(Editor's note: This story originally appeared in 2014.)Santa Claus, Ind., located in Spencer County was given that name on Christmas Eve in 1852 by a small group of German settlers. The town was originally known as Santa Fe, sometimes spelled Santa Fee, but eventually had to rename itself to establish a post office, town lore goes.
Because a town called Santa Fe existed in the north of the state, the townfolk had to scramble quickly to come up with another name, the story goes. With Christmas just a few weeks away, they decided to keep the first part of the town's name and pay homage to St. Nick with the second.
Presumably letters came to Santa Claus, Ind., for the next few decades but the post office would not gain renown until 1914 when the postmaster general James Martin started responding to the letters the town received with hand-written replies of his own.
A few years later, according to a 1934 Evansville Press story, a California stamp collector wrote to Martin, asking him to cancel a letter for him with the Yule postmark. According to that story, until that time, the town had been known as Santaclaus and the letter writer suggested changing the name to Santa Claus to attract attention from stamp collectors around the country. Martin wrote to the postmaster general, who granted the request.
By 1930, the Santa Claus, Ind., post office handled 45,000 pieces of mail in the two weeks before Thanksgiving, Martin said in a 1931 Indianapolis Star story. The year the article appeared, he said, the post office handled that number in one day. To help Martin and the four other postal workers handle the crush, the post office sent electric canceling machines.
The post office doubled as the town general store and during the season, the store merchandise had to make way for the onslaught of mail, the Indianapolis Star reported in 1931, with letter writers eager for the Santa Claus, Ind. stamp. Mail came from as far away as Mexico or Austria. During December Martin had to work on Sundays to keep up with the work, including his self-imposed task of responding to each and every child who wrote hopefully to Santa.
Santa Claus was nearly lost in 1931, when U.S. postmaster Walter F. Brown tried to force the town to give up its name to ease the burden on the tiny post office. Robert "Believe It or Not" Ripley sent a 4-foot-wide postcard in support, and The Indianapolis News asked readers to send letters of protest to the postmaster. The campaign proved to be successful.
In 1934, an Evansville Press story reported that the Santa Claus processed a letter from a child in China. Sadly that letter writer never received a reply as the initial missive was written in Chinese and no one could read it.
In 1935, a themed candy shop opened and a 22-foot Santa Claus statue erected and in 1946 Santa Claus Land, the nation's first theme park opened (now named Holiday World & Splashin' Safari).
Now at its fourth location at the north end of the Kringle Place mall, the post office receives more than a half-million pieces of mail a year -- about 10,000 of them from children addressed to Santa and the rest from adults wanting the Santa Claus, Ind., postmark on their Christmas cards.
The Santa Claus Post Office that officially opened in 1856 remains the world's only post office that bears the name of Santa Claus, according to the town website.
And to this day, volunteer "elves" at the local Santa Claus Museum respond to as many of the letters that come addressed to Santa as they can.