Crested Butte’s small specialty shops have artwork and outdoor clothing galore the single hardware store and two limited grocery stores cram in what supplies they can and local buy-swap-and-sell online platforms fill a lot of needs.īut the nearest big-box store sits in Gunnison, 28 miles down the road. Here, online shopping through outlets such as Amazon can be a necessity because many essential goods aren’t available locally. It has tested the mettle even of the hardy souls who have chosen to live in an end-of-the-pavement town where inconveniences - including no home-mail delivery - are a part of life. The great Crested Butte holiday mail breakdown of 2018 has not only put a local magnifier on the Postal Service’s national struggles. (Dean Krakel, Special to The Colorado Sun) Amazon a necessary evil for hard-to-get essentials “It’s just been a very frustrating year for mail - worse than it’s ever been before.” Katherine Nettles walks out of the Crested Butte Post Office with Christmas packages delivered on December 31st, 2018. “This has spiraled out of control,” said Schmidt, who suffered through the line on several occasions to try to retrieve a Christmas package that couldn’t be found. But I’m expecting that this is going to be the worst one,” said barista Sydney Pracht, one of many who, resignedly, stood in line days after Christmas in an extended effort to mail or receive packages.Ĭrested Butte Mayor Jim Schmidt also counted himself among the disappointed. “I don’t know all the woes yet of Crested Butte. And curses have erupted from more than a few who stuck their heads in the door, took the measure of the line and stomped off into the snow. Sympathetic, collective groans have arisen for those who made it to the window only to hear that their packages can’t be found. High-five celebrations have broken out when the lucky ones made it to the post office window and left triumphantly clutching packages. Grumbles have rumbled up and down a queue that often snaked into a long hallway and at times spilled out onto Elk Avenue. Some have taken the inconvenience in stride, arriving at the cramped post office ready to spend a sizable chunk of the day hanging out with the aid of hot coffee, energy snacks, crossword puzzles and novels. The only way to retrieve those packages is to take the slips to the service counter. Yellow slips in those boxes indicate they have packages. They pick up their mail at post office boxes. There is no home-mail delivery in this town of 1,600 full-time residents. In the case of Crested Butte, “last-mile delivery” actually means postal patron pickup. Scads of Amazon boxes are dumped at the post office for “last-mile delivery” under a contract agreement between Amazon and the Postal Service. The popularity of Amazon shopping, in particular, has contributed to the bottleneck.
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