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CARRYING THE MAIL IN SUSSEX COMMUNITY
The Sussex Post office and mail route covered by a 65 year span of Johnson county history.
The mail was carried by team and wagon or buckboard, on horseback, and finally by car and pickup. At least ten different persons carried the mail during those 65 years through winter snow, spring blizzards and summer heat.
One of the first ranches established on Powder River in the area that is now the Sussex community and was the Sussex Land and Livestock Company. Henry Winter Davis, who became know far and wide as as Hard Winter, established the ranch in 1898. Having come from a civilized part of the country, namely SussexCounty.Delaware. Mr. Davis felt a post office was a necessity.
Frank Wall, Tom Wall’s father, got a contract to carry the mail from Buffalo to the Davis ranch. The route followed the Bozeman Trail for 22 miles to the area on Crazy Woman Creek. Changing to a fresh team of horses there, he drove and the remaining 30 miles to the Sussex Ranch.
It is said that when Mr. Davis and Mr. Wall surveyed the route they marked it with piles of bones, probably buffalo bones,, so Mr. Wall could find his way when the bleak hills were covered with snow. Mr. Wall carried the mail over this route from 1898 to 1902.
In 1901, Emil Meike Sr. moved from Nebraska, looking for a better country to run his cows, and settled at Harrison, CO. The winter following his move there was an extremely bad one and nearly put him out of business. His search for good range brought him to Wyoming. He first intended to settle on Salt Creek because of the grassy, flat-bottomed draws that fanned out from the creek. He could have cut the native grass for hay to help winter his cows. One pailful of Salt Creek water changed his mind about that idea. He came on to the David Sussex Ranch and inquired about available land. Hard Winter told him all the land directly along the Powder River had been taken but there was a lot of open range away from the river.
He settled on the Four Mile Creek where he built a log house for his family. The logs were from very large trees that had once grown on Four Mile. He set four big corner posts and set the logs between, the 5 logs high. There was one large room partitioned off of sheeting with a window at each end and a door on the south. At that time, the Meike family was made up of Emil, his wife Emma and their two children, Helen and Peter
In 1905, the Meikes built a big frame house which became the Meike Ranch headquarters and also became the second site of the Sussex Post Office with Emma Meike serving as postmistress from 1905-1910. The mail now came to Kaycee and then on down the river to Sussex.
The first mail carrier came after the post office was moved to Meikes was Smokey Rowan and then Hugh Palmer. Pete Meike recalls that Smokey always drove to Rowan and then Hugh Palmer. Meike recalls that Smokey always drove at least one broc and sometimes two, on the backboard he hauled mail with. One morning the team ran away while he was in the Meike kitchen collecting the mail. They stampeded down across Four Mile and onto the hill north of the ranch where they finally became so entangled in the wreckage they could go no farther. There was no mail service that day.
In 1910, the new SussexSchool was ready for occupancy, leaving the small log building that had served as a school at the Sussex Store available for use as a post office, so the Sussex post Office was moved again. This time M.H. Leimer, who ran the store, took the job as postmaster.
Following Hugh Palmer as mail carrier were Charlie and Louie Strenz They held the mail contract from 1910 to 1918. On July 1, 1918, J.O. Morgareidge became the mail carrier and held the job until July1, 1922. His daughter, Pearl Raitt, who now makes her home in Kaycee, recalls vividly when her father had the mail route. He bought a car to haul the mail, but it proved to be much less reliable than that of his team of mules.Brick and Jenny, and the buckboard to which they were hitched. Pearl would often ride the four miles to Sussex horseback, pick up the outgoing mail and bring it back to the Morgareidge ranch. Her father would then take it on from there to Kaycee, make the return trip to the ranch with the mail and Pearl would again make the last leg of the trip to the post office by horseback.
If the roads were bad, there were three steep hills the car couldn’t pull. Pearl had to ride along horseback, leading an old work mare and carrying a chain and singletree to pull the car up the hills. So mail delivery during that period was a family effort.
Two families of Bruners came in the area about this time and homesteaded on Indian Flats, south of Powder River. They held the mail contract from 1922 to 1926 at which time Reed and Dora Miller became the mail carriers for the next 8 years.
Mrs. Miller was the main driver during that period and was known affectionately up and down the mail route as “Mrs. Reed.€ť It took me a while to figure out that Mrs. Reed that brought our Christmas packages from Sears and Montgomery Wards was the same person as the Mrs. Miller who served on the school board with my Dad. Sometime during Mrs. Mill’s reign as mail carrier, mail delivery was changed from Mondays and Fridays to Mondays, Wednesday and Friday€ surely a sign of progress!
Fred Skiles took over the mail route on July1, 1934 and had five consecutive mail contracts of four years each. His salary in 1934 was $67.50 and he was making $35.- a month payments on the half-Chevrolet pickup he bought to haul the mail!
In the summer of 1936, a postal inspector from Denver rode the mail route with Fred and approved the extension of the route as far down Powder River as the Walter Thompson place. Up to that time, the patrons of the Sussex mail route had mail boxes as far as the Sussex School. Everyone who lived beyond that point had to come into the Sussex Post Office to pick up their mail. After the extension of the mail route. Fred’s salary was raised to $87.50 a month!!
Fred finished 20 years on the mail route on June 30, 1954 and the last six months, his check was $181.33. In 20 years he had progressed from a dirt road to a State Secondary highway and his pay had gone up $113.83 from his starting salary.
Winter mail delivery was no easy task with frozen gas lines, tire chains to contend with, and snow drifts to shovel. Fred Skiles wife, Una, remembers that in their early days on the mail route before the road was graveled. J. O Morgareidge would use his team of mules to pull Freds pickup at the same troublesome hills that had plagued Mr. Morgareidge when he had the mail route.
Una drove the mail most of the time during the summer months and she related many interesting stories concerning the mail route such as the following:
The inter of 49 was a test of man and beast. The government sent the Army Corp of Engineers in JohnsonCounty to help the residents. But Fred recalls he spent much time rescuing the engineers as they maps did not coincide with the reality of southern Johnson County.
One lady on the route believed her mail was being censored so she produced a pad-locked mail pouch which was delivered in person to the mail carrier by her Indian bodyguard. The second key was held by the postmistress
The end of an era: the Powder River send on a rampage in late May of 1962 and flooded the Sussex Store, Post offices and several homes. The resulting damage brought about the closing of the store and Post Office (source: The 36thAnnualJohnsonCounty Fair edition)
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