For more than a year and a half, some residents of the Lexington hamlet of West Kill have had to cross county lines to get their mail.

The former post office on Spruceton Road closed in January 2025 after an electrical fire broke out in an adjacent building. Smoke damage shuttered the building, and operations moved to the Shandaken post office, more than seven miles away in Ulster County. 

“There was no fire damage to the post office,” said Lexington Supervisor Robert Riccardella, a member of the Lexington Fire Department, who was at the post office during the fire. “There was a lot of smoke damage, no doubt. It was a very smoky fire, low cloud cover. 

“We sort of knew that day that if we lost this, this post office was never coming back,” he said. 

On Aug. 8, more than 40 locals gathered in nearby Lexington to rally for its return. 

Some protesters called for the full restoration of the post office in West Kill, which first opened in 1833, according to data compiled by Sylvia Hasenkopf of the Cairo Historical Society. Others said operations should move from Shandaken to the Lexington post office, just over 4 miles from West Kill. 

Residents said the closure has upended daily life in West Kill, which reported a population of at least 121 in 2020. As participants unfurled a large sign reading “Bring Our Mail Home,” they said the drive down state Route 42 to Shandaken is not just inconvenient; it can be dangerous.

The rally came on the heels of recent negotiations between the town and the United States Postal Service to restore the West Kill post office. On June 30, U.S. Rep. Josh Riley, an Ithaca Democrat who represents the 19th Congressional District, sent a letter to Postmaster General David P. Steiner, who has served in the role since 2025. 

In the letter, cosigned by Riccardella, Riley said the closure had placed “undue burdens” on his constituents. Multiple inquiries made by his office, he said, were met with “bureaucratic runaround and no substantive response from USPS.”

“The lack of details regarding the timeline and implementation of the alternate quarters project and the restoration of mail delivery service to the Hamlet of West Kill is unacceptable,” Riley wrote. “The USPS is not a luxury for many in rural Upstate New York—it is a lifeline. Our neighbors depend on it to deliver far more than personal mail.”

In a July 28 response letter to Riley, James Cari, Government Relations Representative for USPS, said the landlord who owns the building that housed the West Kill post office has been “unresponsive” to inquiries from the agency for restoration, prompting officials to look for a new location. 

“Because we are searching for a site, we cannot offer a timeframe for completion at this time,” Cari said. 

Riccardella didn’t name the owner of the building but said he spoke with him and that he had “moved on.” He said it was USPS’ responsibility to restore service.

“This has been going on for a year and a half,” he said. 

For some residents, the wait means a drive most of them would rather not make. 

“If you’re looking at it on a map you’re like, ‘Oh, that’s not that far,’ but, having wandered around this whole area, it’s a lot of side roads,” said West Kill resident Heather Muse. “That area of 42 is treacherous.”

State Route 42 connects West Kill with Shandaken through the Deep Notch, also known as the West Kill Notch or Echo Notch. The road has no cell service and is difficult to navigate in winter. 

The Shandaken post office does deliver mail in West Kill, though that’s not an option for some. 

“If you’re traveling a lot, that’s not going to work,” Muse said. “I’ve had packages that have been sent to my house that have just been sitting in front of the mailbox, soaking wet.”

Operations moved to Shandaken rather than Lexington, which is closer, because Lexington’s post office doesn’t offer mail delivery and the Shandaken post office has longer hours, open all day rather than half-days like Lexington, Cari said. Residents who want to open post office boxes in Lexington can do so, he added, and locals seeking to save a trip to the post office can buy stamps online. 

Opening a new box in Lexington isn’t convenient for everyone, said Rose Petrella-Wilson, a West Kill resident and Lexington town councilperson. 

“That means all of these old folks that are getting mail have to change their address,” she said. “If they’re getting medications delivered or their checks delivered, now they have to contact all those places and completely change their address.”

Even if residents buy their stamps online, they would still have to go to Shandaken to pick them up, Petrella-Wilson said.

Mark Lawrence, a spokesperson for the United States Postal Service, echoed Cari’s statements in an email, saying the post office may be at risk of permanent closure if a solution can’t be reached.

“If a solution cannot be found, the Postal Service will solicit and evaluate input from the affected customers on the prospect of permanently closing the location,” he said. 

A permanent closure would make the location one of many rural post offices that have faced a similar fate. According to the American Postal Workers Union, 564 post offices nationwide have closed in the past year. 

Similar concerns about the future of small, rural post offices have echoed throughout The Overlook’s region. The Glenford post office in the town of Hurley permanently closed in November 2023 due to rising rent, according to the Kingston Wire. 

In nearby Shandaken, where West Kill residents are getting their mail, the Highmount post office, located near Belleayre Mountain on Galli Curci Road, quietly closed in July 2025 due to what Lawrence said is a “safety hazard,” sending residents to the Pine Hill post office about two miles away.

