Wood and Swink General Store and Post Office

Visitors to this 1882 general store-cum-post office might wonder if they’ve arrived at a tourist attraction—or some fantasy of Old Florida as it looked when writer Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings lived less than 10 miles from this sleepy, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it town off US-441.

Boxes of vintage detergent and canned goods from the 1940s line shelves in an interior virtually unchanged from 1933, when Frederick W. Wood and Paul C. Swink bought the place. Swink sold his shares in the store less than two years later, but the name stuck. Wood went on to become the longest-serving postmaster in Florida history at the tiny post office at the front of the store. His daughter-in-law, Wilma Sue Wood, the long-time postmaster became part-owner of the general store with her husband, Fred Wood, Jr in 1990. 

The post office’s 16 original mailboxes are still in use, though today they are joined by more boxes that have been added over the years. Because there are no rural mail routes in Evinston, all mail is delivered to the post office.

The general store does sell postcards and local delicacies, like guava jam, as well as occasional time-warp copies of The Yearling printed in the 1970s. But this slice of Old Florida is mainly a time capsule with an old-fashioned working post office at its heart.