When I was a kid, I used to read a lot―but I was never into novels. I
don't know if it was my attention span or what, but I read local
newspapers (which is where I suspect I drew my interest in typography)
and reference books: encyclopedia articles, dictionaries, and even phone
books. Each phone book typically has a list of local ZIP Codes. I soon
recognized the pattern: the ZIP Codes were separated by area, and within
each area, the numbers were assigned in alphabetical order. I seem to
recall encountering an older phone book that had a ZIP Code in it that I
hadn't seen in previous lists, discovering that a few small towns had
their ZIP Codes taken away (and that one could get a good idea of how
big or small a town was by whether they had a post office and/or their
own phone exchange, or in the biggest cases, how many of each).
Many years later, I noticed that some of these old ZIP Codes, even if
they no longer are in use, may still be useful. Consider that the ZIP
Code is the default way of voluntarily giving one's general location; if
you're looking for something, it's usually within a certain mile radius
from the ZIP Code you enter. Well, sometimes, there is a need to choose
something a little more asymmetrical. For example, I'm from Little
Valley, New York. If I decide to do online dating, and I search for all
matches within, say, 50 miles of Little Valley, I'm going to pick up a
lot of people in the city of Buffalo, and it's been my experience that
people in bigger cities tend to only be willing to date in a MUCH
smaller radius. On the other hand, I might miss someone in, say, Potter
County, PA―she may be the same distance away as the Buffalonian, but the
smaller population there might make her more willing to consider someone
further away. (If I expand to 100 miles, it gets worse, as that now
covers the city of Toronto, and even without the even bigger city as a
factor, the international border is pretty much a dealbreaker.) So,
strategically, to get better matches, it would make sense to pick a
center point for that radius further south to filter out the big-city
matches.
The areas directly further south enough to create an ideal radius while still being relatively honest about where I am happened to be locations that no longer have ZIP Codes for miles around, meaning they now use a ZIP for a location that's quite some distance away. (Most of these towns lost their post offices in the 1960s, through some fascinating stories of their own.) The fact that the Postal Service no longer uses these ZIP Codes doesn't mean the obsolete ZIP Codes can no longer be used for location purposes. Most services don't include them, alas, so I decided as a public service to compile them here, since they don't show up on search engines. To compile this list, I looked up the Postal Service database (in numerical/alphabetical order), noted the gaps in numbering, and aligned the ghost towns to the best of my knowledge. Since this is government data, and lists of things aren't copyrightable anyway, feel free to use the data however you please. You're welcome. UPDATE 2024: the Postal Service database has been updated, confirming the Red House and Onoville ZIP Codes.
OK, enough rambling. On with the list.
Conewango is a peculiar post office: for various points in its history,
it has had at least two post offices (and occasionally more, especially
in the 19th century): one in the Cattaraugus side (Conewango Creek) and
the other for the hamlet of Conewango Valley (which is ever so slightly
in Chautauqua County), even though the town was never all that populous.
Each appears to have been reserved a ZIP Code (14725 and 14726). The
Conewango Valley post office bounced across both sides of the county
border before settling in Cattaraugus County in 1957; seven years later,
on April 24, 1964 (not long after the ZIP Code system was introduced),
the second Conewango post office was closed.
Ischua is located between the towns of Hinsdale and Farmersville. I
explicitly remember Ischua's ZIP Code being listed in a 1980s phone book
I perused many years ago. Its mail is now handled through the Hinsdale
post office.
Knapp Creek, a small hamlet near the Pennsylvania border in the town of
Allegany is actually still listed in the Postal Service database, even
though its post office closed in 1996. It has since been removed from
most ZIP Code databases. Its mail is now handled by the Olean post
office.
Onoville, flippantly named after the townsfolk rejected all other
options out of hand by responding "oh, no," is the main population
center of the town of South Valley. Onoville today is mainly a seasonal
community centered around the marina built in the 1960s; its permanent
population was forced out when they built the Kinzua Dam. Onoville's
post office closed June 30, 1964; it is served by the Frewsburg post
office.
Quaker Bridge was the population center of the town of Elko. It was
most directly affected by the construction of the Kinzua Dam and was
flooded, destroyed, and all roads leading to it rerouted. It likely
never got to use the ZIP Code that appears to be assigned to it. The
Quaker Bridge post office, which was located within a landmark "trading
post" and operated by the post's owner at the time of its closure, was
closed September 30, 1964.
