Postal Service?

Sorting the ins and outs of  mail delivery in Jackson Hole. 

// By Emily Cohen

It’s a weekday afternoon at the “old” post office in downtown Jackson. It’s been a week since I checked my mail, and I run into two people I know while making my way to the “back of the stacks.” There’s a yellow slip in my box, signaling that I have a package waiting for me. But I don’t have the time to wait in an eight-person-deep line attended to by one mail clerk. So, I will come back another day. 

Bill Hayes often bikes to the Wilson Post Office—a five-mile trek from his home off Moose-Wilson Road. He likes to come to the post office because it gets him out in the community. “I always inevitably bump into somebody I know or haven’t seen,” he says. Or, he says, he meets someone new. A friendly retiree, he moved to Wilson full-time in 2018 from Houston and finds his daily visits to the post office part of the charm of living in Jackson Hole. He says it’s also an excuse to stop by Hungry Jack’s General Store next door—and buy something he doesn’t need.

Jackson resident Elisabeth Rohrbach isn’t as charmed. She lives just blocks away from Jackson’s downtown branch on Pearl Avenue, but when asked about her thoughts on mail, she had a litany of complaints. “It’s closed for lunch now, so when can you go if you’re working? Why can’t we get home delivery? The system doesn’t work,” she says. “I mean, seventy-three cents for a stamp, come on.” Rohrbach finds having to go to the post office to get her mail inconvenient and frustrating, and that the lines for services are only getting worse. “Can’t they fix this?” she asks.  

Rohrbach isn’t alone in her frustration. Over the years, there have been various attempts to improve mail in Jackson Hole, and the challenges here aren’t unique. Ski towns like Crested Butte, Breckenridge, and Aspen, Colorado, also do not have home delivery of mail, largely because when mail was first established in these communities in the late 1800s, there wasn’t rural home delivery of mail. Today’s system is simply a holdover from settlement days. 

So, with limited home delivery of mail in this northwest corner of Wyoming, most residents must register at one of the area’s seven post offices for a post office box. “It’s a big part of everybody’s everyday lives. And in a rural community like Jackson, you have to rely on the post office,” says former town councilor Jim Stanford. Legendary fishing guide and newspaperman Paul Brunn said the post office was the best place to gossip in the 1950s and 60s—followed only by the beauty shop and the bar. Bruun moved to the valley in 1955, when, he says, “there weren’t many people around.” He says that back then people liked the camaraderie that the post office facilitated. “It was a good gathering spot, especially when faced with long winters,” he says. 

When homesteaders began arriving in the 1880s, mail to Jackson Hole first made its way to Saint Anthony, Idaho, 80 miles away, on the Oregon Short Line, a subsidiary of the Union Pacific Railroad. From there, it went to Victor, Idaho, where a volunteer picked it up and brought it to Jackson Hole via an arduous and dangerous two-day trek over Teton Pass by wagon, sled, or skis.

According to History Jackson Hole (formerly the Jackson Hole Historical Society), one volunteer went missing along the way, and his body wasn’t found until spring. He wasn’t the only one. Records from the Bridger-Teton Avalanche Center show that in 1913, mail carrier Clarence Curtis died when he was caught in an avalanche and swept into Coal Creek on the west side of Teton Pass. Just one year later, another mail carrier, Franke Parsons, met the same fate when he was hit by an avalanche at Windy Hollow on the Victor side of the pass while he was carrying the mail. 

Before the first post office in Jackson was approved in 1892, the residents of the Flat Creek area had to deliver their own mail, on time, for a year to prove that it could be done. The United States Postal Service also wanted to ensure that there were enough people living in the area to make the route worth it. Though the USPS started rural free delivery, which brought mail directly to peoples’ homes, in 1893, this service never made its way to Jackson.

Joe Boxrud, public information officer with the USPS, says that a post office coming to a community often led to a town’s official designation. “Jackson and many of these small towns, they weren’t even towns until the post office planted a flag there and said, all right, we’re Jackson, Wyoming,” Boxrud says. “Back in the 1800s, that’s how a town was established, when they started establishing mail delivery there.”

Jackson Hole’s first post office was in the two-story Simpson homestead, located in what today is considered downtown Jackson. Some of the earliest postmasters were postmistresses. From 1894 to 1918, Maggie Simpson, Mary Anderson, and Sara McKean subsequently held the top job for Jackson. Elsewhere in the region, the head of the post office—master or mistress—would rotate between neighbors, usually because the “post office” only consisted of a box.

