Carbon Canyon Historic Artifact #68: A First Day Cancellation for the Sleepy Hollow Rural Station Post Office, 1 April 1954

The establishment in 1923 of the Sleepy Hollow community on the western edge of Chino Hills in Carbon Canyon was primarily for people to have vacation cabins and enjoy the peace and solitude of what was then a rural area where Orange and San Bernardino counties meet.  While there were a few permanent residents, most property owners who had dwellings were those whose primary domicile was somewhere else and this basically remained the case for more than a quarter-century.

As prior posts here have observed with the federal censuses of 1930, 1940 and 1950, the population in the little hamlet was quite small in those first two counts, with 40 persons enumerated as the Roaring Twenties came to an end and a 15% increase to 46 denizens as the Depression was soon followed by the Second World War.

  But, by the time the Fifties arrived with another greater Los Angeles boom and suburbanization creeping steadily eastward into Orange County, the eastern San Gabriel Valley and western San Bernardino County, there was a dramatic shift in the 1950 count as the Sleepy Hollow population just about tripled to 135 residents.  There were also a gas station, two cafés (one with a grocery store), so the community was starting to look a lot less like a remote outpost and more like a small town.

Still, it was a bit surprising to learn that there was, for a few years, during the Fifties, an official post office in Sleepy Hollow.  Technically it was a "rural station," a classification with the United States Postal Service that was the same as a branch until 1908 and which was also part of the Rural Free Delivery system established as the 19th century came to a close.  Many people old enough to remember the television show, Mayberry RFD, off-shoot of The Andy Griffith Show probably did not know what those letters stood for.

In any case, the Chino Champion, our weekly newspaper since 1887, informed its readers in the issue of 11 March 1954 that,

Effective April 1, a rural station will be located in Sleepy Hollow, according to Mrs. Buena Phillips, postmaster.  Mrs. Leona E. Purrington [sic] will be in charge and mail will be supplied by the regular rural carrier.  Money orders will be available as will stamps and parcel post mailing.

Lila Craig's column, "Carbon Canyon Capers,"  in the 8 April edition of the paper shared the news that,

Well!  It's finally happened.  Sleepy Hollow is becoming more and more recognized as an established community, rather than a place where property owners just spend week-ends or holidays. We have a Post Office—well, a sub-station anyway.  It is located in Ichabod's Store and Cafe and Mrs. Leone Purington is clerk-in-charge.  We even have our own cancellation stamp that shows where our mail is coming from.  All of the services are offered that any big post office has.  Money orders, stamps, postcards, etc.  Outgoing mail leaves around 11:00 a.m.  More and more in the past few years Sleepy Hollow has been getting 'on the map'.  It seems that all of the approximatey [sic] 350 residents make up an unofficial Chamber of Commerce, and we are extremely proud of the strides we have made to make our section more desirable.  Our little Post Office which opened April 1st, is one of the big steps to let people know we are here.  We know we are being watched, because somebody set up a billboard just south of the summit.  Thanks so much to Postmaster Buena Phillips and her efforts to help us take this step forward.

The building in which Ichabod's Store and Café (tied, of course, to the old Washington Irving story of Sleepy Hollow and the hapless Ichabod Crane) was located was on the north side of Carbon Canyon Road and Oak Way Lane and was razed several years ago after the City of Chino Hills acquired the property.  The reference to about 350 residents, though one wonders if this was strictly in Sleepy Hollow or in the area served by the station including other parts of the Canyon, shows remarkable growth in just four years.

Chino Champion, 11 March 1954.

It was owned by David Purington, son of Sleepy Hollow founders Cleve and Elizabeth Purington, and his wife Leone was the "clerk-in-charge" mentioned in both Champion references.  She was born Leone Evelyn Gathercole in New Hampshire and moved as a young child with her family to El Monte and then lived in Pomona.  She was a graduate of Pomona High School and married David Purington in 1940 and the couple settled in Sleepy Hollow and operated the store and restaurant.  Leone also occasionally wrote a column about the community for the Champion called "Ichabod's Corner."

The station's life-span, however, was not much more than three years, however.  This was likely due to the fact that the Puringtons decided to sell Ichabod's, as a want ad in the Santa Ana Register from 25 May 1957 showed.  The new owner perhaps did not want the added responsibility of running the station, though there may have been other reasons.  Whatever the reason(s), the station was discontinued on 9 August.

Champion, 8 April 1954.

The featured artifact here is a "first-day cancellation" which were sought by philatelists, a fancy term for a stamp collector.  Dated on that inaugural day of operation, the reply postal card with a preprinted two-cent stamp has the cancelation clearly imprinted—after all, Purington's stamp was brand new!  On the reverse is a second stamp (again, new) and the card was mailed to Gustav Lund of Martinez, a town northeast of Berkeley.

On the reverse, Purington wrote:

Dear Mr. Lund, Here's your 1st day cancellation from Sleepy Hollow, Carbon Canyon.  We're out of Pomona about 3 miles.  Have a cafe and grocery called Ichabod's.  Thanks for interest.  Leone Purington, Clerk-in-charge.

Pasted down on the card are brief printed statements regarding the establishment and discontinuation of the station.  

While it is a innocuous little artifact and the station did not long operate, it does reflect the dramatic changes coming to Sleepy Hollow as it increasingly became a residential community in the post-World War II period.