OUR STORY

It was supposed to be for farming.

Once the trees were cleared and the meadows opened up the valley looked to be a prime location for sprawling farms and a livelihood in agriculture. As it turns out, decent crops are hard to grow in the mountains.

After fighting the cooler temps and short growing seasons residents turned to logging, trapping and homesteading in order to carve out their place in the valley.

We used to go by the name Beaver Valley. But, as the story goes, the postal service wouldn’t accept that name – claimed it was too long. So the residents told the postmaster to just give them a name as long as it was a ‘plain’ name.

And with that, Plain was born.

The post office puttered along for a couple decades in the valley. Community members would place it on skids and drag it to the residence of the next installed postmaster. “You knew you were the postmaster,” one old-timer said, “when you woke up and found the post office in your yard.”

The little building eventually closed its doors in 1936, which we consider our official date of unincorporation.