Tourists make smallest post office a big deal : Toolshed-sized Florida attraction has no bathrooms, gators--just a few snakes. But it makes money.

In a state bursting with major tourist attractions, this may be the least of all. Still, the tour buses pull up, the visitors get out, and one at a time they step into the smallest post office in the United States.

“The most common--and usually the first--question,” Postmaster Naomi Lewis said, “is: ‘Do you have a bathroom?’ ”

Of course, the answer is no.

Lewis barely has room to turn around.

Yet for 41 years this onetime toolshed--measuring 8 feet, 4 inches by 7 feet, 3 inches--has served the people who live on islands of high ground amid Florida’s swampy interior near the Big Cypress National Preserve.

Many of the 200 families whose mail is delivered out of Ochopee are Native Americans of the Miccosukee and Seminole tribes.

The story of how Ochopee--a misspelled Native American word meaning big field--got to have its own ZIP code--33943--and an official designation as the nation’s smallest post office begins with a roaring fire in 1953 that destroyed the general store that once housed the post office.

According to local historian Maria Stone, a shed used to store irrigation pipes was dragged to the roadside to serve as a temporary mail drop until the store could be rebuilt. Of course, the store was never rebuilt and Ochopee, once an area known for its tomato farms, never grew.

And anyway, the tiny post office soon became so popular that no one cared.

Located on the Tamiami Trail (U.S. 41), 35 miles east of Naples, Fla., and 70 miles west of Miami, the tiny white building next to the flagpole stands alone and conspicuous against the forested green background, and makes a natural stop for passers-by. Many people buy a 25-cent picture postcard of the building and a 19-cent stamp, then dash off a message to someone at home. Lewis hand-cancels it on the spot.

At that point, Lewis said, she often fields the second-most common question: Do you get alligators in here?

No. Alligators, abundant in the surrounding wilderness, are not permitted inside.

Snakes are another story. While technically not permitted inside either, several snakes have slithered in over the years. But Lewis said efforts to seal the baseboards of the tin-walled hut may have halted the intruders.

Despite its dollhouse look, the Ochopee post office is a working, full-service station, offering Express Mail, money orders and packaging materials, stored in an attic-like compartment above Lewis’ head.

And the place is a money-maker, according to U.S. Postal Service spokesman Marty Roberts. The Postal Service pays $25 a month in rent for the building, while taking in an average $5,000 each month in revenue. That more than covers the salaries of Lewis, one contract mail carrier and the electric bill, Roberts said.

“The Ochopee office is cost-effective, it generates a lot of publicity and it demonstrates our concern to provide universal service,” Roberts said. “It is also valuable as the answer to a trivia question.”

Several years ago, the Postal Service sponsored a nationwide search for small, free-standing post offices and found two to rival Ochopee. One was in Salvo, on North Carolina’s Hatteras Island. But it was destroyed in 1992 when torched by an arsonist. Although rebuilt and restored, it is now a piece of history and not a working post office, according to Postal Service clerk Linda Hooper. The residents of Salvo now get their mail from nearby Rodanthe, N.C.

The other contender was in Birds Landing, a California town of 28 residents located about 20 miles northeast of San Francisco. Although that post office delivers mail to only nine families and has an annual revenue of less than $8,000, by Ochopee standards the building is Grand Central Station. “We’re 6 feet by 24 feet,” said Shirley Paolini, postmaster for 26 years. “We even have a lobby where you can sit down.”

Over the years, the Ochopee post office has been featured many times in print and on television. The former postmaster, Evelyn Shealy, was also a notary public who performed 19 marriages here.

Lewis says she does not have time to marry anyone. She is too busy sorting mail and hand-canceling tourist postcards and boxes of mail carted out from Miami or Naples by people who just want the Ochopee postmark on their correspondence.

“I meet a lot of interesting people, from all over the world,” she said. “I’d say the only drawback is that sometimes I get something like tennis elbow from all the hand-canceling. But my job--oh, I love it.”