It’s hailed as the most beautiful road in America. “A journey through time” is the description on a travel website. People put it on their bucket lists. Motorcycle clubs treat it like the holy grail.
Tracy Sidwell has another name for Utah’s legendary Highway 12.
He calls it his mail route.
For the past thirty years, not long after Escalante High School graduated him and sent him out into the world to make his way, Tracy looked at the highway and there he was, right outside his front door.
He went to work as a contract delivery boy for the United States Postal Service, a job that required him to pick up mail bags early in the morning where Highway 12 begins (and ends) in Panguitch and deliver them to post offices in Bryce Canyon City, Tropic, Cannonville, Henrieville and Escalante — before making a final stop in the small mountain town of Boulder, some 95 miles (151 kilometers) away.
Then he packed more bags and did the same on the way back to Panguitch.
A two hundred mile round trip if you include the Bryce Canyon jog.
Tracy insists the drive – with its pine- and aspen-clad mountains at either end, with stop-offs for Red Canyon, Bryce Canyon National Park and the glittering Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument – has never gotten old.
“I get to drive on the most beautiful road in the world every day, except Sundays,” he explains.
But that’s not why he’s logged nearly two million miles driving three different Dodge Ram diesel trucks and working the same job for three decades.
In the meantime, he has also become a beloved figure himself.
While she delivers the mail six days a week, year after year, Tracy has become the godfather and guardian of Highway 12. Getting the mail from A to B is just the beginning. He wears a lot of different hats. When necessary, he is also a delivery person, taxi driver, mechanic and neighborhood watch: a one-man UPS, AAA, Uber and Good Samaritan.
A store in Boulder is running out of Pepsi? No problem. Tracy loads a crate at the mail truck. Some parents need help taking their kids to Grandpa’s farm for the day? Sure. And he’s taking them back. A car breaks down on the side of the highway. The mail truck stops and sees what help he can provide (Tracy is a trained mechanic). When people are stranded, he gives them rides.
Tracy has delivered blood to clinics, tractor parts to ranchers, milk to grocery stores; he has fixed flat tires and given directions to tourists; once he picked up a trailer full of dirty laundry from a motel in one town, dropped it off in another town to be washed, and then brought it back. Another time—true story—he towed the driver of the county snowplow into his two-wheel-drive Dodge so he could get to his snowplow. Sometimes people pay him for his services, or they try, but not much more than to cover the gas bill.
“If he can help you with something, he will,” said Sandra Francisco, the postmaster at Bryce Canyon City, “and he does his job. He’s never late.”
In rural Garfield County, where 5,281 people live in 2,063 square miles (5,208 square kilometers) — an area the size of Connecticut with a per capita density more like the moon — Tracy stands out like Highway 12’s famous hogsback bends.
Ryan Crosier, the postmaster in Escalante, tells the story about the schoolmaster who lives in Escalante and teaches in Tropic, 45 miles away.
“She was at the post office one day and she told me that she liked knowing that Tracy was on the highway every day when she drove to work, whether she was coming or going,” Ryan said. “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, reliable, kind-hearted man.”
The reason for writing about the Garfield County mailman was because he was retiring. Or thought he was retiring. Last April, another postal worker friend of his, Mike Lind, sent an email to the Deseret News. In it, he praised Tracy’s long service, explained that he planned to leave for another job at the end of May and that it would be nice to get a little recognition after 30 years on the job.
“He is known throughout the province and loved by all,” Mike wrote.
Then, as life goes, things changed. Tracy’s plan was to quit his job as a mail carrier and take a job as a long-haul truck driver, fulfilling a lifelong dream. But when news of his departure spread throughout Garfield County (and it didn’t take long), the company that had taken over the Highway 12 mail contract stepped in. Realizing that it would be nearly impossible to replace Tracy, they offered him a big raise to decide not to retire.
“It was an offer I couldn’t refuse,” says Tracy with a broad smile.
Not only did his financial situation improve, he also had the benefit of people telling him what they thought of him because they thought he was going to leave.
“I think people are exaggerating a little bit here,” says Tracy, doing his best to ignore all the praise coming his way, then adds, “I knew I had friends, I didn’t know They were more like family than friends.”
