Wellington, Nevada: 89444

This post continues the story from last week's post, all about the little town of Smith, Cherokee the friendly postal clerk, and hints of the dramatic demise of the Topaz post office. If you haven't read it, you should probably check it out before you read this one...

Between Smith and Wellington, we stop at one of Smith Valley’s better-known farm stands: Renner Family Farms. There’s a long, dusty driveway bordered with the ubiquitous cottonwoods. The farm’s fields stretch out on either side, rows and rows of squash-like vines writhing off into the haze. Pumpkins, I presume; Renner’s pumpkin patch and corn maze are seasonal classics, well known throughout the region. The farm stand itself looks closed, but as we pull around, a jovial fellow emerges from the farmhouse, waving us over. There’s not much produce on offer this early in the season, but the shelves are well-stocked with local honey, jam, and fresh eggs. As I choose a few zucchini from the cooler, I chat with Mr. Jovial, who turns out to be one of the farm’s eponymous Renners. He tells me about the valley: his uncle runs the True Value up in Smith, and he names a few of Smith Valley’s other founding families. Of course, we discuss the weather, and especially the prospect of rain. We might just not have water, he says. Mr. Renner doesn’t seem particularly bitter about the drought, or fearful about its effects, but he’s a realist. Sometimes there’s water, sometimes there isn’t. We just gotta hope we make it through. But he and I both know that pumpkins shall not live by hope alone.

Onward into Wellington, past more peculiarly flat rangeland, more placid cattle, more barbed wire, more dry watercourses. At the intersection of State Highways 208 and 338, we pass a brick church that looks like it has flanges or flaps, and make a mental note to pass back this way as we leave the valley. Then State Highway 208 describes another elbow-like curve, and caught in the crook of this elbow is the most patriotic truck scales I’ve ever seen. As we move slowly hither and yon, trying to photograph the building in its most striking aspect, our graphic designer Cameron, who’s the fourth member of today’s expedition, calls out nine!

Nine what?

Flags, he says. From where I’m standing I can see nine different flags.

I can only find eight, but then he mentions that he’s also counting the building itself. I raise an eyebrow.

The Wellington post office building looks just as neat and trim as the Smith building – nay, more so. But it somehow seems more distant. Nothing on the building itself identifies it as the Wellington PO; this is the first such signless post office we’ve visited. Oh, there’s the standard-issue USPS-branded sign out by the road, but this is a more bashful location than Smith. Partially obscured by some dead thistles, a boulder of modest dimensions does in fact proclaim this to be the Wellington Post Office. We have the Youth of Smith Valley to thank for this boulder. That’s an endearing phrase: it could refer to young people or to the abstract concept of relative youngness.

We arrive at Wellington around 4pm; it closes at 4.30. Usually, we prefer to visit post offices just after midday, as workers gather themselves after lunch for the afternoon shift. Today, though, we’re running late, so I hurry in to meet Wendy, the clerk on duty, who answered the phone when I called to ask if they were open.

If Cherokee matched her post office, so does Wendy match hers. (I don’t meet a postmaster on this trip; she’s based in Wellington, but out of town. Cherokee tells me that the current postmaster has been in the role for a couple years; her predecessor, who retired perhaps seven years ago, seems to have been universally loved.) The Smith office fronts up to the street, garrulously proclaiming its vital statistics in curly gothic letters to anyone happening to pass by – and the outgoing, gregarious Cherokee fits perfectly there. Wellington is professional, put-together, and withdrawn; Wendy, in parallel, is polite and deliberate in her speech, knowing where she’d rather not go. (For instance: I asked Wendy, at the end of our conversation, for a photo, as I’ve done with other workers. Absolutely not, she says. I smile, stutter a Please? But she’s firm: not impolite, just certain. I don’t like people taking my picture. So no.)

Smith is a small community; we guess it’s home to no more than 200 or so. Wellington seems significantly larger, with multiple eateries, a more developed town center, and various ranching-associated services – a garage, a realtor, the aforementioned truck scales, a lot full of storage sheds for sale. So the size of Wellington’s post office is proportionate with its surroundings.

Wendy is, as I have mentioned, reserved, but she answers my questions willingly enough. Yes, we do have carriers. Three: one for the valley, two for TRE. TRE, she tells me, stands for Topaz Ranch Estates, a development out west on State Highway 208, north of Topaz Lake. As Nevada morphs into the preferred retirement destination of aging Californians, TRE and other rural developments like it have grown. As a result, Wellington’s post office has benefited as well. Wendy lives out in that direction herself.

And how do you like working here? I’m beginning to understand, and appreciate, the rhythms of Wendy’s taciturnity. The beat she pauses before she says The paycheck is good, and the quirk at the corner of her mouth, speaks volumes. Most folks here are great, she adds, and she likes the flexibility of the hours. She’s worked at the Wellington PO for maybe 8 years? Like Cherokee, she can’t precisely pin down when she transitioned to be here full-time.

Before I moved here full-time: a conversational thread. I tug it. Where were you before Wellington? Her response is quick. Topaz.

There it is again.

Based on how our conversation is going, I sense that Wendy might be pretty circumspect in how she talks about Topaz. I tread lightly: Topaz closed down, didn’t it?

It did. Then a pause. A few years ago. Another, longer pause.

I ask, any idea why it closed?

Wendy considers for a moment. It was a leasing issue. Another conversational thread to tug: so the USPS didn’t own the building? Apparently not. The building Topaz was using was one bedroom of a house from Smith Valley, a structure that was bodily transported west then north to Topaz. Didn’t even have a bathroom, just a closet, says Wendy.

