Estimated read time: 5-6 minutes
PANGUITCH — It's been hailed as the most scenic road in America. "A journey through time" is the description on one travel website. People put it on their bucket lists. Motorcycle clubs treat it like it's the holy grail.
Tracy Sidwell has another name for Utah's fabled Highway 12.
He calls it his mail route.
For the last 30 years, not long after Escalante High School gave him his diploma and sent him out into the world to find his way, Sidwell looked at the highway and there it was, right out his front door.
He went to work as a contract carrier for the United States Postal Service, a job that entailed picking up the mail bags early in the morning where Highway 12 starts (and ends) in Panguitch and dropping them off at the post offices in Bryce Canyon City, Tropic, Cannonville, Henrieville and Escalante — before a final stop at the little mountain town of Boulder some 94 miles away.
Then he'd pick up more bags and do the same thing on his way back to Panguitch.
Two hundred miles round trip when you throw in the Bryce Canyon jog.
Sidwell insists the drive — with its pine- and aspen-covered mountains on either end bookending Red Canyon, Bryce Canyon National Park and the shimmering Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument — has never gotten old.
"I get to drive the prettiest road in the whole world every day but Sunday," he declares.
But that's not why he's put nearly 2 million miles on three different Dodge Ram diesel trucks and stayed with the same job for three decades.
In the process, he's become a beloved fixture himself.
While delivering the mail six days a week, year-in, year-out, Sidwell has become the godfather and guardian of Highway 12. Getting the mail from A to B is just the start of it. He wears a bunch of different hats. When needed, he's also a delivery man, a taxi cab, a mechanic and neighborhood watch: a one-man UPS, AAA, Uber and good Samaritan.
A store in Boulder is running low on Pepsi? No problem. Tracy will load a crate in with the mail. Some parents need help getting their kids to grandpa's farm for the day? Sure thing. And he'll bring them back. A car breaks down on the side of the highway. The mail truck stops and sees what assistance it can render (Sidwell's a trained auto mechanic). If people are stranded, he gives them rides.
I knew I had friends, I didn't know they were more like family than friends.
–Tracy Sidwell
Sidwell's delivered blood to clinics, tractor parts to ranchers, milk to grocery stores; he's fixed flats and given tourists directions; one time, he hauled a trailer with dirty laundry from a motel in one town, dropped it off to get washed in another town, and brought it back. Another time — true story — he and his four-wheel-drive Dodge towed the county snowplow driver in his two-wheel-drive truck so he could get to his snowplow. Sometimes people pay him for his service, or they try to, but not much more than to cover the gas.
"If he can help you do something, he'll do it," says Sandra Francisco, the postmaster in Bryce Canyon City, "and he'll do his job too. He's never late."
In rural Garfield County, where 5,281 people live amid 5,208 square miles — an area the size of Connecticut with a per-capita density more like the moon — Tracy stands out like Highway 12′s famed hogsback turns.
Ryan Crosier, the postmaster in Escalante, tells the story about the school teacher who lives in Escalante and teaches in Tropic, 44 miles away.
"She was in the post office one day and she told me she had a comfort of knowing every day when she drove to work that Tracy was out there on the highway, either coming or going," says Crosier. "Just knowing that gave her a sense of peace in case anything ever went wrong. And they weren't even close friends, she just knew she could count on Tracy. He's a tough, dependable, kindhearted man."
The impetus for writing about the mailman of Garfield County was because he was retiring. Or thought he was. This past April, another of his postal worker friends, Mike Lind, sent an email to the Deseret News. In it, he extolled Tracy's long years of service, explained that he had plans to leave for another job at the end of May and it would be nice if he got a little recognition on his way out after 30 years on the job.
"He is known county-wide and is loved by everyone," Mike wrote.
Then, as life is known to do, things changed. Sidwell's plan was to stop work as a mail carrier and take a job as a long-haul trucker, fulfilling a lifelong dream. But as news of his departure made its way through Garfield County (and it didn't take long), the company taking over the Highway 12 mail contract stepped in. Realizing it would be nigh on impossible to replace Sidwell, they offered him a healthy raise to decide not to retire.
"It was an offer I couldn't refuse," says Sidwell with a wide smile.
Not only did his financial situation improve, he had the added benefit of people telling him how they feel about him because they thought he was leaving.
"I think people here exaggerate a little bit," says Sidwell, doing his best to deflect all the praise that's been thrown his way, and then adds, "I knew I had friends, I didn't know they were more like family than friends."
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Lee Benson
