Post Office Serving Sheepherders, Farmers Is Tiny, but It Still Has ZIP

The Birds Landing Post Office, one of the smallest in the nation, looks more like a spruced-up toolshed than the local outpost of the U.S. Postal Service.

Postmaster Shirley Paolini admitted that handling mail for the 24 folks in town and about 100 families in the surrounding countryside does not sound like a high-pressure job by city standards. Nevertheless, Paolini said she never has a dull moment.

“For me, it’s never boring. It can be anything else, but it’s never boring. You never know what the day is going to bring,” she said.

Important Function

The post office serves an important function for the farm families who have lived in the area for generations and for the homesick Basque, Peruvian and Mexican sheepherders under contract with local ranches.

Paolini, who lives with her husband in a frame house behind the post office, has been postmaster for 20 years. In the summer, she and her husband are joined by their grandson, who catches turtles in the nearby creek and plays softball in the road.

An American flag and red geraniums grace the front of the post office while two friendly old dogs watch the locals trade gossip at nearby picnic tables. Inside, a table and two chairs provide more opportunity to catch up on town news. Next door sits a 19th-Century general store.

Founded by settler John Bird in the 1870s, Birds Landing is south of Fairfield in Solano County, about 20 miles northeast of San Francisco.

The U.S. Postal Service announced recently that the Birds Landing Post Office tied with two others in a contest to name the nation’s smallest post office. The two others are Salvo, N.C., and Ocholpee, Fla., beating out such places as Cut and Shoot, Tex.; Smile, Ky., and Remote, Alaska.

Nominated by Public

Candidates for the contest were nominated by the public. Using a point system, nominees were compared in such categories as square footage, local population, number of post office boxes and number of delivery route stops.

The contest was the brainchild of officials at the Postal Service’s Oakland division, which includes Bird’s Landing. Contenders had to be free-standing post offices with appointed postmasters and their own ZIP codes.

“Each town has a cute little story to tell,” said Dan DeMiglio, spokesman for the Oakland postal division. “The majority of (nominating) calls came from people who grew up in some wonderful small town and remember the way life used to be.”