Pause. I offer an encouraging huh, trying to draw out more, but it seems that she’s also caught my rhythms. It was a leasing issue, she smiles, and that’s all I’ll say.

A customer enters, and I step back while Wendy assists her: time to to wrap this up. I ask her one last question: what does she think about the Wellington community? Again that deliberating pause. Then she describes a familiar shift in local culture. There are ranchers up north, but down here it’s all OC money. Orange County. And the Bay Area. Folks pretending to be farmers. The valley’s going to get built up in the next ten years. It reminds me of what Greg said in Genoa, and somewhat of Phil’s optimism for the coming boom in Hawthorne. Different folks have different perspectives on growth.

No, she won’t let me take her photo. But she’s given me plenty to consider, along with a few more pieces of the Topaz puzzle. We discuss that puzzle on our way out of the valley, turning it this way and that in conversation. Turning back south on State Highway 338, we discover that the building with the brick flanges is St. John the Baptist Mission Catholic Church, and the north-facing flanges frame stained-glass windows. Our route takes us down through the south end of Smith Valley, past a sorority of desert peaks in the Sweetwater Range: East Sister, Middle Sister, and South Sister. (I am uncomfortable at the implications of the missing North and West Sisters.)

We dip south into California, past the dazzling, unexpected lushness of the Bridgeport Reservoir (fed by the Walker River), then ride US-395 out of the ranching town of Bridgeport. 395 winds beneath the sheer granite walls and ancient sequoias of the Walker River Canyon, then we stop for incredible hamburgers and ice cream at Walker Burger in the little hamlet of Walker. Cervantes, that inveterate forger of axioms, was right: hunger is in fact the best sauce in the world.

But we didn’t come all this way for burgers and canyons, delightful though both experiences are. No, we chose this circuitous route in order to pass a little white building just off 395, less than six miles before the spot where the highway sashays back into Nevada: 11 Topaz Lane, a converted Smith Valley bedroom, now an apparently defunct post office. Busted up, in Cherokee’s memorable phrase. Topaz.

Smoke from the Tamarack Fire is even heavier here in the Antelope Valley, ranchland watered by (what else) the Walker River on its way north towards Smith Valley. As we stop at the building which used to house the Topaz Post Office, visibility is dramatically limited; the relentless heat, even as close to sundown as it is, seems to intensify the malevolent scent in the air.

There is no sign on the former Topaz building. In fact, there is nothing to suggest that this once served as the mail hub for this tiny community – 50 people, at most. A No Smoking decal is still visible on the inside of the front window. The shingles on the roof are ragged. A gutter has fallen down, barring the concrete steps up to the front door. Other derelict buildings, in worse shape, loom behind it.

I’ve done some subsequent research on this spot, which fills out the story somewhat. The Topaz post office was founded in 1885, years before the Smith PO began service. As did many early rural post offices, its location bounced around depending on which local luminary served as postmaster. This transitory movement was hastened by a surprising number of building fires, which repeatedly forced the office to relocate. It settled in its final spot in the ‘70s, and the Smith Valley bedroom became its final form.

Like many rural post offices, Topaz eventually found itself listed for review regarding closure – a 2011 news article in the Carson Valley Record-Courier mentions it, along with the locations in Glenbrook and South Yerington, as candidates for culling. It survived the 2011 listing, but something happened in 2016 that prompted an emergency suspension of service from the location. The official USPS news release on May 4, 2016, mentions “structural concerns with the building” and directs Topaz patrons to use the Coleville location, 3 miles north. By July of 2017, the temporary suspension had become permanent. Topaz was done.

Evan Kalish, who’s visited more USPS locations than we ever will, stopped by Topaz in July of 2017. His blog post includes historical photographs of the post office in operation, from 2018 and 2014, as well as one of the (then) newly-defunct building. In Kalish’s words:

The saddest part about this effective closure is the pride the community seemingly took in its post office. The sign, repainted multiple times, proudly declared "Est. 1885". Unless the post office reopens, it will have lived to the ripe old age of 131.

I wish I knew where that sign ended up. I wish I'd stopped when I passed through back in early 2016, scant months before Topaz would shut its doors. I wish I could find the original owner of that Smith Valley bedroom. For now, the remnants of the Topaz post office are few. Digital stories about its long life and abrupt closure exist, for now. Cherokee and Wendy in Smith Valley, Greg in Genoa, and certainly others in the region hold it in their memories, for now. The transplanted bedroom does still stand just off US-395, flanked by the decaying buildings behind it, but we suppose that fire will someday claim the building, as it has so many other Topaz PO locations. With heat domes and wildfires aplenty, some day may come sooner rather than later.

If you search Google Maps for the Topaz post office, it’s still listed as active in Google’s databases. Its hours are still listed at 10am-2pm Monday through Friday, even though the Google Street View capture (taken in 2019) shows an obviously shuttered building. Even more strangely, the USPS website still claims that the location is in open, those same four midday hours, Monday through Friday. I finally lay the ghost by calling the phone number listed on the USPS website.

The line rings twice, then I hear a familiar three-note beep, tones ascending in thirds, an automated error-cue. A cultured, non-regional female voice speaks in the exaggerated correct diction of an old-fashioned recording: The number you have reached is not in service. This is a recording. Then a different female voice, fuzzy with a tinge of regional dialect: seven seven five, seven eight two.

Then a busy signal, tolling an interminable knell for the passing of the post office in Topaz, California.