Scott Swanson
Nov. 19 marked 10 years since the Cascadia Post Office burned down in a fire that also leveled the old Cascadia School building.
For residents without on-highway mailboxes, it’s been a long haul getting local delivery reinstated. But a combination of efforts from, really, multiple layers of government have resulted in the installation of U.S. Postal Service-approved cluster boxes at the U.S. Forest Service wayside next to Short Bridge.
Ground was broken in September for the project and the three free-standing stacks, totaling 48 individual mailboxes, were installed on a concrete pad. Delivery began in November.
“We’re ecstatic,” said High Deck Road resident Jean Burger, commonly regarded as the unincorporated community’s “mayor.” “We won’t have to go to Foster anymore. It felt like we were doomed to have to go to Foster forever.”
The 2011 fire destroyed the former school and then spread to the post office, which was housed in a mobile home in the parking lot in front of the school. Efforts by Burger and others began immediately to restore mail service to addresses that weren’t on the Cascadia delivery route, but a solution was reached by placing boxes at the Foster Post Office.
Linn County commissioner Will Tucker said Burger was “a constant advocate” for re-establishing local postal service over that span. He said he reminded legislators “multiple times a year” of promises to address the situation.
“I offered to try to get a FEMA trailer,” he recalled. “I offered to drive to New Orleans, after the hurricane, to pick it up.”
Progress stalled, he and others said, and the need grew, according to Janet Quinn, another Cascadia resident involved in the effort.
“It was getting harder and harder for us to freely go and pick up our mail, 13 miles away,” she said.
In the spring of 2020, Quinn and Burger decided to try again.
“Jean is very good with the telephone and I am pretty good at writing letters, letting them know where they need to go,” Quinn said. “Our good friend, retired (state) Sen. Mae Yih, suggested that (Burger) go online to Sen. [Jeff] Merkley’s town hall meeting in July (of 2020), and bring this to his attention.”
A Merkley staff member responded, which started a “dialogue” with Merkley’s office, prompting “a series of phone calls to postal leaders in Oregon,” she said.
According to Burger, issues with postal deliveries to Cascadia residents have included medicines addressed to residents who weren’t on the rural delivery route, along the highway, which were returned as undeliverable. Efforts to add the west end of Cascadia Drive came to naught, but she said Merkley’s influence led the Postal Service to extend the route to include the address of a disabled veteran who otherwise had to travel to Foster for mail.
“We desperately tried to get mail delivery for one resident before she died,” Burger said.
“We’ve had a devil of a time,” Burger said. “Janet and I worked pretty hard on this project, real hard in the last couple of years. I’d pick up the project every few months over the 10-year period.”
Eventually, the U.S. Forest Service got involved. The organization had constructed a wayside day-use rest area at the intersection of High Deck and Highway 20 in 2016, and current District Ranger Nikki Swanson said Tucker alerted her to the situation shortly after she arrived in Sweet Home that year.
“It’s been kind of a long time,” Swanson said, noting a lack of clear options at the time. “We talked from time to time, saying things like ‘wouldn’t it be great to help these folks out?'”
Meanwhile, Tucker had decided to step down as commissioner to deal with family responsibilities and contacted the Postal Service before he left the board.
The idea of putting mailboxes at Short Bridge made sense, but it wasn’t a “common” practice to locate mailboxes on Forest Service land, Swanson said.
“We didn’t know what kind of permits would be needed, what the policy and paperwork would be,” she explained. “It took a little bit of time, but we found our way through that.”
Swanson noted that this isn’t the first time mail delivery occurred at that site.
“The really cool thing is we have an old, tiny picture of a horse-drawn mail truck,” she said. “Historically, at this site, it had mail delivery.”
Tucker credits Swanson and Willamette National Forest Supervisor Dave Warnack as key to getting use of the land, and Linn County Parks Director Brian Carroll has agreed to have his department provide upkeep.
“Their willingness is appreciated,” he said.
The process has been tortuous, all agree.
“It’s been two steps ahead, one step back,” Quinn said.
At, literally, every turn, Tucker said, “I’d have to wait a week or two, sometimes months. I didn’t want it to go 10 years, but now we have hit 10 years. It was really a challenge. It’s embarrassing.”
Burger’s just happy it happened.
“We’re very thankful,” she said.