Went out and took several somewhat local post office photos today. I had been out in this neck of the woods gathering post offices back in November and snagged a bunch, there were still several to get. The first 3 were west of the Willamette River and the last four were east of it and on the way back home.
The first post office in Lake Oswego was easy. The second post office was a little more challenging, Google Maps couldn’t direct me to my final destination. It is on the campus of what was once Marylhurst University and I could see the roads I needed to get there, but it was kinda hard driving and following the blue dot along on the phone at the same time. Luckily it was early Sunday morning and I was the only car driving around.
The 3rd of the day in West Linn (top photo) was the weird one. As I was driving to it, the closer I got, the more familiar the roads seemed. I was having the strangest sense of Déjà vu. When I got to the Post Office, it was in a shopping center and I swore I’d been here before. I remember it because it was a very rainy day and the parking lot was mirrorlike with water. But there was a lingering feeling that maybe I hadn’t been here before, so I took a couple pictures while I was there anyway.
The last four Post Offices were easy finds in smallish rural towns and when I got home, I looked through all the post office photos looking for that West Linn image. It wasn’t there, the one I thought was it, was actually Keizer outside of Salem. I looked to see if I posted West Linn on Instagram or maybe a random post on the blog here. Nope.
Mystery #1 was solved when I started to mark off the captured Post Offices in the master spreadsheet. The address I had for the West Linn Post Office was listed as 5665 Hood St. Wait a minute the post office I found today was at 22220 Salamo Rd. I typed the 5665 Hood address into Google Maps and it dumped me into a shopping center area. When I looked at the street view, I recognized it. The memory was of me driving around looking for the post office in the parking lot was solid.
Back in November I must have realized that the Post Office used to be there and looked up on the phone to get the new address. The reason the route to the West Linn Post Office seemed so familiar is that because back in November I must have driven to the new location. Mystery #2 remains unsolved, why the heck didn’t I take any pictures of the post office back then?
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Lake Oswego – The exit for Lake Oswego off of I-5 south is the same one we would take to get to the VA Hospital. This time I kept going south to the town itself. (3/2/25)
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Marylhurst – This area was founded as St. Mary’s College in 1893 and run for many years by the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary. It closed its doors in 2018. (3/2/25)
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Molalla – The town was named after the Molalla River, which in turn was named for the Molala, a Native American tribe that inhabited the area. (3/2/25)
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Mulino – “Mulino” is a corruption of the Spanish word molino, or mill, and was chosen for the name when postal authorities objected that “Molino” was easily confused with nearby Molalla. (3/2/25)
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Colton – The birthplace of Stella Nickell who was convicted of murdering her husband by poisoning him with an Excedrin laced with cyanide. She is currently serving a 90-year sentence in federal prison. (3/2/25)
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Estacada – This was the last of today’s seven Post Office finds. (3/2/25)
