Nor gloom of night? When the post office leaves town
Closing locations creates new struggles for locals
From the outside, it doesn’t really stand out; most people drive by without a glance.
But, for years, the post office in Gladstone served as a hub for its small farming community — and still does nearly a decade after it shut down for good.
Gladstone is located in a remote section of an already rural Union County in the state’s far northeast corner. The area is home to only a few dozen residents, most of them scattered across the rolling ranchland that extends forever in every direction.
Driving along U.S. 56, you might not even notice you were in a place called Gladstone were it not for Gladstone Mercantile, the town’s only gas station, restaurant and store. Owner Victoria Price said most of her customers are either locals or truck drivers headed to Clayton or Springer.
“We’re it for everything I guess,” Price said.
And, for decades, that included the local post office.
It was first opened in 1888 and moved to several locations around the area, finally settling in the eastern half of the Gladstone Mercantile for its last few decades in operation.
Remnants of the old office still remain, with mail slots from the 1950s, the counter where customers would line up and even an old delivery bag nailed to the door. A hand-carved sign outside the building still reads: “U.S. POST OFFICE Gladstone N.M. 88422.”
Price’s eyes filled with pride as she showed an envelope she keeps displayed in the post office, which commemorated the 100th anniversary of Gladstone’s post office in 1988. She describes herself as “very pro-post office.”
Price has only owned the building for a couple of years, but she said she remembers it being open when she was a kid growing up in the area, and that everyone would come to the office to collect their mail and converse with other locals.
In that way, Gladstone doesn’t differ from many other rural locales in New Mexico, where post offices are often one of the only public buildings in the area and serve as a natural gathering point.
But, in 2011, the U.S. Postal Service closed the post office in Gladstone, along with several other rural offices in the state, as part of an ongoing effort to cut costs.
Now, a gray cluster mail box sits near the highway, serving as the de-facto post office for Gladstone residents. The closest post office building is now in the town of Mills, more than 30 miles south.
Price has started filling the old post office with antiques and other knickknacks from the area, adding she’d like to convert it into a museum some day. For now, though, piles of objects are obscure signs of what the small room once was.
Some of those driving by the postal building still assume it’s open for business.
“We’ve actually been talking about taking that sign down because it’s very confusing to a lot of people,” Price said. “About three people a week.”
Six days a week
Concern surrounding the postal service has reached fever pitch in recent weeks as operational cuts proposed by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy stoke fears of mail delays and the shutting down of certain post offices.
This as the U.S. prepares for a significant surge of mail-in ballots for Election Day in November as more Americans vote from home during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The closure of post offices, though, is nothing new, especially in rural areas.
Since 1964, at least 50 post offices in New Mexico have shut their doors, nearly all of them in some of the state’s most remote locations, according to data from the postal service. A majority were located in northern New Mexico specifically, five in Union County alone.
The largest wave came in 1995, when 13 post offices closed statewide. The postal service had said many lacked the necessary facilities, with many offices being run out of people’s homes that were often the only buildings in the area, according to newspaper articles from the time.
More than 30 rural post offices were ordered to move their operations — those that could not comply closed for good.
For many small communities, losing a post office can be a devastating experience.
The tiny town of La Madera in Rio Arriba County nearly lost its post office in 2001 due to its crumbling condition. One resident, in an interview with the Santa Fe New Mexican, scoffed at the idea of replacing a box with a cluster mail box.
“You can’t get personal attention from boxes,” the resident said.
Gladstone has now implemented that exact system, while still trying to maintain a personal touch.
Six days a week, Cynthia Cruz stops at Gladstone during her four-hour route from Des Moines, Union County, to drop off mail at the cluster box. Sometimes, residents will wait next to the box for her 11 a.m. delivery.
“I’m just here to serve my customers and if there’s anything I can do to help them, I will do that,” Cruz said.
Cruz is not your typical postal worker, in that she isn’t one at all. Her family has a contract with the postal service that allows them to deliver mail in the area.
Many rural areas rely on contracted couriers to deliver mail rather than full-fledged postal workers.
Richard Trujillo, who’s delivered mail in Gladstone for more than 40 years, said these contractors deliver packages and other goods not readily available to residents.
“That’s their lifeline to the outside,” Trujillo said.
Over the years, Trujillo has built a close relationship with his customers. If he’s running late or muddy roads prevent him from delivering that day, he knows many will call him to ask what is wrong.
But despite that relationship, he’s wondered how costeffective of a model it is to deliver door-to-door to residents.
“I have about a 130-mile route and I only have maybe 35 customers,” he said, adding dirt roads slow him down no matter the weather. “If it snows, it’s bad, or if it rains, these roads are muddy, muddy.”
He said he was surprised he hasn’t had his hours cut, since some rural carriers deliver three days a week. But such a move might make his job untenable.
“I don’t know if I can make a living that way,” he said.
A trip to Gladstone
Residents can have most of their mail-related needs, such as sending letters and buying stamps, met through the couriers.
However, sometimes they do need to make the 35-mile drive to Springer, since closer offices are open only a couple of hours a day. Price said money orders and international packages are the main reason people need to visit a post office.
“It’s a pain not to have a real post office,” she said.
“We really need it out here.”
A trip to the post office means Price needs to close her store early, hurting her business. And while her store no longer has a post office, she still performs many of the same duties.
She’ll regularly accept mail for residents and sell them stamps secondhand, with many making long drives to the store just to get their mail.
“They kind of make a trip of it to Gladstone every day,” Price said, adding the mail still binds the community like it did when the post office was open.
Rural residents rely heavily on the mail for information, medicine, bills and other important notifications. Union County Commissioner Clay Kiesling said it’s always been that way.
“It is a gathering place, a place to get information,” he said.
“Which is a big deal in rural areas.”
And when those post offices close, many fear small towns will disappear with them. Price said the effects in Union County are plain to see.
“It’s already noticeable in all the towns that have closed — you take your business elsewhere,” she said, pointing to nearby Mount Dora as an example. “I don’t think anyone lives there any more.”
Mount Dora’s post office closed in 2002. Kiesling still lives in the area and said the couple that ran the office were often the only people in the actual town.
“Once the postmaster there hit retirement age, I don’t think anybody wanted to come up there and take over,” he said. “It just kind of closed after that.”
Afterward, the addresses of nearby homes changed from Mount Dora to Grenville, the nearest post office, at 17 miles away.
Kiesling, whose father’s ranch is in Mount Dora, said it bothered him that his home area was no longer recognized by the postal service.
“I always still put Mount Dora, even though it’s actually Grenville,” he said, noting he still gets his mail delivered.
The postal service has not recently announced potential closures in New Mexico, as it has in other states.
Lately, DeJoy has backed off plans to cut hours and remove machines from local post offices. Ken Fajardo, president of the American Postal Workers Union Albuquerque Local 380, recently told the Journal that those decisions created delays in mail delivery.