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Poor Sidewalks Rule Out Free Home Mail Delivery

Forty-three years after the first post office opened in Klamath Falls, Ore., postmen in 1914 still weren’t making free home mail deliveries.  A Klamath Falls Evening Herald story of Aug. 15, 1914, indicated the lack of free home delivery was due more to the condition of the town than any reluctance of the post office.  The newspaper story says:

 
 
“While the receipts of the Klamath Falls postoffice [sic] are more than enough to justify the free delivery of mail, there is not much chance of this service being inaugurated here by Uncle Sam until the sidewalks are connected up and made more thorough throughout the city, according to D.E. Wood, postoffice inspector.
 
 
“Wood also claims that all of the houses are not numbered, and says that until this is attended to, the getting of free delivery will be greatly hampered.  He will make his report to the Postoffice Department.
 
 
“According to Wood, if the downtown section of town fully complies with the requirements of the department, it is possible that free delivery will be started there, and the outskirts will be provided with mail as they grow and put in the necessary sidewalks, lights and numbers.”
 
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Source: "Says We Need Sidewalks." Klamath Falls Evening Herald 15 Aug. 1914: 1. Web. 15 Aug. 2014.

Kernan Turner is the Southern Oregon Historical Society’s volunteer editor and coordinator of the As It Was series broadcast daily by Jefferson Public Radio. A University of Oregon journalism graduate, Turner was a reporter for the Coos Bay World and managing editor of the Democrat-Herald in Albany before joining the Associated Press in Portland in 1967. Turner spent 35 years with the AP before retiring in Ashland.