| Plains Journal: Feb. 25, 1943
HISTORIC POST OFFICE BURNS DOWN
Money and Stamps Saved at Nye: Origin of Fire Is a
Mystery
The Nye post office burned Friday Afternoon
The fire was discovered by R.R. Dickey who was
working out near the granary. He and Mrs. Dickey, the
postmaster, ran to the building which contained the post
office, but when they got there the fire had gotten such
a start that they couldn't get the door open.
They broke out a window, and kept throwing water on a
chest in the corner which contained the money and the
stamps. they kept the chest from burning until Mr.
Dickey chopped a hole in the side of the building. the
chest was removed and the money and the stamps were
removed.
Mrs. Dickey doesn't know how the fire was started.
There had not been a fire going in the building Friday,
since it was a warm day. The fire was discovered at 3
p.m.
the only mail lost was a bath for the XIT ranch.
The post office inspector at Kansas City was notified
immediately.
The Nyy post office serves the Cimarron river
country, with number of its patrons living in Oklahoma.
The post office has been in its present location
since Mrs. Dickey became postmaster Dec. 19, 1919. It is
on the dickey farm about a mile north of the Oklahoma
line on Highway 23.
The exact date when mail was first carried to the Nye
patrons is lost in antiquity.
It is know, however, from information gathered from
Brother Buis, Mrs. D.M. Mackey and Mrs. Dickey, that
mail was carried to the area from Uneeda, and from
Miles, Kansas, before the Nye post office was first
established in 1893. Mrs. Ruth Baker was the first
postmaster, with the post office on the Oklahoma side.
Mary Free was postmaster for a time. (The Free
sisters ran the post office, and one was just about as
much the postmaster as the other.) Then nephew Charle
Free followed them as postmaster.
When Mrs. Dickey became postmaster in 1919, the post
office was moved across the Cimarron to the Kansas side.
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