versus the spikes and drops found farther inland. It’s also getting warmer:
“Each year the sea ice was getting thinner and arriving later. Coastal storms have become so dangerous that some villages—lacking the shore ice that used to protect them—will have to be moved miles inland. In one village I watched the Army Corps of Engineers build rock walls to shield against fierce waves. Fish species from warmer waters were showing up in fishing nets. Insects that no one recalled seeing before—such as spruce bark beetles, which kill trees—were falling from the sky. There was a proliferation of flies that make caribou sick.”
Smallest
Look at the cute little post office for Ochopee, Florida serving ZIP Code 34141. Just look at it. The entire building covers only 61.3 square feet (5.7 square metres). A nearby historical marker explained the situation.
“Considered to be the smallest post office in the United States, this building was formerly an irrigation pipe shed belonging to the J. T. Gaunt Company tomato farm. It was hurriedly pressed into service by postmaster Sidney Brown after a disastrous night fire in 1953 burned Ochopee’s general store and post office. The present structure has been in continuous use ever since-as both a post office and ticket station for Trailways bus lines-and still services residents in a three-county area including deliveries to Seminole and Miccosukee Indians living in the region. Daily business often includes requests from tourists and stamp collectors the world over for the famed Ochopee post mark. The property was acquired by the Wooten Family in 1992.”
It wasn’t a joke. It was a temporary fix that became permanent because of inertia.
Oldest in the Same Building
I don’t know why this one fascinated me. Nonetheless it seemed remarkable that the post office serving Hindsdale, New Hampshire had remained in the same building for two centuries, or about a century and a half before ZIP Code 03451 even existed. It didn’t have much of a backstory beyond its age.
The town said its “1,327 square foot building was constructed on September 25, 1816, following the appointment of Hinsdale’s first postmaster in 1815.” From an architectural perspective, “A Field Guide to American Houses described this design as a Gable Front Family Folk house common on the East Coast of the U.S. before the Civil War.” That was about all I found.
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