While many are aware that Lassen County was dotted with numerous one-room schools, it applied to post offices, too. Some operated for decades, like Merrillville, some short-lived like Hazel, and there are a few ghost ones.
For many, it might be hard to believe that Grasshopper Valley, a sagebrush plain in north-central Lassen County, would even have enough population to support a settlement, let alone a post office. Grasshopper, it should be noted came to the forefront in the 1870s with mining activity at Hayden Hill. In 1883, John Calvin York purchased the 440 acre Madeline ranch and stage-stop in Grasshopper. Over the years it simply became known as Yorks.
Very briefly, it became known as Hazel, when the family petitioned to have a post office established there. It was granted on May 14, 1895, but postal officials revoked it on July 9, 1895. The post-office was named for York’s latest addition to the family, his granddaughter, Hazel Mae York born there on February 14, 1895.