GRAVETTE — It survived the uncertainties of rugged pioneer days when unknown challenges lurked in the nearby wilderness.

It survived the Civil War when brother was pitted against brother, when soldiers camped nearby, when carpetbaggers often looted nearby homes, sometimes killing the occupants.

It survived being bypassed by a railroad, which possibly ruined growth of a community that might have become a small city.

It even survived two greatfires more than a century ago, and finally a devastating blaze in the winter of 1976 which destroyed what had remained of the community’s business district. It was heavily damaged by that fire, but it prevailed. Such is the history of the Maysville Post Office.

Wars, the great depression, the dust bowl days, the cold war, all came and went. Still, for more than 170 years, the Maysville Post Office has been a “constant,” holding the small community together.

Maysville is where Adam Beatie, the first resident in all of Benton County, made hishome in 1828 before there was a Maysville, before there was a state of Arkansas.

It was first called Beatie Prairie, and a post office opened its doors with that name in 1840. It was located just a few blocks from where the present Maysville Post Office now serves a community and large surrounding rural area.

In 1850 the name was changed to Maysville. It was derived from the name “Mays,” another area pioneer family. It became a thriving community in a remote area that bordered what was then the Indian Territory.

During those early years, the residents of the Territory couldn’t legally call Maysville their home. But its business community and post office became their trading and cultural center. That is true even today. Many residents of that other state, just across the pavement of Highway 43 that separates Oklahoma from Arkansas, receive their mail in boxes at the Maysville Post Office. It is where they can purchase stamps and conduct business, foregoing a long trip to the closest post office, some 10-12 miles away or 18 miles to the Jay, Okla., office.

Thus, located so far removed from another office, the Maysville Post Office has endured and continues to serve its rural two-state community.

When notification arrived recently that Maysville, zip code 72747, was one of the3,700 post offices that faced the possibility of closing, the town “bristled” at the possibility of losing the one constant that has served them for going on two centuries.

A U.S. Postal Service statement indicates assessing the offices is a money-saving venture, being undertaken to “right size retail operations ... Our customers’ habits have made it clear they no longer require a physical post office to conduct most of their postal business.”

Maysville area residents believe it is more than a “retail assessment” that is important - that the need of people in an isolated area and “people service” is the issue that should be addressed, that allowing a 170-year-old service to continue to do just that, serving hundreds of rural residents 10-20 miles from another post office, is one of the few “hands-on” governmental demonstrations that impact people.

A concerned group of Maysville area citizens are marshaling their neighbors to attend a public meeting at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, Sept.13, at the old school house to voice their concerns to postal authorities and to inform those who need to know just how important the Maysville Post Office is to a great many citizens, many of them elderly, who rely on the officefor its service to them and the area.

Cards are being mailed, ironically, through that same post office, to almost 200 families, urging good attendance. The cards give a website: www.pre.gov where messages “concerning the impacts that closing the office will have on you personally and your community” can be posted.

The cards also contain names and addresses of U.S. Senators Mark Pryor and John Boozman to help in saving what is more than a traditional service; it’s a people service. And what is more important to an ages-old U.S. Postal Service than people service?

News, Pages 2 on 08/31/2011