The Highmount post office is also at risk of permanent closure, Lawrence said.

“With regard to the Highmount Post Office, we are searching for alternative quarters,” he said. “If a solution cannot be found, the Postal Service will solicit and evaluate input from the affected customers on the prospect of permanently closing the location.”

Lawrence wouldn’t say what the “safety hazard” was or why the building could no longer house the post office more than a year later. A spokesperson for the Olympic Regional Development Authority, which owns Belleayre Mountain, declined to comment.

Shandaken Supervisor Barbara Mansfield said in an email she was unaware of the reason behind the closure. The office had operated since at least 1890, according to postcards postmarked in the hamlet.

Deputy Supervisor Robert Drake said he also wasn’t aware of the reason for the closure but said it might have drawn less attention since it had slim hours of operation and Pine Hill is close. 

“The hours on that post office, at least in its last handful of years, were very, very narrow,” he said. “The majority of local residents were probably going to the Pine Hill post office, which is admittedly not very far. Perhaps folks were also going to Fleischmanns.”

Several other post offices in town have also been at risk through the years, Drake said. The building that houses the Phoenicia post office on Ava Maria Drive is currently for sale. The Mount Tremper post office, now located at Emerson Resort and Spa off state Route 28, has faced temporary closures and location changes on multiple occasions.

“The concern is obviously that, with it being a large town and an older town, the loss of a rural post office is really the loss of a huge connection point for people and a huge service point for people,” said Drake, who lives in Phoenicia. 

Shandaken is home to six active post offices: Big Indian, Chichester, Mount Tremper, Phoenicia, Pine Hill, and Shandaken. Neighboring Olive has four.

Elsewhere in The Overlook’s region, Saugerties and Hunter have the most post offices, each with five, followed by Woodstock with four. Windham has three post offices, while Hurley has two. 

In a town like Shandaken, which reported a population of 2,866 in the 2020 Census, six post offices may seem like a lot. But in rural Catskills communities often lacking in public transportation and community spaces, they serve as essential hubs for communication and the spread of information, according to Sarah Anderson, program director at progressive think tank the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C. 

“I have learned so much about the role that the postal service plays in rural areas, like a neighborhood watch kind of service,” she said. “I’ve heard countless stories about mail carriers who come across people who have fallen off a roof, or they’re ill, or their power has gone out, and the letter carrier is someone they really trust and can turn to in situations like that.”

The mail is a particular lifeline for older residents, Anderson said, both for staying in touch with family and for medications, especially as rural pharmacies close.

“It’s a really critical way for them to stay connected to the rest of the world and their family,” she said. “Lots of people rely on it for shipments of medicines and other essentials. A lot of pharmacies have closed, especially in rural communities. Without that reliable delivery service from the postal service, people would be hard-pressed on that front.”

Of the 15 most rural states, 11 have larger-than-average shares of residents 65 and older, the age group that relies most heavily on the mail, according to Institute for Policy Studies data. Households headed by someone 55 or older sent an average of more than 22 pieces of correspondence mail in 2024, almost six times as much as the 18-to-34 age group, a postal service survey found. The older group paid 18% of its bills by mail, compared with 7% for the younger group.

Closures usually follow building damage or leasing disputes, Anderson said, because federal law bars the postal service from closing a post office solely because it loses money. 

No small post office, the statute reads, “shall be closed solely for operating at a deficit,” and the agency must serve rural areas “where post offices are not self-sustaining.”

In rural areas, nearly two-thirds of post offices have not turned a profit in recent years, Anderson said.

“They are costing the postal service,” she said.

Rural post offices can be saved, Anderson said, if the agency finds new sources of revenue.

“You could go there to make photocopies,” she said. “You could get free Wi-Fi, you could charge up an electric vehicle there. You could partner with local government so that’s where you go to pick up your hunting and fishing license. There’s so many ideas about how we could use this incredible infrastructure that is present in most communities and make it even more valuable, especially for rural residents.”

Any sort of change starts with residents in rural communities making their voices heard, Anderson said.

“Anything that people can do to raise this issue with elected officials across the political spectrum is really important and it’s really important now,” she said. “It’s a really urgent issue and would encourage everyone to get involved.”

For Muse, the West Kill post office’s role as a community hub is exactly why she was out rallying for its return. 

“Before I moved up here, I used to stay at the Spruceton Inn a lot,” she said. “I just remember Casey Sciezka, the owner, telling me that she went down to the post office and that’s how she got all the dirt.”

“It’s a pillar of the community that’s gone,” Muse said.

Connor Greco is a staff reporter for The Overlook covering Windham, Hunter, and surrounding Greene County communities. Send correspondence to connor@theoverlooknews.com.