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titlePost Office
Message Box
iconhelp
titleThe Guidelines define Post Office as follows:
typesuccess

An official facility of the U.S. Postal Service used for processing and distributing mail and other postal material.

INDICATORS: Official logo of U.S. Post Office.

INCLUDES: USPS official post offices, post office stations, branch post offices, community post offices (CPOs), village post offices (VPOs), and postal annexes with a public post office.

DOES NOT INCLUDE: Mail drop off locations (blue US Mail box), carrier annexes with no public hours, or contract postal units (CPUs, which are often in commercial establishments) that do not have their own zip code.



What is a Post Office? 

There are quite a few types of Location Types you can choose from, but the USGS guidelines stipulate that only official USPS facilities should be included in the National Structures dataset: this translates to the Post office, Village Post office, and Contract Postal Units location types. To do a search for these three types, select “Post Offices and Approved Postal Providers” from the Location Types list and then click on the Refine search link, and then make sure that only Post Offices, Village Post offices, and Contract Postal Units are checked.

This restricted definition means that many locations that sell stamps or have only automated postal centers or only participate in the PO Box Online program, such as markets, banks, and office and mailing supply stores, do not qualify as Post Offices for the National Structures dataset.


Naming Post Offices: 
 
The guidelines stipulate that the correct way to name a post office is: <name> Post Office, for example “Pueblo Post Office”. Also, to naming the Contract Postal Unit, the correct way is: Name+Contract Postal Unit or Name+CPU. The name is the name that is shown in the USPS website. Occasionally, you will see a Post Office on the USPS website that has a name like “Westminster (Harris Park)”; in this case, name the post office as: "Westminster Post Office Harris Park Station”. .

Editing/Reviewing Post Offices for a city or county: 


You might want to review all of the Post Offices for a city or county. To do this, go to the USPS Find Locations web page; restrict the search to Post Offices and Village Post Offices, and Contract Postal Units; type in the city of interest; and select a reasonable search radius. Then go through all of the locations and make sure they are in the Structures database. If you are working on a county, then successively type in the names of various cities in that county with a reasonable search radius for each so that when each of your search results are combined you get complete results for the whole county. NOTE: there is a USPS web page for searching for Post Offices within a county, but this search uses an out-of-date-database, so it is recommended not to rely on this county search.