The tiny outpost of Aladdin in northeast Wyoming is home to the state’s oldest general store, which has also served as a local post office since 1898.
But no more.
The U.S. Postal Service has discontinued its contract with the Aladdin General Store, a change that is tied, somewhat ironically, to efforts by the store’s new owner to preserve this historic treasure.
Trent Tope, who grew up in Aladdin and remembers shopping at Wyoming’s oldest continuously operating general store in his youth, bought the general store in 2019. He and his fiancée, Jordan Yates, paid off the purchase in April of last year.
Tope said when the Postal Service learned the store had a new owner, he was told that was a breach of the postal contract, which had to be held by someone owning the land underneath the post office.
Tope hired an attorney to put together a new proposal, but said the Postal Service was completely uninterested in retaining a post office in Aladdin.
Tope went first to Hulett’s post office, which sent him to Cheyenne’s, which sent him to Denver’s.
“Denver runs the postal contracts for the western part of the U.S.,” Tope said. “So, we found out who we needed to talk to, and they had no interest in even considering it.”
Tope talked a Denver official into giving him an email so he could at least submit the proposal he’d paid an attorney to draw up.
“They looked at the numbers right there on the phone with me,” Tope said. “And they said, ‘Well, you make this much a year, and it’s costing us this much for the contract. So, yeah, no, we’re not interested at all.’”
Slowly Dwindling Away
Tope believes the change won’t inconvenience residents too much.
That’s because many of the postal functions available at Aladdin’s only store had already been whittled away, bit by bit, over the years.
“A couple of years ago, everyone was required to put up their own mailbox,” Tope said. “And many of them put up bigger mailboxes to allow for packages.”
That, Tope said, should help prevent too many trips to Hulett to pick up large packages.
Tope said the store had already lost its ability to weigh irregular packages about five or six years ago, which meant it could no longer handle that type of mail for residents.
“Then all we could do is if someone came in with a package with a prepaid label, we could send it for them,” Tope said.
During COVID, the hours for the Post Office were further reduced, to four.
“All of this has been just kind of whittling away,” Tope said.
But, he added, the store will still sell stamps and post cards for those who want them, even though it is no longer an official post office location.
Mail delivery, he added, will probably become a little faster too, since the store is no longer charged with sorting any mail. Hulett will sort that mail instead and send the mail out directly along its routes.
“They’re not going to get any less of service,” Yates said. “All of the stuff will still be delivered. It’s been many months now (since) residents were even allowed to come pick up their mail at the store.”
Only residents receiving exceptionally large packages, or packages that require something unusual like age verification, will need to drive to Hulett for that.
“Even if they get a certified letter, as long as they have their little signature card done, no problem,” Tope said. “They don’t have to go all that way to do that.”
Aladdin Resurgence?
The demise of Aladdin’s 127-year-old Post Office comes as the town is experiencing something of a resurgence.
The small Wyoming town on the eastern border of the state has a population sign that says 15 — something that might have prompted jokes at one time about counting cats as well as humans.
But more recently, people are moving to the area, Tope said.
“Several ranches have sold up on Bear Lodge and on the other side of Bear Lodge,” he said. “And those have been split into little 40-acre ranchettes. So, we’ve probably had a good 50 people move in recently.”
Tope said in talking with other real estate agents, he’s been told that the millionaires pushed out of Jackson Hole are interested in the Black Hills as an alternative.
“I had somebody who is highly involved real estate nationwide tell me that the Black Hills are going to become a smaller version of Jackson Hole,” Tope said. “And Wyoming does have a piece of the Black Hills. It’s not just South Dakota.”
Indeed, while the bulk of the Black Hills are in South Dakota, Wyoming’s Devils Tower is part of the Black Hills formation.
It’s About Preserving History
Tope knows that the influx of new people to the area won’t likely ever reach a point that it prompts the return of Aladdin’s Post Office now that it’s gone.
The Aladdin General Store will always keep all of its old post office boxes as long as Tope owns it. They are built into one wall and, while they haven’t been officially used as post office boxes since the 1940s, they are a built into the tiny town’s history as well.
That history is something Tope still hopes to preserve, along with the store — as tough as economic times have been the last two years for this small store on Wyoming’s edge.
The Aladdin General Store was built in 1896, serving as post office, train depot, barbershop, freight station, gas station and general store. It was the nerve center of what was once a booming coal town — the place to get just about anything a settler might need.
A short-line railroad track arrived in 1898, connecting the coal mines near Aladdin with the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad’s main line in Belle Fourche, South Dakota.
The coal mined near Aladdin served as a local fuel source, as well as fueling gold smelters in South Dakota, continuing operations until 1942.
Its tipple, one of the last remaining coal tipples west of the Mississippi, still remains. Although it is teetering on the brink of collapse.
Fighting For Small Town America
The demise of Aladdin post office has caught the attention of other residents in small towns around the Hulett area, including Andrea Driskill. She is the daughter of state Sen. Ogden Driskill, R-Devils Tower.
She has been following the stories about Delivering for America, a USPS cost-cutting proposal that will speed metropolitan mail deliveries by sacrificing rural mail service.
Recently, USPS announced that Cheyenne and Casper will retain more of their mail processing than had been the case before. But the rest of the plan for Wyoming is still in effect, which has had Rep. Harriet Hageman filing new legislation so that small post offices can’t be closed without significant notice.
Driskill believes it likely the slow-motion loss of the Aladdin Post Office will be replicated across the state in other small Wyoming communities. Services are gradually cut until those post offices also no longer make sense and are easy to cut loose.
“We are going to have to fight for services we may have previously taken for granted,” she said. “It’s time to step up as communities and take care of one another.”
Driskill knows firsthand what happens to small communities that lose their post offices, she added.
“I have a Moorcroft address, but my home lies in the area that’s considered Carlisle, and that is how we identify,” she said. “However, that post office closed years ago, and we lost the opportunity to have that hub of our community available to us.
“As a result, the community is now scattered and rarely gathers. Post offices are important parts of our communities. Losing them damages our identity.”
Contact Renee Jean at renee@cowboystatedaily.com
