Pleasant Valley Post Office

So Pleasant (Valley)
Pleasant Valley Post Office, Barkhamsted

Of all the place names in Connecticut, Pleasant Valley may be one of my favorites. It’s just so… so accurate. The southern section of Barkhamsted along the Farmington River is not only a valley, it is very pleasant.

It’s sylvan and quaint. A large percentage of land is state forest and fly fishermen ply their trade in the picture perfect river. It’s all very northern New Englandy. I love it.

And I love that the little post office looks like a park ranger’s office. And I apparently love it enough to create this silly little page about it. But hey, back in 2013 this cute li’l Smokey Bear post office made the news:

Emotions ran high Wednesday afternoon as residents reacted to representatives from the United States Postal Service, who were there to discuss how the two post offices in town — Riverton and Pleasant Valley — will have shorter window and retail hours beginning in March.

The two post offices have showed a steady decline in retail transactions over the past year, officials said, prompting the Postal Service to make some changes..

The Postal Service mailed out surveys a few months ago to all residents in Barkhamsted — 465 in Riverton and 1,501 in Pleasant Valley — and received 247 back from Riverton and 329 back from Pleasant Valley, respectively. The majority of the surveys returned between both villages recommended realignment of the post office’s hours, with the other options being home delivery, a village post office or using a nearby post office.

Riverton will have one hour cut in the day, while Pleasant Valley will see four hours lost.

Joseph Mazzola, manager of Postal Office Operations, relieved the crowd by saying that just because operating hours will be cut — one hour in Riverton’s case — doesn’t mean there is a plan to eventually close the facility.

“There’s no plan whatsoever to use the one-hour reduction in the operating hours as a way to build toward closing the Riverton post office,” said Mazzola, who oversees all Postmasters in 59 post offices across Central Connecticut. “We need to match their hours of operation to the work load.”

Cutting back hours, in his opinion, was “the least disruptive to the town.”

He said the revenue dropping is caused by electronic diversion with people ordering more online and finding less reasons to go to post offices.

Yet Doug Roberts, the 88-year old town historian and longtime resident, didn’t want any changes made at all.

“I think you should leave the thing just the way it is,” he said, adding that he has many ancestors who claimed the title of postmaster at the Riverton post office since its opening in the 1800s.

Mazzola said that, in his 18 years in the Postal Service industry, he has never seen a post office with limited hours benefit less than a neighboring one.

I love the old timer who refers to the whole issue as “the thing.” The Riverton and Pleasant Valley post offices are a whopping four miles apart along the same road. And it’s a beautiful road at that. I get that no one wants essential services cut, but c’mon people.

There you have it. Another page of another cute Connecticut post office for no particular reason. Oh, here’s the Riverton PO too: