NEWSPAPER & ARCHIVE
Benson Landing, Nov. 27 - A. L. Hale, an aged resident here, is rounding out his 52nd year as postmaster at Benson Landing and says he believes he is one of the oldest, if not the oldest postmaster, in point of service, in Vermont.
Postmaster Hale went into office in 1870, under Grant's administration, and has been sorting mail and serving the needs of his patrons steadily ever since. Although now there are but ten or a dozen who call at the Benson Landing postoffice for their mail, things were different back in the seventies. That was when steamers brought Uncle Sam's mail pouches to the little hamlet on the shore of Lake Champlain, before the construction of the Delaware & Hudson railroad on the New York side, and when lumber-laden craf plied the lake waters, unloading their cargoes at Benson Landing for reshipment to points south.
In those days Benson Landing was a distributing station for both Benson, Vt. and Putnam Station, N.Y., just across the lake. Ever since the construction of the railroad, which brought the region in closer touch with the outside world, Postmaster Hale says one of his hardest jobes has been that of helping keep open a pathway across the lake with the coming of cold weather so that a boat which carries mail back and forth could make its regular trips until the ice got thick enough to walk upon.
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