For more than two years, a big wooden sign in west Marin County has displayed a set of hand-painted numbers, dutifully changed each morning. “Days Without a Bolinas Post Office,” the sign reads. The number Friday: 806. The sign has been a charming, if sad, reminder to the 1,200 or so residents of Bolinas of the loss of their beloved post office, which was booted from its downtown building amid a spat between the U.S. Postal Service and its longtime landlord. Late last month, though, Bolinas resident John Borg nailed a new message to the top of the sign — the wooden equivalent of a P.S. on a letter. It reads: “We Did It, Bolinas!!! New Post Office Opening by Fall 2025.” The post office soon will move back into the unadorned wooden building on Brighton Avenue where it had operated for six decades.
On April 17, the Postal Service signed a 10-year lease with landlord Gregg Welsh, of Ventura County, his attorney, Patrick Morris, said in an email. For the rural denizens of ZIP Code 94924, the reopening is a major victory — especially given President Trump’s musings about privatizing the Postal Service, which lost $9.5 billion in the 2024 fiscal year and is cutting thousands of jobs. “For this to be approved during the massive federal cutbacks of the Trump administration, it’s really somewhat astonishing for a lot of us,” said Borg, 63, who helped lead a citizens’ campaign to reopen the facility.
A group of locals dressed like postal workers for a Bolinas Fourth of July parade. The town rallied together to call for the reopening of the post office. “I think the past two years gave our town a taste of what potential privatization of the Postal Service could mean for other underserved and rural places throughout the country,” he said. “That includes reduced retail operations, delays and inconvenience, increased prices … [and] more focus on bigger communities that can deliver more profit.”
In Bolinas — a haven for poets, painters, writers, and actors — residents got creative in their push to reopen the post office. They picketed with placards reading, “Real Mail Not Email!” They marched in local parades dressed as letter carriers, composed songs and wrote more than 2,000 letters in hand-painted envelopes that they sent to Postal Service officials. And they wrote scores of poems to be read at aloud rallies. Like this one, with emphasis by the author: They’ve closed the Bolinas Post Office down Forgetting our isolated, far away little town. The elders need their pensions and checks And wonder what on earth will be next.
Most people in Bolinas, a town abutting Point Reyes National Seashore, do not get home mail delivery. Residents long relied upon daily trips to the post office for parcels, pension checks, and mail-order prescriptions, not to mention a chance to catch up on the local gossip. Since the post office closed, their mail has been delivered to the smaller town of Olema — a 40-minute round-trip drive through the forest on Highway 1 — where the post office has repeatedly closed because of flooding. And sometimes it has been rerouted to nearby Stinson Beach.
The relocations have been more than just an inconvenience for the town’s elderly residents, many of whom cannot drive. There is little public transit, and 47% of the town’s residents are 65 and older. Residents have reported problems getting mail-order prescriptions, lab results, healthcare coverage updates, paychecks, and other packages. “It may seem like a little thing, but it really did impact our town greatly,” said Borg, 63, a type 1 diabetic who had his insulin delivered through the mail before the closure. For the last two years, he has driven two hours round-trip to San Rafael each month to pick up his medication at a pharmacy.
Rep. Jared Huffman, a San Rafael Democrat who lobbied former U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy on behalf of Bolinas, called it “great news” that the post office was reopening. But, he said in an interview Friday, the process took too long. “They should not have had to experience all of this and to weather all of the bureaucracy and just bulls— that has prevented them from having a post office,” Huffman said.
