
Photo by Halie Wilson
Santa’s Mail Box is back
By Wilson, Johnny & Halie
Evelyn Teel, 3, is the first to drop her letter to Santa in the North Pole-bound mail box at the Idyllwild Post Office. Helping Santa are post office employees Julie Stanford and Christina Reitz (front), Kelsi Lehman, Postmaster Kelly Gates, Mom Theresa Teel and John Aussenhofer. The mail box will be in the Idyllwild Post Office lobby until Friday, Dec. 12, for children to send Santa their Christmas wishes. Santa allows the Town Crier to print the letters in the Christmas edition for readers to enjoy. Photo by Halie Wilson” width=”720″ height=”480″ /> NORTH POLE MAIL: Evelyn Teel, 3, is the first to drop her letter to Santa in the North Pole-bound mail box at the Idyllwild Post Office. Helping Santa are post office employees Julie Stanford and Christina Reitz (front), Kelsi Lehman, Postmaster Kelly Gates, Mom Theresa Teel and John Aussenhofer. The mail box will be in the Idyllwild Post Office lobby until Friday, Dec. 12, for children to send Santa their Christmas wishes. Santa allows the Town Crier to print the letters in the Christmas edition for readers to enjoy.

It has been years, but California, the entire state, is drought free. See the accompanying map from the Drought Monitoring Center. The state is totally white. This is the result of plentiful precipitation since summer. Since October 1, 2025 (the beginning of the water year), the Forest Service’s Keenwild Ranger Station has recorded 9.6 inches…...
The Ralph M. Brown Act, which is codified as California Government Code sections 54950-54963, is open-meeting legislation that governs only local public agencies. (State public agencies are governed by separate legislation.)Six presently active local governmental agencies on our Hill are governed by the Brown Act: the Idyllwild, Pine Cove, Fern Valley and Lake Hemet Municipal…
By Patrick Reitz Idyllwild Fire Chief At about 1 a.m. Thursday, Nov. 14, Idyllwild Fire Department was dispatched to the report of a structure fire in the 54400 block of Strawberry Valley Drive. Upon arrival on scene, personnel found that the resident had extinguished the fire. Residents who noticed the fire outside woke the…
Idyllwild Arts presents its second-annual Indigenous Peoples Day Celebration Sunday and Monday, Oct. 8 and 9, on campus. Idyllwild Arts is an institution rooted in respect, reverence, and support for Native American people, culture, and art, and is the only residential arts high school in the country to offer a Native American Arts Center led…
Nine students from high schools across the country were selected as winners of Bennington College’s 2018/2019 Young Writers Awards, including Kali Puhnaty of Idyllwild Arts Academy, who won second place in fiction for “Moon Fever.” This annual competition, which accepts entries in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, is free to enter and open to high school…