I recently got my hands on a zip code map, and made a surprising (for me) discovery:
Some very small rural villages in Wisconsin have a post office with its own zip code, but the geographic area that is covered by the post office is very, very tiny. Like under one square mile.
It looks like a single postman could cover all the involved streets on foot in under a day!
3 such towns:
Hingham, WI 53031
Greenbush, WI 53026
Newburg, WI 53060
In each case, the tiny zip code is completely surrounded by a MUCH larger Zip code encompassing many, many more people and served by a different post office.
It’s hard to find web-based maps for free of these particular zip codes. The zip code boundary map websites I’ve checked don’t even show them. Enter the zip code of Newburg, and it’ll take you to a map of Newburg but show only the zip code boundaries of the larger post office areas.
Does anyone know why these tiny, tiny post offices, serving very small areas with very small populations still persist? Can anyone list other such tiny, minimally populated zip codes?
some thought, but nothing really based on actual knowledge
may still, or in the past, have a lot of PO boxes for local companies - mail order services or addresses for companies (may have even been related to historical WI rules about local addresses for domestic companies?);
somewhat related - rural delivery may not have been as fast/reliable in the past, so local surrounding farming communities relied on in-town post offices to send and receive mail, either through PO boxes or general delivery, or they may not have even offered rural delivery.
basically, while the geographic delivery area may be small, it serves a larger population.
Sometimes, post office boxes at the actual post office have a different zip code from the rest of the area served by that office. So ZIP 12345 is Bumcrack, WI, while 12346 is just for the PO boxes in Bumcrack’s post office.
Usually those small, rural post offices are run as adjunct to another business like a general store. Think how Sam Drucker on Green Acres was also the local postmaster and ran the post office out of his general store. My grandparents did the same thing. Well actually Grandma was the postmistress; she outscored him on the civil service test despite him getting extra points for being a veteran.
Well, according to this article (warning: nutcase alert), it’s so that they have a place to build the secret police interrogation chambers.
More seriously, I was under the impression that until relatively recently, every incorporated town or municipality was required to have a post office unless no one could be found to run it. However, I can’t find any cite for that, so it may just be better put in the “things I learned in school that aren’t true” thread.
My town is one square mile in area and we have a post office and our own zip code. There are lots of tiny towns in Iowa with post offices and zip codes.
I don’t know why it’s still open and I imagine it loses money. There’s one business in town that does some shipping, but they use UPS and FedEx.
If it closed, what would happen? I suppose our mail would go to a larger post office for sorting and then it’d be delivered. That might mean additional staff for the larger post office, so maybe that’s why they haven’t closed ours. It wouldn’t save them that much money and it’d be bad PR.
I heard a interview of the Postmaster General on NPR on wanting to close these small post offices and discontinuing Saturday delivery but they were meeting lots of opposition.
I grew up in S. Dakota so I know of many small post offices with the added disadvantage of having a small population spread over a large area. My brother and dad get their mail every other day. I believe that some don’t deliver, the people have to come into the store/post office to get it. I am thinking of Mud Butte SD which is the store & a couple of houses a long ways from anywhere else.
They may not deliver mail. It’s just a place for people to have a PO box. That’s the case where I live.
I have a small PO 4 miles to the south of my house. We are in there zip code, not that it matters much. We have a PO box 15 miles to the north. That’s the town that my Wife works in and I drive through on the way to my work, another 10 miles. Neither of those Post Offices deliver either. Though by all accounts, they are pretty modern. There is not one Post office in the County that I work for that delivers, in town or rural.
ZIP Codes designate mail delivery routes, not geographic areas. Small towns don’t have home delivery. Everyone comes to the post office to pick up his mail from a post office box. The surrounding rural areas, however, are on rural routes serviced out of a larger town (usually what used to be called a sectional center facility) that may be some distance away. Each morning, trucks from the SCF head out on star routes to deliver mail to the various small-town post offices, and a couple hours later, the various rural carriers head out in their own vehicles to deliver to curbside boxes along rural roads (though some also start their routes at the small-town offices). Every few years, the Postal Service tries to close more of the costly small offices, and are beaten down by congressional representatives.
Thanks for the interesting info, all. I’ll peruse more of it at length, and perhaps drop in on Hingham’s or Greenbush’s post office to get the actual factual from the resident employee.
I do note in Hingham that folks within the village’s small zip code demarcation do have mailboxes outside of their homes, so do get delivery at their houses.
IANAPost Office employee, but I suspect letter carriers aren’t limited to carrying just one ZIP code’s worth of mail, so a small ZIP area might share delivery services with others.
In my area – which seems the opposite of the OP, but is in Wisconsin – one ZIP code serves a town of 10,000, including all PO boxes, plus a large (100 square miles or more) rural area with perhaps 5,000 more residents. This makes most demographic data laughably inaccurate; this single ZIP code covers a huge range in income, wealth and property values and the “average” of anything is highly misleading.
I think you will find, especially if it’s small towns in the midwest, that there is some postal substation for a large mailhouse that has those zip codes.
Large magazine and direct mail houses will have such a substation set up for themselves in their shops to handle the large volume of mail they process. They get a discount on postage and such by handling it all themselves.
For that matter, it’s not limited to such places. A look at Zip Codes in Northern Virginia will show that the Pentagon has several only for itself because it handles so much mail.
Young America, MN, a tiny town of about 3,000 people (and that’s after merging with neighboring Norwood) has over 20 zip codes assigned to the town. Including 55555.
That is because of the Young America corporation, the largest employer in town. They do coupon & rebate processing for businesses all over the country. If you’ve ever redeemed a rebate, it probably went through Young America, MN.
Sorry if this is a hijack but I just wanted to second this. In fact, each of the towers in the world trade center was assigned its own zip code. After September 11, I remember receiving an email at my office explaining that those two zip codes no longer exist. It was a very eerie message.
fwiw, my town does not deliver. Everyone has to have a PO Box in town and we all drive in to pick up our mail. It’s a pain. When I mail order occasionally there are businesses where they have never encountered this and they don’t believe me. ‘We can’t deliver to a PO Box’
Well, then I guess you won’t be doing business with me.
This normally means they don’t use the USPS for delivery. UPS, FedEx & the like really can’t deliver to USPS PO boxes. They can, however, deliver to real addresses. So give them a real address.
Meanwhile, if the shipper does use USPS for shipping, they certainly can deliver to USPS PO boxes.
Sounds more like you & they weren’t communicating clearly than that they were stupid.
both FedEx and UPS have a delivery method where they get the package to your local USPS office and let them deliver it, if you have a USPS PO box then that is the destination.
the shipper has to have that as an option, the FedEx is called SmartPost, UPS does it though i don’t know what they call it.
Qadgop, your first zip code mapquests to a local airport. Maybe it’s a shipping depot of some sort.
Your house still has a number and some sort of street name or route number, though, doesn’t it? FedEx and UPS may well deliver to your home even if the USPS does not.
Many shippers have contracts with UPS or FedEx and just don’t use the USPS for shipping. They thus can’t ship to a Post Office box. But you still can have them send things to your street address.
We do this in my home town. All mail goes to the post office and it’s not delivered to your house. But you can use the street address for other shipments.
