Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Rock, Missouri


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete.  JGHowes   talk  22:44, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

Rock, Missouri

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State historical society calls it "Rock Post Office", and it frankly seems to have been nothing more than a post office. Google maps gives me a trailer home, a couple barns, and one house. The SHS source also makes it clear that this post office was in a small portion of a rural store. It's not on the small-scale 1940 topo that I can find. All signs point to this being a case of GNIS error in identifying a fourth-class post office as a town. Hog Farm Bacon 19:36, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Geography-related deletion discussions. Hog Farm Bacon 19:36, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Missouri-related deletion discussions. Hog Farm Bacon 19:36, 11 September 2020 (UTC)


 * This one is a bit problematic as it isn't depicted on a USGS topo map. Seems GNIS error in identifying a fourth-class post office as a town is a bit off though. These historic post offices were typically located within a country store which served the citizens of a rural area back when travel was likely by horse and buggy and local country stores/post offices were important. Some folks may have their modern citified blinders on :) Sorry 'bout that. Roll on, Vsmith (talk) 14:46, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm a lifelong rural resident, and I'm aware that these don't meet the GEOLAND requirement of "legally recognized, populated place". While these country stores were a local gathering place, Wikipedia doesn't consider local gathering place to be notable.  The rural Midwest is full of extinct country churches, random local primary schools in the middle of cow pastures, named farms/ranches, and places where one family had a house there long enough that people started calling it "the old Smith place".  I wouldn't contend that any of the above are notable, even though some of the names lived on enough to make it on maps, even to the present day.  If local importance with no evidence of legal recognition is considered notability, then an RFC on WP: GEOLAND is necessary. Hog Farm Bacon 15:20, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Seems the establishment of a post office should be evidence of "legal recognition" ... unless they were illegally established. Vsmith (talk) 19:37, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Whether post office naming constitutes a legal authority is already problematic, but in any case the problem here is that you keep assuming that every place that had a post office was some sort of community. That's just not how it was. 4th class post offices were frequently moved and renamed, often simply because the house changed hands or because the office was moved from one house to another. A lot of them were in railroad depots with nothing else much around them. Even now there are still post offices which was just a window or counter in a store or the like: the post office in Essex, Montana is in the office of a motel. Post offices were established to give people a place to collect their mail in the era before Rural Free Delivery, which is why there were so many of them around the turn of the century. Mangoe (talk) 20:29, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete Cited reference says clearly that Rock was a post office in a local store, named for the limestone rock on which it sat. No reference indicates that this was a community. Glendoremus (talk) 03:23, 19 September 2020 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.