Hye Post Office

Duane's take

The official marker at Hye Post Office tells it this way, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, there are post offices, and then there are post offices. Most of 'em are just four walls and a counter and a smell of old rubber bands.

But the one sitting out in Hye, Texas — Blanco County — has got a story layered up inside it like rings in a live oak. It starts with a man named Hiram Brown. Folks called him Hye.

In 1880, he founded a store out here, and the settlement took his name — or at least the name they called him. Six years later, in 1886, a post office was established to go along with it. Then in 1904, the present store went up — and here's the detail that'll make you look twice — it was built with Bavarian metalwork.

Out here in the Texas Hill Country. Bavarian metalwork. Don't ask me how, because the marker doesn't say, and that's half the charm of it.

Since 1923, the place has been owned by the Deike family. Some things in Texas are just steady like that. But now — now — here's where the story takes a turn that nobody at a little country post office could've seen comin'.

At some point in his early years, a four-year-old boy walked up to this counter and mailed a letter. First time in his life he'd ever been a postal customer. The boy's name was Lyndon B.

Johnson. He would grow up to become President of the United States. And the place where he first dropped a letter in the mail was right here — this store, this counter, Hye, Texas.

But the story doesn't stop there. It loops back around in a way that feels almost too tidy to be true — except it is. In 1965, Postmaster General Lawrence F.

O'Brien was sworn into the cabinet of President Johnson. And where did that swearing-in take place? Not in Washington.

Not in some grand federal building. Right here. At the Hye Post Office.

The same little Hill Country post office where that same president had once stood — small enough to barely see over the counter — and mailed his very first letter. Some places just hold onto history whether they mean to or not. Hye's been doing it since 1880.

What the marker says

Named for Hiram ("Hye") Brown, founder of store, in 1880. Post office established 1886. Present store with Bavarian metalwork built in 1904. Owned by Deike family since 1923. At age four, Lyndon B. Johnson, future U.S. President, mailed a letter here- a postal customer for first time in his life. Postmaster General Lawrence F. O'Brien was sworn into cabinet of President Johnson at this post office in 1965. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark, 1966.