At the Car Wash
To eliminate what happened 2 weeks ago, me missing a post office and having to go back, today I wrote down the names of all the post offices I was after. And it was a good thing too because I would have missed Falls City. And not only would I have missed the post office, I would have missed getting the car washed by a girls softball team.
Today’s post office total of fifteen is the largest daily haul so far in Oregon. I want to say when doing the South Carolina post offices, there were a couple of days where it was in the twenties. But then again, South Carolina has about 150 more post offices and has 1/3 the land area, so everything is a lot closer. I did some chipherin’ and there is 1 post office for every 71 square miles in South Carolina, and Oregon has 1 post office for every 252 square miles!
Now I’ve got to go back and write something about each of today’s fifteen post offices…
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- Amity – I’m going to take a wild guess and say this isn’t named after the island that a great white shark terrorized back in 1975. (7/12/25)
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- Sheridan – Sheridan counts the prison population of the Federal Correctional Institution as part of the city’s official population. (7/12/25)
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- Willamina – The town was named after Willamina Creek, which in turn was named for early settler Willamina Williams shortly after she fell off of her horse and into the creek. (7/12/25)
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- Grand Ronde – The only thing of any substance in this town of 1,600 is the Spirit Mountain Casino. (7/12/25)
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- Rickreall – Rickreall was often referred to as Dixie during the Civil War and for some time after because of the Southern sympathies of the local populace. (7/12/25)
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- Dallas – Unlike Scio & Monmouth, I’m betting the founders of this town didn’t name it after where they came from. Folks from Dallas, TX, weren’t moving here in the 1840s. (7/12/25)
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- Monmouth – Like Scio, this town took its name from the town the early settlers came from, in this case Monmouth, Ohio. (7/12/25)
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- Falls City – I almost missed this one like I missed Odell two weeks ago, but this time I had written down all the POs I planned on photographing and realized I’d skipped it, so I went back for it. (7/12/25)
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- Independence – Hooray for the red, white and blue. Red Ford Explorer, white Toyota RAV4 and a blue Mazda Miata. (7/12/25)
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- Turner – My good friend Mark Turner from the ASCO days was a CNC programmer and machinist and in spite of his last name, he was more of a miller than a turner. (7/12/25)
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- Aumsville – I don’t know how the residents of this town pronounce its name, but all I hear in my head is “alms for the poor.” (7/12/25)
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- Sublimity – The blue lettering on the building goes sublimely with the blue of the Miata. (7/12/25)
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- Stayton – Instead of my usual, standing across the street and clicking away, I backed off a bit to get the mural in the photo. (7/12/25)
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- Scio – The town was named by one of the original residents, William McKinney. He used the name of his former home, Scio, Ohio. The Ohio village is, in turn, named for a Greek island called Chios; the Italian version of the name is Scio. (7/12/25)
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- Jefferson – The first name for this locality was Conser’s Ferry, for Jacob S. Conser, an Oregon Trail pioneer of 1848 who ran a ferry across the Santiam River. (7/12/25)