Red House is the town that contains the vast majority of Allegany State Park. The expansion of the park, along with the construction of the Southern Tier Expressway, gave New York a reason to force the residents out, one by one, coincidentally beginning the same time the Kinzua Dam was built. The remaining residents managed to halt the eviction process in 1973; 28 residents remained at the time of the 2020 census, mostly living on one side road. The Red House post office was located within Costello's grocery store and closed June 30, 1964, a few years before the mass evacuation. The remains of the town are now served by Salamanca mailing addresses.
As with other cities, Salamanca likely was assigned multiple ZIP Codes.
It also happened to have two post offices, as prior to 1913, Salamanca
and West Salamanca were separate municipalities. I don’t have any
concrete information as to when the West Salamanca post office closed.
(Editor’s note: the coordinates given are somewhat further south than
the West Salamanca post office likely was. The coordinates point to
Shongo, a hamlet south of West Salamanca. Between the two is
Jimersontown, the area where most Kinzua Dam refugees were resettled.)
There are two other ZIP Codes in the Jamestown area (the area in which codes begin with "147"), which covers southern Chautauqua, southern and central Cattaraugus and southwestern Allegany counties, that I was unable to definitively locate.
14734 (Falconer—Fillmore). The best potential fit I could find for this
ZIP Code was Fentonville, a community south of Frewsburg in
Chautauqua County and west of Onoville—though no such
14768 (Panama—Portland). I had previously included in this article some speculation that this could be Persia or Poland Center—but it appears I was wrong. The Postal Service database suggests it is instead Point Chautauqua, a resort community on Chautauqua Lake between the village of Mayville and the hamlet of Dewittville; the Point Chautauqua post office closed in 1966.
The ZIP Codes from 14790 to 14799 have never been allocated, as there
were not enough towns. The highest ZIP code in the 147 prefix is Weston
Mills, geographically between Olean and Portville (14788). 14789 was Wiscoy,
a location in the town of Hume in Allegany County.
ZIP Codes 14702 through 14705 are unused; they are reserved for the
city of Jamestown. I think 14702 was at one point in use.
These ones aren’t real, but may be of use when filling in database
gaps.
Hall was a location in what is now Allegany State Park during the town
of Red House's (see below) lumber boom where a sawmill was located. It
had its own post office from 1893 to about 1910—which, obviously, was
over half a century before ZIP Codes were established. By 1910, the name
"Hall" had been given to the post office in what had previously been
Hall’s Corners, out in Ontario County. (Coincidentally, its ZIP Code is
14463.) Though the location has been depopulated since Allegany State
Park was established, the former Cattaraugus County hamlet of Hall
happens to be a substantial distance from other post offices, about
halfway between the old Red House office and the current one in
Limestone.
So I took a few liberties. There’s no gap in the H’s to fit Hall, but if Red House’s ZIP Code was going to be 14773, and Limestone’s is 14753, then the one between ought to be 14763. As it so happens, the ZIP Codes between 14761 and 14763 were never used; I presume they were set aside for Olean. So I assigned 14763 to the old hamlet of Hall. Now, because the name Hall is used elsewhere and because 14763 is alphabetically between Olean and Onoville, that's where the On prefix came in, to fit it alphabetically in the list.
Old maps of Cattaraugus County make note of a Mansfield-Eddyville post
office; it appears on 19th century maps but by 1910 the name Eddyville
appears to have been assigned to an area in Ulster County, New York
(since subsumed into the city of Kingston); the 1933 article calls the
Cattaraugus County town Mansfield again. The ZIP Code Tabulation Area
(the areas the Census Bureau uses to approximate post offices' reaches)
for Little Valley's ZIP Code, 14755, shows an obvious 8 shape,
suggesting that the Mansfield/Eddyville post office territory was
hastily annexed to Little Valley's in fairly recent time. (The
Mansfield, NY post office is not in the USPS database; attempting to
search for it returns a message "NO
POST OFFICE BY THIS NAME HAS BEEN RESEARCHED." It would have
had to be closed before the early 1960s; coincidentally, in the 147
area, Little Valley and Mansfield were next to each other
alphabetically, thus sharing 14755 for two areas that were adjacent both
geographically and alphabetically—well, it'd be an unorthodox shortcut
but a clever one.
