Of all the Lorain County communities that had a post office, but no longer do, perhaps the one with the most unusual name was Copopa.
Pronounced kah-poe-pa, the post office’s name was derived from the Native American name of the Rocky River — Copokah — that flowed through Columbia Township.
However, the word was incorrectly written as “Copopo” on documents in 1824 sent to postal officials in Washington seeking the establishment of a post office by Thomas G. Bronson, an early settler. He had had operated a post office from his home beginning in 1817. In another misstep, someone in the Post Office Department misspelled the name yet again when approving the request. The error was never corrected.
Officially, the Copopa post office opened on June 23, 1824, with Bronson as postmaster.
Some of the facts surrounding the Copopa post office are murky. The Columbia Historical Society, headquartered at the Bronson House Museum on West River Road in Columbia Station, has worked to piece together the town’s history of postal services.
Blanche Nemeth, 82, society president, said the Copopa post office for decades in the 19th and early 20th centuries was located in a general store at the southwest corner of what is today’s Ohio routes 252 and 82. The post office closed Feb. 29, 1924, nearly 100 years after it opened.