In the early part of the 20th century, the number of post offices grew, along with the valley’s population and tourism industry. At one point, 15 separate communities had their own post offices within Teton County (which was part of Lincoln County until 1921). The post offices in Moose and Jenny Lake were seasonal—established just to keep up with mail from tourists in the summer months. 

Icy conditions—and inconvenience—made calls for home delivery frequent. According to a 1974 Jackson Hole News article, the Postal Service held a community poll to determine the desire for home delivery. Just over half of survey respondents gave a thumbs up to home delivery. However, the Postal Service didn’t recognize the results because only 20 percent of the surveys were returned, and the Postal Service required a 75 percent return rate. 

The most recent push for home delivery came in 2018, when locals like Patrick Starich appealed to the Jackson Town Council to create a stakeholder group to work with the Postal Service to find a way to offer home delivery of mail. He came up with a long list of compelling figures to make his case, estimating that Jackson Hole’s 10,000-plus residents travel a total of 1,045,200 miles each year to get their mail, a distance of more than two trips to the moon and back that consumes 42,145 gallons of gasoline and emits 413 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. 

“I got a holiday card from someone whose PO Box is directly beneath mine—our boxes literally touch. And it went to Salt Lake,” says Rohrbach. Salt Lake City is the closest mail-processing center, at about 270 miles away. (There are two processing centers in Wyoming, in Casper, 280 miles from Jackson, and Cheyenne, 430 miles from Jackson.) 

Today, there are seven post offices in Teton County—two in the town of Jackson and one each in Teton Village, Wilson, Moose, Kelly, and Moran. Jackson’s two branches are the main post offices and see the bulk of the mail. The valley’s mail service faces a confluence of challenges largely centered around staffing shortages, which is an issue facing rural and urban areas alike across the country. In the fall of 2023, Jackson’s downtown post office temporarily closed its retail counter because it didn’t have enough employees. The closure didn’t last more than a few days though because the USPS sent employees from other post offices around the region on temporary assignments—called details—to fill the vacant positions. 

Out in Kelly, the post office is open just two hours each weekday—from 2 to 4 p.m.—and not at all on weekends. It is staffed by a postal worker on detail from Centennial, Wyoming—a seven-hour drive away. The Kelly clerk also mans the Moose post office in Grand Teton National Park on weekday mornings. For the past five years, on average only half of the USPS positions in Jackson Hole’s post offices have been filled. The current acting postmaster for the valley’s post offices, Alicia Dickson, is based out of Cheyenne, an eight-hour drive away. Dickson has been on detail to the Jackson office on and off for the past four years.

USPS public information officer Boxrud says Jackson Hole isn’t alone in its staffing woes; it is a common challenge across resort communities in the West. Understaffed branches mean a lot of frustrated customers. It has gotten so bad in some communities that a handful of towns in Colorado including Crested Butte, Silverthorne, Snowmass Village, and Steamboat Springs have even threatened to sue the federal government for poor service. “Whether it be Jackson or places across Colorado, in Vail, Aspen, et cetera, they’re always challenging,” Boxrud says. “The cost of living is very high. It’s very hard on a government salary to afford housing in those places.” What that means for customers through, is “a pain in the ass,” says Stanford. 

There is a way to make getting mail a little less of a pain in the ass. Valley resident Mickey Babcock has a PO Box at the Wilson Post Office and also has a “private mailbox” at the UPS Store on Broadway Avenue. She says a PMB allows her to have all her packages shipped to one place. Compared to PO Boxes, a PMB is expensive, though; a PMB at the UPS Store is $270 for six months, while almost every physical address in the valley gets one PO Box for free. (If you want a larger POB or a roommate has already claimed your residence’s free one, it is $70 for six months.) 

While the Postal Service is trying to improve service, declining revenue makes this an uphill battle. The Postal Service’s main revenue stream comes from products and services, not taxpayer dollars. According to a 2021 GSA report, the Postal Service lost $1.3 billion in 2022 and $65 billion over the prior 11 years. This is because overall mail volume is down, despite the growth in online shopping. The proposed changes from the federal agency—which largely aim to consolidate distribution to a few regional hubs—are facing a lot of pushback, including from Wyoming’s congressional delegation for fear that it could slow delivery. 

