MOSCOW — The Moscow Town Hall was buzzing with activity Friday morning as residents lined up to stamp and send their mail, stopping to chat with one another or peruse a collection of town memorabilia for sale.

Most don’t consider it an inconvenience not to have a post office in town, but the novelty of a temporary post office set up Friday morning was enough to draw crowds in the town of about 500 people.

Bingham resident Jordan Baker, left, pays for his postage at Moscow's temporary post office Friday morning. There are 439 post offices in Maine but Moscow is among the towns that does not have its own. Rachel Ohm/Morning Sentinel

A visitor to Moscow holds an envelope stamped with the special pictorial postmark designed for the town's 200th anniversary celebration at the town's temporary post office Friday. Staff photo by Rachel Ohm

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“I wish we did have a post office in town,” said resident Olivia Beane, 39, as she stood in line with several envelopes, one of which she was planning to send to a cousin in California and others she hoped to have stamped to save as mementos. “I wouldn’t say it’s annoying not to, but it would be nice.”

Friday’s temporary post office was a special event for the town’s bicentennial celebration. Moscow is one of the few towns in Maine that does not have a post office.

There are 439 post offices in the state, and while some urban centers like Augusta and Portland have more than one, in general most of Maine’s 488 municipalities and towns have just one post office, said Stephen Doherty, a spokesman for the U.S. Postal Service in the Greater Boston and northern New England districts.

The postal service has no record of Moscow ever having had a post office, although residents recall two different post offices having been in the town at points in its history. While there are no current efforts to resurrect a post office in town, having one in place for a day was a fun event that helped residents to reflect on the town’s history as part of the larger celebration, they said. At several points during the morning Friday, there was a line for the post office – designated by a single table cluttered with envelopes and stamps in the corner of the Town Hall.

“We’ve managed for a while without one, so I think we can make it,” said resident Norma Stevens, 79, holding on to her stack of envelopes. “I’m glad this turned out well though.”

In 1906, Frank E. Haines, the owner of Haines Lumber Co., started a post office to serve the 250 to 300 residents of the logging community. The post office had four postmasters before it closed in 1931, according to a town history book, “Makers of Moscow.”

Around the same time as the Deadwater post office closed, Walter L. Perry, owner of the Wyman Dam Store, started a post office to serve a group of about 1,500 people who had settled in an area of town known as Daggettville to work on the construction of the dam.

Perry was the first postmaster of the Wyman Dam post office, located inside the store until 1945, when it moved to the Main Street home of postmaster Verda L. Bell. It was moved twice more and was finally located at the current site of the Trinity Baptist Church before closing in July 1967, according to the town history book.

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