Whats The Smallest Town You Have A Precancel For

Came across this precancel when I was sorting.
Town has a current population of 421 people. Show some pics of your precancels from small towns.

Scott

Minneapolis. Yeah, I'm afraid of getting into precancel collecting.

I probably can find a dozen of very small towns. Here are three examples to get started:


Hyndman, PA (pop. 1005):



St. Michael, ND (pop. 560):


...and the winner, so far...

Laceyville, PA (pop. 396):

This is what happens when I start looking for small town precancels -- found three more:

Hornbrook, CA (pop. 286)
Bemos Point, NY (pop. 340)
Sharon Springs, NY (pop. 547)

Guessing it is in Alaska - I did a quick check of the census-2000 data online. Flat, AK reported a population of 4 (four!).

You guys sure have me beat. Best I can do is McCleary, WA pop 1600

As for Flat, AK, this Wiki page is quite revealing:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat,_Alaska

One family lives there now and the post office had an office there until the year 2000. (I guess that's one less post office closing we'll have to worry about in 2011.)

The real Population test would be to determine the POP of the town when the precancel was issued and in use. I don't think I can beat a family of 4 on the frozen tundra. I am sure I have precancels from towns that no longer exist at all or are ghost towns.

A precancel collection from DPO's or ghost towns....

A few from Colorado


Victor (729) pop 445, not the smallest but at 9695 feet one of the highest)
Snyder (701) pop 436
Timnath (812) pop 223
Crook (708) pop 128
Gill (841) pop 394


Olney Springs (734) pop 339


Genoa (712) Pop 211


Red Feather Lakes (805) pop 595


U.S.A.F. Academy (807) Not really a town but several thousand people.
Mesa Verde N.P. with zero population but once the site of thousands. With over 4700 archeological sites and the earliest dating to about 500 AD probaably the oldest town precancel.

Very cool precancels folks. I am surprised at the variety of small towns represented already.

A popular collection area!

Ryan

Man! you have some amazing books Ryan.

Are we using today's population or the population when the stamps were issue? There is a big difference.

Frankie

I was using 2000 census population, the easiest numbers to come by when searching for small towns on the internet. Many precancels (especially the earlier ones) could have been used for 10-20-30 years, so without a date it would be difficult to define which decade the precancel saw use.

By the way, I did come across this one and can't find any population information. In fact, it is a DPO (1903-1955) now, so I wonder what the population would have been when this example saw use?

I also was using current census population for my figure

Ryan how many pages are in that booklet? I'd be interested in my route 66 states: il, mo, ks, ok, tx, az, nm, ca