With post office closures, small towns feel loss of community: "You're not going to understand what's the big deal unless you've lived it"
While the U.S. Postal Service can trace its roots back to the country's founding, it faces growing questions about its relevance. The postal service is struggling with increased competition and huge losses, leading to budget cuts and slower service.
It's left some to ponder if the post office even has a place anymore in our digital world. But in one community, folks would tell you it most certainly should.
Fewer than 500 people live in the tiny hamlet of Alplaus, New York. For years, your best chance of running into any one of them was at the post office.
"That was where you could find other neighbors. And you could find dog biscuits, and books, and doughnuts and coffee," Alplaus resident Vicki Watkins said.
"And gossip," added neighbor Elizabeth S. Burke.
Even though home delivery was an option, most residents still preferred a P.O. Box.
"Most of us chose to have a box because we loved to make the daily visit to the post office," Jessica Hornik Evans said.
But at the spot where the post office once stood, a gazebo has taken its place. It's been 10 years since the postal service abandoned its location in ZIP code 12008.
"Everybody was devastated. I had warned people, you know, 'You better get ready. … Put your mailboxes up,'" said Kathy Boyle, who was postmaster until the shutdown.
Kathleen Schnitzer heeded Boyle's warning. The day her family had to put a mailbox at the end of their driveway was "incredibly sad," she told CBS Mornings co-host Tony Dokoupil.
That sense of sadness is a familiar one in small town America. Since the growth of rural home delivery in the early 1900s, more than 50,000 post offices have closed.
"The communities that do experience postal closures, they would tell you they're not quite the same," said Evan Kalish, who has visited more than 10,000 post offices in all 50 states – documenting the journeys on his blog, Postlandia.
He's collected dozens of postmarks along the way in a hobby some writers have described as obsessive.
"Obsessive would be if I did all the international post offices too," Kalish joked.
What drives his enthusiasm, he says, is in part the Postal Service's obligation to provide service to everyone, regardless of where they live.
"It is rather egalitarian. Every place, every person is treated equally. No matter if you're in the desert of Nevada or in the heart of New York, you can get the same service for the same price," he said
Even the companies cutting into the post office's business rely on what multiple surveys have deemed to be America's "most trusted government agency," and what a 2020 Morning Consult survey found to be the "most trusted brand" in the country.
"UPS and FedEx will deliver many of their packages to the postal service for what's known as the last mile delivery," Kalish said.
Traversing the United States by horse, boat, train, bike, car and plane, the postal service helped build this nation and created a bond with its citizens, dating all the way back to its creation in a 1792 law signed by President George Washington.
But Devin Leonard, author of "Neither Snow Nor Rain: A History of the United States Postal Service," says the agency's best days are behind it.
"Nobody really wants to have an adult conversation about what's happening with the Postal Service. And that is, that people don't really need it, you know, like they used to," he said.
Over the years, new innovations have chipped away at the Postal Service's business. The telegraph and telephone reduced the need for letters. Private shipping companies offered other options for sending goods. The internet has made it easier to do just about everything.
Leonard said the Postal Service is "definitely not" part of the future of America the way it has been in the past.
"People do have this great affection and nostalgia for the postal service, but if they're not using it, you know, what good is that?" he said.
The agency is also billions of dollars in the red, in part because of a 2006 law requiring it to set aside funding for health benefits for workers retiring decades from now.
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy last year introduced a ten-year plan to put the agency back on a path to profitability, but critics voiced concerns that it would cut post office hours and lengthen delivery times.
In a statement to CBS News, the Postal Service says the plan "is helping stabilize the workforce, improve operations, and increase investments in facilities and equipment, all of which led to successfully delivering more than 13.2 billion mailpieces and packages this holiday season with an average delivery time of less than 3 days."
The mail in Alplaus now comes in from the nearby town Rexford, just a three-minute drive from where the old post office once stood. But for the people there, that short trip has taken them too far away from each other.
"You're not going to understand what's the big deal unless you've lived it," Alplaus resident Shawna Thompson said.
"This is a connection to the past," Jessica Hornik Evans added. "And the post office was the symbol of community.