After 35 Years, Lori Cantrell Bids Farewell to Calistoga’s Post Office
By Tim Carl
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CALISTOGA, Calif. — On April 30, Lori Cantrell walked into the Calistoga post office for the last time as an employee. But this time, instead of her USPS uniform, she wore a sweeping, hand-sewn Renaissance gown in deep sapphire blue. Above her hung a handmade sign reading: “CONGRATS LORI WE WILL MISS YOU!” Around the building, 35 clusters of blue, white and silver balloons — one for each year she served — floated above mail bins and counters.
“I’ve opened, closed, handled bulk mail, ordered stamps, filled out every form you can think of,” Cantrell said, standing near the same service window where she spent the last two decades. “It’s been a good run.”
Cantrell started her postal career in 1990 as a letter carrier in Calistoga. She delivered mail by hand for 13 years before moving to the front counter, where she became a mainstay of daily life in town.
“When I started, we sorted everything by hand,” she said. “You’d get these trays with 2,000 letters, sort them by route and pass them to the carriers — who then sorted again. Now all that’s done by machine in Oakland.”
“I’ll be sewing a lot more now. I just have to decide whether to light up an old dress for this year’s parade or make a new one.” — Lori Cantrell
But it wasn’t just automation that changed. Calistoga grew, new neighborhoods sprang up and the post office physically expanded — though not without incident. “We had a couple of cars drive into the building over the years,” Cantrell said, laughing. “One hit the corner, one came right through the wall.”
Originally from San Pablo, Cantrell moved to Napa as a child before settling in Calistoga at 18. She and her husband, Gary, now a retired vineyard mechanic, have been married for 43 years.
“He likes working on old tractors and machines,” she said. “And I sew.”
That’s an understatement. Cantrell is known across the region for her elaborate handmade costumes — from 1910s tea dresses to Civil War ballgowns to her famous light-up holiday attire. During Halloween and the annual Lighted Tractor Parade, locals line the streets to see what she’ll wear next.