Imprint of the past

Students who have ever been within a 50-foot radius of the Northgate Post Office on University Drive may have noticed a small white sign displaying three yellow triangles and the words, "Fallout Shelter," and wondered just what lies beneath the hustle and bustle of the North side mail rooms.

Could there be a vast expanse of century-old food rations, tattered cots and dusty first-aid kits hiding beneath hundreds of small P.O. boxes?

Built in 1937, the post office was the main source of mail circulation throughout College Station. William Hines, the lead custodian of the building, said the basement was transformed into a civil defense shelter in 1962, when it was furnished with items such as large five-gallon tubs of candy and packaged C-rations.

Hines explained that items were plentiful enough for 900 people, and were in the basement of the post office until three or four years ago when he removed them.

Walking through the rooms of the basement, one could see that most were marked by concrete floors and faded green walls. A couple of rooms, however, have floors that are not concrete, but composed of a soft, almost squishy layer of dirt.

"The only reason I could think of for them ever having to use it is if people were dying down here - they would have a place to bury them," Hines said.

In one of the rooms containing dirt floors, a black and yellow sign, similarly designed as the one on the outside wall of the building, displays "935." Hines explained that the number indicated the amount of people that the shelter could maintain in the event of an emergency.

Another room near the back of the basement contained large plastic bags and small, aged pieces of paper with the words "safety notification cards" written plainly on the front. Hines said the bags were most likely to be used as a means of disposing waste from the bathrooms, and the cards were for notifying family members of evacuation or retreat into the shelters.

Directions on the card read: "Fill in this card and mail it immediately after evacuation or attack to any person who might be concerned about your safety. Cards may be obtained free at Civil Defense registration points and post offices."

In addition to harboring many unique items characteristic of a bomb shelter, the basement of the post office is notably reminiscent of the mail rooms upstairs. There are hundreds of deserted and unused P.O. boxes, a lonely magazine rack and even an old-fashioned stamp machine.

Despite its functionality as a mail room, the basement is used primarily for storage of excess supplies from the post office upstairs.

"It used to be the main post office in College Station and it still has the potential to be [a post office]," said Cephas Riggins, postmaster of College Station post offices.

If the College Station area continues to grow and the need for more mailing routes increases, there is a possibility that the underground facility could be remodeled and reopened. Riggins explained that a decision regarding this procedure should be made in the next few years.

According to statistics for the city of College Station provided by the director of public communications Wayne Larson, population increased by 6,958 people, or 8.45 percent, from 2004 to 2008.

Only time will tell if these increases will be enough to prompt a change in mailing routes, the old bomb shelter will be more than an inactive evacuation refuge and Aggies will be able to retrieve their mail from a piece of campus history.

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