Post office is leaving Old San Simeon Village after 140 years. Here’s where it’s moving
More than 140 years of continuous postal service in Old San Simeon Village will come to an end on Saturday, Sept. 26.
That’s when mail deliveries will shift from a temporary cluster of mailboxes to the new, permanent postal branch in the Plaza del Cavalier in San Simeon’s commercial district.
The change comes a little more than a year after the U.S. Postal Services (USPS) made a sudden exit from the historic Sebastian’s General Store, where it had been for many decades. USPS cited an engineer’s study that showed the aging building was unsafe.
Hearst Corporation vice president Stephen Hearst has vowed to completely restore the building.
Starting Monday, Sept. 28, area residents, mailbox holders and others will be able to pick up and send mail from 250 San Simeon Ave., Suite 7A. Retail hours at the branch will be from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday.
The move happens during a time when the federal postal service is under duress because of a lack of funding and some rule changes that have snarled mail deliveries.
According to a USPS notice, box services will resume at the new San Simeon location, and “each P.O. box customer will retain their same box number” but “will be issued a new key to accommodate the new P.O. box units.”
The notice urged all customers to visit the new facility to pick up their new keys; the box lobby will be open 24 hours a day.
At the end of the notice, USPS appended a reminder that the service “receives no tax dollars for operating expenses and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations.”
History of San Simeon building
Some Cambria Historical Society reports show that Sebastian’s began in 1873 as a general store, livery stable and post office.
According to a 1999 report that Nancy Carr of Cambria wrote for the society, Leopold Frankl “applied for a reopening of a post office in San Simeon, which was formerly operated by Benigno Pico, and was granted the postmastership on Aug. 9, 1878.”
Capt. L.V. Thorndyke bought the store in 1904 and took over as postmaster in 1906 or 1907. His son, Loren Thorndyke, operated the shop until he sold it to Manuel and Mary Sebastian in May 1914.
Manuel Sebastian ran the store until 1948, when he retired and sold it to one of his sons, J.C. “Pete” Sebastian. He served as postmaster from 1949 to 1970, thereby cementing further the USPS link to the Sebastian store and family.
When Pete Sebastian died in 1988 at the age of 81, his daughter Mary Sebastian (Hansen) became the new owner. She sold it to the Hearst Corporation in 2009, ending 95 years of Sebastian family ownership.
North Coast residents react to post office move
In the meantime, some area residents say they’re sad about the post office’s relocation, while others welcome a site that’s easier for them to access.
When Marjorie Sewell, a native of Old San Simeon Village, learned of the upcoming move, her reaction was swift and unhappy. “Oh no! Yuk!” she said. “I wanted it to stay in my hometown. It makes me sad.
“Yes, it’s just another move” for the postal branch, the octogenarian said. “But it’s out of the area” where the post office has been for as long as she can remember.
She recalled childhood memories of “waiting for the mail, playing in 300-pound bundles of kelp that were to be shipped out by schooner” and chasing extremely large pack rats that were hiding the kelp.
Another person who’s mourning the change is Kathy Wilson, a Cambria resident who retired in 2012 after more than eight years as postmaster at the San Simeon postal branch in Sebastian’s store. Her retirement capped a postal career that spanned 42 years.
“I know a lot of people north of San Simeon will not be happy,” she said. “It’s going to be sad for most, maybe because it was just a comfortable place to get your mail. I can’t really speak for others, but I, myself, will miss the old San Simeon Post Office.”
San Simeon resident Hank Krzciuk, who originally opposed moving the postal branch out of the village, said that “I’m supportive of it now. There’s definitely strong support for having it in the business center in the new San Simeon.”
Krzciuk, who serves as San Simeon’s representative on the North Coast Advisory Council, said that this time he was speaking only for himself. He stressed that he wants the “old brass post office boxes and the old neon sign” to stay in Old San Simeon Village.
He also added that he’s “pleased that (the new postal branch) will be open before the election, so we can mail in our ballots” from there.
Former Hearst Castle museum director Hoyt Fields, who spent a half century working for Hearst Castle and the Hearst family, called the postal branch’s move “a major change in the history of San Simeon, not only longevity of having the post office there, but also the millions of visitors to the castle that have wanted the San Simeon post mark on their postcards.”
“As the Castle is historic to San Simeon, so too is the San Simeon Post Office!” Fields wrote in an email, calling San Simeon Acres, the commercial strip of San Simeon that’s further south on Highway 1, “a wannabe San Simeon.”
“Moving the post office to the Acres continues to change the long history of the San Simeon post office being in the true town of San Simeon,” he wrote. “It seems like our history is changing all around us, but this is not a piece of the history that needs changing!”
Perhaps the last word should come from Steve Hearst, who said that “we liked our status of being the landlord for one of the oldest post offices in the state, and we’ll miss them” in Old San Simeon Village.
This story was originally published September 23, 2020 at 5:05 AM.
