Cobalt Post Office

Mining the Depths for This Website
Cobalt Post Office, East Hampton

Pro-tip: If a town is linked on CTMQ, it’s a real town. If it’s not, it’s not.

I used to get all fired up when people would say certain non-towns were towns in Connecticut. I’m mostly over that now with a few exceptions: I’m looking at you Mystic and Weatogue (Simsbury). I saw a thing the other day asking people to name their “three cutest towns” in the state.

So many listed Mystic and Stonington as two of their three. This grinds my gears (Mystic is not real, and it is half in Stonington, half in Groton). If you’re curious, the proper answer to that question is, of course, Chester, Essex, and Stonington.

Not Cobalt?

Not Cobalt.

For one, Cobalt isn’t a real Connecticut town of course, but it does have its own real US Post Office. And she’s a beaut.

You are rightly wondering why in the world you are reading a dedicated CTMQ page about a random little beatdown post office in Cobalt, Connecticut. Unfortunately, I have no good answer for you other than I started noticing and documenting the random little beatdown (and super cute! And weird!) post offices around our little state.

I think, for me, it’s the fonts at these weird little post offices. Use a weird font that screams anything but important federal building and I’ll take a picture and cobble together a random CTMQ page about you.

I suppose I could use this page to explain why this section of East Hampton is called Cobalt.

Cobalt miner with cobalt

Cobalt is called Cobalt because there’s cobalt there. And it was mined there for centuries, but there’s just not enough to make a thriving industry out of it. Just one peek into what cobalt mining is doing to places like Democratic Republic of the Congo and Indonesia should make locals happy that there’s scant amounts of the stuff here.

The first attempts at mining in the area came in the 1770s, though a popular legend says that the state’s first governor, John Winthrop the Younger, had discovered a secret lode of gold in the area around the base of Great Hill roughly 100 years prior. According to a history of the mines written for a 1980s-era guidebook by a UConn geology professor Norman Gray, the first prospectors to the area were likely attracted by the reports of gold, but instead found cobalt.

At the time, cobalt, prized for its deep bluish hues, was used as a dye to manufacture stained glasses and porcelain.

What’s more interesting, to me, about Cobalt is that it’s part of East Hampton which is southwest of Hampton and that Cobalt borders Middle Haddam which is also part of East Hampton but not Haddam which contains Haddam Neck and Higganum, but not Little Haddam which is part of nearby East Haddam which contains Hadlyme which is not in Lyme or Old Lyme which…

Oh Connecticut, how I love thee.