The sole employee of the Kelly branch says most of her job consists of tracking down things that have been either addressed wrong or delivered incorrectly, and also trying to encourage box holders to include their PO Box on everything sent to them so that no matter what shipping company is used, it will get to them (see sidebar). “I actually make a difference in these spaces,” she says. She recently tracked down a package that had carried a print for a memorial service. “I checked all the places that I possibly could to figure out where it might have gotten to. It was probably a 45-minute process. But I was able to find what they were looking for. I literally jumped over the counter and ran out the door as they were pulling out.” She says the customer got out of the car and gave her “a big old hug.”

When we were talking at the counter, one customer came in and casually retrieved her box key, which she had hidden above the door frame. She says she leaves her key at the post office because “its just one less thing to keep track of.” According to the Kelly postal clerk, there are a lot of “funny things about little tiny offices.” 

The Moran branch—the northernmost office in Jackson Hole—often gets hikers on the Continental Divide Trail or long-distance bikers camping in the post office (illegally). Even if counter service is sporadic and diminishing, the actual PO Box area at each of the valley’s post offices is open 24/7 so customers can get their mail whenever they want—and so others might get a warm night’s rest.

The Kelly clerk says her former postmaster in Centennial kept a cot with bedding for six to nine months of the year because she regularly couldn’t get home due to winter weather. “That was her backup. If the roads closed and she couldn’t get home, she’d sleep in the office. She’d literally go to bed next to the mail and wake up and do the same thing the next day.”

Despite the frustration with the post office, it remains a place of connection. And locals have a lot of appreciation for the people who keep it running. “I’m not knocking the people working there. They are barely keeping it together,” Stanford says. Buffalo Valley resident Lois Cashin bakes Christmas cookies for the clerks at the Moran Post Office to show her appreciation. Though she says, “When the snow is heavy, you wish it was delivered to your house.”

PO Vibes

Wilson 
5605 Highway 22
Zip code: 83014

Named after Nick Wilson, a Mormon pioneer and Pony Express rider, this post office is at the base of Teton Pass, has about 2,100 POBs, and channels a classic Old West feel, at least on its exterior, which has a wooden frame and false-front architecture.  

PO Vibes

Teton Village
3230 McCollister Dr.
Zip code:  83025

This post office near the base area of the Jackson Hole Mountain Resort serves a community of about 500 residents and hundreds of thousands of visitors each year. While JHMR has been getting more and more glamorous over the past decade, this post office remains a modest one-story building with a wood-panel interior.  

PO Vibes

Downtown Jackson
220 West Pearl Avenue
Zip code: 83001

Built in 1973, this is known locally as the “old” post office. It has over 5,000 POBs and several hundred package lockers. Local singer-songwriter Pat Chadwick describes it as claustrophobic, especially since the addition of the package lockers.

PO Vibes

Jackson, Maple Way
1070 Maple Way
Zip code: 83002

Opened in 1995 in West Jackson, this post office is no longer new, but locals still call it the “new” post office. (It is 20-plus years younger than the downtown post office.) It is the largest post office in the valley with more than 15,000 POBs and is the main sorting location for lost mail.  

PO Vibes

Kelly
4486 Lower Gros Ventre Rd
Zip code: 83011

Founded in 1914, the original Kelly Post Office was one of the many buildings washed away by a catastrophic flood in 1927. Today’s post office, on the community’s main road, is a metal- roofed former shed adjacent to the Kelly Cafe. The office is staffed just two hours a day, five days a week. 

PO Vibes

Moose
3 Teton Park Road
Zip code:  83012

The Moose Post Office is across the road from GTNP’s main visitor center. It was established in William Grant’s general store in April 1923 to handle tourist letters during the summer months. Today’s Moose Post Office primarily services park employees with its 500-some PO Boxes. 

PO Vibes

Moran 
1 Moran Town Road
Zip code: 83013

Established in 1902 by Maria Allen, this PO is named it after artist Thomas Moran and was originally in the Elk Horn Hotel on Oxbow Bend. Today this PO has 600-some boxes in a double-wide trailer from 1973 that was supposed to be temporary. 

You’ve Got Mail

Whether you’re in Jackson Hole receiving mail or packages or you’re sending mail or packages to someone in Jackson Hole,
here’s how to make sure it gets where it is supposed to:

Individual’s Name-PO Box Number 
1234 Whatever Street 
PO Box #
City, State, Zip Code

Putting the PO Box as part of the last name is key. Some of the slower delivery services from carriers like UPS and Fed Ex use USPS for last mile delivery, and sometimes the shippers don’t print the PO Box line on shipping labels. Putting the PO Box number after the last name ensures that, even if the PO Box line is omitted, your box number is still on the package. JH