Hammond, Montana

In the Big Sky plains of southeastern Montana lie several post offices along a lonely artery: U.S. 212, which winds its way through hundreds of miles of rural landscape from the Little Bighorn Battlefield along I-90 through to Minneapolis, by way of Wyoming and the entire width of South Dakota. Along the 60-mile stretch of the road in Montana southeast of the town of Broadus, a county seat, lie three post offices: Boyes, Hammond, and Arzada. When I say post offices lie along the road I don't mean that you'll see towns; you may see three or four buildings along a road, one of which is a functioning post office. The speed limit doesn't even drop at these points. Blink and you will miss them.



This is not to say that these post offices are not worthwhile; au contraire, they serve ranchers living miles away along dirt back roads. This is why these post offices tend to be found at intersections of U.S. 212 with what would seem to be dusty trails to nowhere. Hammond's is found between Crow Creek Road and S Rd. Here's a map of the community:



Since there are no addresses in the community, USPS's Leased Facility Report states a rather unusual address for the post office: "S OF HIGHWAY 212". To be fair, this is actually the only structure on the south side of Highway 212 in Hammond. The post office was purpose-built (date unknown; missing from USPS Leased Facilities Report) on a 10,000-square-foot plot owned by a local landowner (address: a P.O. box) for the modest sum of $1,825 per year.

The Hammond and Boyes post offices are oddities: due to the fact that either a) their workload surpasses four hours a day or b) they happen to be far enough away from the nearest larger post office, each now rates as a six-hour facility under USPS's POStPlan. While thousands of post offices have had their hours reduced across the country, these two post office actually increased from four-hour-a-day to six-hour-a-day operations!

The design of the post office building itself is standard for a class of generic small post office buildings constructed several years back before the Big Sky District of USPS had been consolidated into the Dakotas District. Standard size, standard layout, standard colors, standard signage. Sadly, this means that the remote post offices in this corner of the country are not the most photogenic.



However, look across the street (i.e., to the north side of Highway 212) and you will see what I love to find: the former site of the post office, uninhabited but authentic through and through.



Beautiful.

A Positive Impact of POStPlan?

Editor's notes: In discussing the nationwide implementation of POStPlan we consider frequently the reduction of retail hours at rural post offices and the dismissal of Postmasters. Often overlooked is the need for local residents who have no rural delivery to be able to pick up their mail beyond the hours of a post office's new reduced hours of, say, 8—10 A.M. Here's how that issue is being addressed in many parts of the Midwest and in particular at one office affected by POStPlan in eastern Iowa. Mr. Bahnsen is encouraging and working with various postal officials around the country to improve access to Post Office Box lobbies, whether or not those post offices are impacted by POStPlan and its attendant reduced window hours. (This post does not necessarily endorse the latter policy.)

A POStPlan Perspective by Steven Bahnsen, retired Postmaster:

POStPlan is sweeping rural America. Perhaps you have heard of it, or even had this affect your community's post office. It was designed to eliminate Postmaster jobs, and while small post offices will remain open, their window hours will be reduced to 6, 4, or even 2 hours a day.

Postal Service Headquarters in Washington, D.C. selected which offices would be impacted by POStPlan, and gave guidance to its local Districts regarding the logistics of its implementation.

POStPlan mandates that residents' ability to access their Post Office Boxes [in the post office lobby] not be reduced upon the plan's implementation. If a lobby was open all the time, access would not change. If the boxes were available from, say, 7:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M., or even if the boxes were only accessible during the morning, lobby access hours would not be reduced even as retail hours were impacted. Nowhere within POStPlan were there instructions that box lobby hours could not be expanded, only that they could not be reduced. In this way POStPlan has afforded the Postal Service with the opportunity to re-evaluate and in many cases improve P.O. Box mail access.

Clinton, Iowa post office (taken 1989)


My own postal history dates to about 1965 when I discovered the glorious 1902 post office in my hometown of Clinton, Iowa. I was mesmerized by the marble walls and floors in this building where people came to buy stamps and mail things. The whirr of the cancelling machine in the late afternoon and evenings was music to my ears, as was the idea that any person could come into this building at any time to get their P.O. Box mail. The concept that everyone should be able to get their mail at any time has stayed with me for 50 years.

For decades Iowa has housed hundreds of post offices whose lobbies are accessible at all hours. Plenty of other offices maintain lobbies that are accessible into the evening courtesy of automated time locks, many of which were installed during the 1980s.

POStPlan has provided the impetus to turn off the time locks at many offices and just leave the lobby open all the time. [The postal Districts governing] Minnesota, northwestern Wisconsin, Missouri, southern Illinois, and Indiana are among those that have joined Iowa['s] in simply leaving post offices' lobbies open once POStPlan impacts them.

The expanded lobby hours have been a boon to many communities. Residents need no longer race home from work just to pick up their mail before the post office is locked for the evening. Now they can get their mail after dinner, on Saturday afternoons, or even Sundays and holidays — any time that suits them. Only minor security modifications have been required at many offices for this plan to succeed.

A novel idea was implemented in Goose Lake in eastern Iowa, a town of 250 people (and a large school complex) about 15 miles from the Mississippi River. Their post office building was hastily constructed 35 years ago [in 1978] with the P.O. Boxes and window counter all occupying the same room. The entire building needed to be locked while the Postmaster took lunch [before window hours were reduced upon the implementation of POStPlan]. A 24-hour lobby here is out of the question.

Here the Postal Service provided and installed four large cluster boxes in front of the post office building, meaning residents can pick up their mail whenever they want to -- for the first time in history in Goose Lake. The equipment also includes eight parcel lockers (another first), which enable most customers to pick up a package that is too large for their mailbox at any time.

[Below: the Goose Lake post office featuring cluster boxes for increased P.O. Box mail access. The boxes were added upon the implementation of POStPlan as the post office lobby could not be left unlocked beyond the newly diminished retail hours.]


Some residents preferred to keep their Post Office Boxes inside. Those are accessible from 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM during the week as well as for a couple of hours Saturday morning.

The standard blue collection box is emptied each afternoon after 4:00 P.M. by the Highway Contract Route driver and taken to the Quad Cities P&DF [about 45 minutes south].

POStPlan has its downsides, but I firmly believe that in this respect people are being better served now by being able to access their mail every day, even if the retail window is open less.

Steven Bahnsen, Chicago, Illinois

Note: During my own travels I've observed that post offices in the southern part of the country are much more likely to maintain P.O. Box lobbies that are accessible 24/7. Rare is a 24-hour lobby in the Northeast, even in remote and presumably safe areas in Pennsylvania and New England. In the South 24-hour lobbies are pervasive.

Man, Oh Amana: Post Offices of the Colonies

Edit—May 12, 2013: The Middle [Amana] post office has since reopened. The below content will remain as written on May 5, 2013.

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The "lease dispute" strikes again, and according to KCRG-TV out of Cedar Rapids another small-town office bites USPS's emergency suspension dust. The victim this time: Middle, Iowa, also known as Middle Amana. If Amana sounds like the name on your refrigerator, that's because that now-Whirlpool subsidiary began manufacturing coolers in this very town in 1934. But the seven villages that comprise the Amana Colonies have a history that long predates electricity. The villages were founded by immigrant members of the Community of True Inspiration religious sect, who fled Germany in search of religious freedom.

These colonies were called by some "utopian experiments", and they were in fact communal, with "all property was held in common". (The Amana Heritage Society has further details.) The town of ["main"] Amana was settled in 1855, with the surrounding six villages established within eight years.

The Amana Colonies are located in eastern Iowa, about halfway between Des Moines and the Quad Cities and a tad north. Cedar Rapids and Iowa city each lie about 25 miles away, to the northeast and ESE, respectively. The seven villages are Amana, Middle [Amana], High Amana, West [Amana], South Amana, East Amana, and Homestead.

Here's a map presenting the landscape:


Of the seven towns in the Amana colonies, six (all but East Amana) have possessed a post office. With the suspension of the Middle post office, that leaves the colonies at two operating post offices: Amana and South Amana.

Photos from 2012 are my own; prior photos come courtesy the Post Mark Collectors Club (PMCC) Museum post office photograph collection — in physical form, that is.

A post office has been operating in Middle since Jan. 14, 1933, and it has been at its present location for most of that time. USPS's Leased Facilities Report sheds light on some of the history of the Middle Amana post office and the terms of its lease. The present site has been occupied since April 1948; the site was likely moved in tandem with Carl Hergert's being named Acting Postmaster that February. (Research shows that Mr. Hergert, a New Year's birthday boy, was 29 years old at the time he became Postmaster; he died in 2003 at the age of 84.) Maintenance is conducted by the landlord (the Amana Society), which cuts down on USPS's operating expenses at this location. The terms for the five-year lease ending April 30, 2013 provided for a 523-square foot site leased for $2,520 a year.

Let's see what we're looking at!

Middle [Amana], IA post office, June 2003 (by J. Gallagher)


Middle [Amana], IA post office, Oct. 2012


A comparison of the photos (including this one, at Iowa Backroads) suggests that a new sign was installed between 2003 and 2010. You can read more about a previous closure scare in 1995 at that link as well.

Under USPS's POStPlan the operating costs at the Middle post office were slated to decrease anyway once POStPlan was implemented at the office by next summer; a minimum-wage Postmaster Relief would have been hired to operate the facility for four hours a day.

Additional commentary is available at Save The Post Office, here.

Next up in our Amana postal tour is the town of Homestead, the last town to join the Colonies, in 1861. The post office predates even that development, having been established Aug. 16, 1852. The post office here, too, was suspended, Nov. 28, 2011. Until its suspension the post office was at the same site since 1913. Iowa Backroads discovered this photo, from the Amana Heritage Society Collection, showing the post office in 1919. Physically, IB notes, the building had changed in several ways: "a ramp has been added added, chimneys removed, and supports now prop up the west wall of the building."

Homestead, IA post office, June 2003 (by J. Gallagher)


I came across the site in 2012, and though the sign had been removed the building was clearly the site of a former post office.

Homestead, IA post office site, Oct. 2012


The South Amana post office was established Jun. 19, 1874 and is now one of the two that continues to operate in the Amana colonies. It is scheduled to be reduced to a two-hour office as part of POStPlan. (Full information regarding hours reduction in Iowa can be found at Iowa Backroads, here.)

South Amana, IA post office, Sept. 1989 (by M. Anderson)


A new sign has since been installed.

South Amana, IA post office, Oct. 2012


The post office has been at its present site since June 1952; its present lease lasts until 2015, is for $5,040 a year, and is also held by the Amana Society. (Keep your fingers crossed.)

Amana's post office, by far the biggest in the Colonies, was established Sept. 3, 1884 and is not slated to incur any cuts as part of POStPlan. The post office has been at its present site since Feb. 1972. Its current lease, also with the Amana Society, costs the Postal Service $14,400 per year and lasts until 2016.

Amana, IA post office, Jun. 2003 (by J. Gallagher)


A comparison with a more recent photo reveals substantial landscaping changes at the building's front entrance.

Amana, IA post office, Oct. 2012


The post office in West [Amana] was established Feb. 28, 1902 and was discontinued March 1991.

Amana, IA post office, Mar. 1990 (by M. Anderson)


The post office in High [Amana] was established Apr. 6, 1901 and was discontinued Feb. 29, 1968. We do not have a photograph of this operation available.