US Post Offices "RUR. STA."

Factual Questions
1

Am doing some research on small US towns and their post offices. In the process it’s not unusual to see post office names of the format:

Marmarth Rur. Sta. (1974-Date) (in Slope County ND)
Which follows chronologically from Marmarth (1908-1974)

So I’m presuming Marmath, ND had a post office until 1974 and then it was down sized. A sub-post office, staffed part-time or summat.

But can somebody help me with what does the abbreviation “Rur. Sta.” stand for? My googlefu is failing me.

My guess would be “rural station” but that may not work in the US venacular.

2

Surely you are correct – “rural station.”

3

I was curious about this myself, so I did a little googling, and found this pretty interesting official historical overview.

PDF:

It lays out the evolution of rural services, including some definitions of how the various terms were used over the decades. Interesting stuff.

4

The show that replaced the Andy Griffith show, Mayberry R.F.D. was name to indicate how rural it was. RFD being a common term for Rural Free Delivery at the time, i.e. the sticks.

5

Anecdotally, in the UK, I shipped a Raspberry Pi from Bath to a guy in Scotland. I looked it up on Google Maps, and it was in the west and to the left of nowhere.

24-hour overnight, guaranteed 1 PM delivery. Not very expensive; shipped at 2 PM, and he told me he had it in hand the next day at 10 AM. Trains, Planes and automobiles, if I could have found the place, I could not have beaten that.

6

@JKellyMap Thank you!

@Cervaise Thanks for that. :upside_down_face:

7

I used to live out in the sticks amongst New Zealand farm land. Though we lived in a village so had a regular street address, anyone between towns, i.e. Farmers, usually had RD1 / 2 / 3 addresses, meaning “Rural Delivery.” Presumably the Post Office had lists of farms by surname or some other divisioning for the really remote places, and local knowledge was the way you deliver mail. I think it was twice-weekly, too.

8

Growing up in the Riverina area in NSW, Australia our mail address was just three lines:

Surname
Property
Nearest Town

Once when we had a serviceman come out, their service centre insisted on including the nearest cross street on the call out.

Dad took considerable pleasure with his instructions.

  1. From (Nearest town)
  2. Take the (2nd nearest town) Road
  3. Turn right at the 5 mile intersection
  4. Continue for 27 miles
  5. Turn left at (property name) mailbox and follow the drive for 2 miles.
  6. If you reach a crossroad you have gone 3 miles too far.
9

When I was a kid I remember our mailing address still used a rural route number. Realizing that I had a resource for actually dating the change, I just looked at my scanned copies of the family’s old church directories, which had mailing addresses in the back.

In 1967 it was just the route number and town. By 1974 an area code was added but the route was still there. Between 1984 and 1987 a road address was added and the route number removed. (I don’t know if the road actually had a name before then, I do remember that at some time in my childhood road name signs were first added.)

The progression was:

1967
Darren’s Family
Route 1, Smalltown

1974
Darren’s Family
Route 1
Smalltown, 12345

1984
Darren’s Family
Route 1
Smalltown, 12345

1987
Darren’s Family’s
123 Local Road
Smalltown 12345

(None of them included the state name between town and zip code.)

10

Of course I meant zip code, not area code.

11

I don’t see the difference between 1974 and 1984.

12

I interpret that in the context of his statement that the change happened “between” those reference points. He has them as bookends, and is offering them as such, but has no further granularity in the data. The previous data point was in 1974, which means, without the 1984 data point, the 1987 address had 13 years in which it might have been introduced. But this way, we see the old format was still effective a decade after the change in 1974, and the actual change window is much narrower.

That’s how I read it, anyway.

13

What is (was) a church directory? A list of members of a local church with their addresses?

14

There isn’t one. But it narrows the period when one o f the changes took place.

15

Like a school yearbook, but for a church. Photos of the member families.

16

With contact information (addresses, phone numbers) and sometimes some other stuff, like birthdays, year they joined the church, etc.