In the ZIP+4 system, locations in the Village of Little Valley have ZIP Codes of 14755-1___, while those in Mansfield have 14755-9___. I suppose that one could try to shoehorn 14734 in there with creative spelling as "Fddyville" but I don’t recommend that because I suspect the ZIP belonged to another town and I explicitly want to use unused ZIP Codes for fakes to avoid confusion. So I dipped into the tail end of unclaimed ZIP Codes in the 1479x range and combined that with Little Valley's 14755. 14759 is taken by North Clymer (whose office has since closed), so that left 14795.
By the way, the neighboring hamlet of Maples ALMOST fits—but not quite, as Maple Springs would come before it. But spell it Maple S, and it does fit.
Unlike Cattaraugus County, the ZIP Codes for Pennsylvania aren't quite as clear cut: the gaps are wider, and either the Allegheny River or the McKean/Warren County line divides ZIP Code regions. 167 is devoted entirely to McKean County, even though it only uses about 30 of the 100 possible codes. 163 covers Warren County and some other territory in Pennsylvania. The odd part is that there are gaps in BOTH regions that fit the towns that were destroyed in the creation of the Kinzua Dam, and the ones in the 167 section each have gaps TWO ZIP Codes wide. On the whole, the U.S. Postal Service has kept post offices for much smaller towns in Pennsylvania than they have in New York.
Akeley: A small Pennsylvania community just north of Russell and south
of the New York State line, one I cross through regularly on the way to
Warren, had a post office that closed in 1963. The unusual thing about
Akeley is that it is in the 163 territory for ZIP Codes, but the gap
between the flagship for that prefix, Oil City (16301), and the first
alphabetically after it (16311 for Carlton) is unusually wide, and there
are no A or B towns other than Akeley in the database, so it could in
theory be anything between 16302 and 16310. I'll guess 16310.
Corydon: Before the dam, Corydon was actually two separate townships,
one in McKean County (which still survives but has no post office) and
one in Warren (which no longer exists). Possible ZIP Codes: 16318, 16722
or 16723. One of these (if any, 16318 is the most likely candidate, as
it is further west) might also be Cornplanter, a Seneca community that
was on the west bank of the Allegheny.
Kinzua: this town was south of Corydon on the east bank of the
Allegheny. Possible ZIP Codes include 16330, 16736 or 16737.
Post offices were an early way of marking populated places, long before
villages were incorporated. Most population centers in the county got
their post offices before 1840.
Looking at some old county maps reveals a few post offices for areas
that are no longer populated. Old maps show post offices for Napoli and
New Albion, which both still exist but no longer have offices; these
defunct offices are not listed on the Postal Service site. New Albion's
name is mentioned in the 1933 article; Napoli's is not. The post office
site does list a large number of post offices for locations that closed
decades before the ZIP Code era: Axeville (east of Conewango, 1839-51);
Bowen (southwest of Randolph, 1891-1907); East Leon/Pleasant Grove
(1830-54); Elm Creek (north of Randolph, 1864-65); Fairview (in
Farmersville,1827-1903); and Pope (between Conewango and Randolph,
1892-1903). Several post offices are on old 1840 and/or 1869 county maps
that are not in the USPS database: Sociality (southeast part of Dayton),
Seelysburgh (in the west part of Napoli), Hopkins/Elgin (Lyndon),
Chelsea/Elton (southwestern part of Freedom), Ashford Hollow, East
Ashford and Humphrey (Chapellsburg).
There also appear to be quite a few ZIP Codes in danger of
discontinuation. Leon, NY (14751) had its post office closed in 2010.
Otto (14766), Kill Buck (14748), Conewango Valley (14726) and Steamburg
(14783) lost their postmasters in the early 2010s and are now being
managed by other towns' postmasters. East Randolph (14730) was closed in
2017.
Source: U.S.
Postal Service Postmaster Finder: Post Offices by ZIP Code
Information on the Red House, Onoville and Quaker Bridge post offices
was confirmed by articles in the Bradford Era ("Post Offices to Close,"
April 22, 1964) and the Salamanca Republican-Press ("Final Check-Out,"
July 1, 1964).
Further reading: Only One 'Salamanca' in United States; Many Cattaraugus Co. Names Duplicated, The Cattaraugus Republican, 1933
See also: The Full Listing of ZIP Codes and
Telephone Exchanges in Cattaraugus County
This list was compiled by J. Myrle Fuller and Fullervision
Enterprises