Nye

The Old Nye Post Office

I recently ran across an article in the Plains Journal that was telling about a fire at the old Nye Post Office. It gave a good history so I thought I would post it along with a great old photo offered to me from the Larry Meyer collection. As we discover more about "Nye" we will post it here.

HISTORIC POST OFFICE BURNS DOWN

Money and Stamps Saved at Nye: Origin of Fire Is a Mystery

The Nye post office burned Friday Afternoon

The fire was discovered by R.R. Dickey who was working out near the granary. He and Mrs. Dickey, the postmaster, ran to the building which contained the post office, but when they got there the fire had gotten such a start that they couldn't get the door open. They broke out a window, and kept throwing water on a chest in the corner which contained the money and the stamps. they kept the chest from burning until Mr. Dickey chopped a hole in the side of the building. the chest was removed and the money and the stamps were removed. Mrs. Dickey doesn't know how the fire was started. There had not been a fire going in the building Friday, since it was a warm day. The fire was discovered at 3 p.m. the only mail lost was a bath for the XIT ranch. The post office inspector at Kansas City was notified immediately. The Nyy post office serves the Cimarron river country, with number of its patrons living in Oklahoma. The post office has been in its present location since Mrs. Dickey became postmaster Dec. 19, 1919. It is on the dickey farm about a mile north of the Oklahoma line on Highway 23. The exact date when mail was first carried to the Nye patrons is lost in antiquity.

It is know, however, from information gathered from Brother Buis, Mrs. D.M. Mackey and Mrs. Dickey, that mail was carried to the area from Uneeda, and from Miles, Kansas, before the Nye post office was first established in 1893. Mrs. Ruth Baker was the first postmaster, with the post office on the Oklahoma side. Mary Free was postmaster for a time. (The Free sisters ran the post office, and one was just about as much the postmaster as the other.) Then nephew Charle Free followed them as postmaster. When Mrs. Dickey became postmaster in 1919, the post office was moved across the Cimarron to the Kansas side.

Charles & Claude Ross in front of the Nye Post Office. Courtesy of L. Meyers