ochopee post office {march 3, 2022}

For the past few months I have been burning up the internet waves and in search for a dress for my daughter's wedding. And in that process, I have made many, many trips to the post office to return those dresses. My search is done...hallelujah!

My last dress-returning trip was on an icky, cold, gray day and my mind wandered to sunshine and blue skies. All at once the memory of driving on the Tamiami Trail through the teeny town of Ochopee, FL came back to me. 

T and I had been in Naples visiting friends and were driving down to Key West. We were in the Everglades, not much to see on either side of the road, I was trying to spot an alligator, and T was driving over the speed limit. All at once I saw it...a marker designating something, an American flag, and a tiny building.

"OhmygoshIwanttoseethatyouhavetoturnaround!" 

We found the smallest post office in the United States in Ochopee, FL, a closet-sized, 7x8-foot building that used to be a shed that stored irrigation pipe for a tomato farm. It was pressed into service after a fire destroyed the Ochopee general store -- which also housed the post office -- in 1953. Now it’s a full-fledged post office with room for only a single clerk. It has 40 P.O. boxes and sends a carrier out six days a week on a 170-mile route to serve 300 patrons who dwell mostly in the middle of nowhere.

Ochopee, which sits on the edge of the Everglades, population 133, has been happy with it ever since.

During the winter, the nation's smallest post office is a tourist attraction. People line up at the window for post cards showing a photo of the building and bearing the coveted Ochopee 34141 zip code. I bought a post card, addressed it to me, and had a nice conversation with the clerk. Luckily T and I beat the tour bus by 20 minutes. We left the parking lot as it became flooded with people.