Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Little Norway, California

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. Sufficient consensus that this passes NGEO. Barkeep49 (talk) 02:34, 21 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Little Norway, California[edit]

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Fails WP:GEOLAND. Former hotel and cafe (pic) that burned down some time ago and appears now to be in some sort of state of limbo. The only coverage I can find is a local news article from 2001 about new owners' plans for the property] and a mention in a list of historical post offices in El Dorado county. I've seen nothing indicating this is significant, and not just another run of the mill lodge. This is not to be confused with another historical locale in Solano County. CJK09 (talk) 14:51, 12 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Geography-related deletion discussions. CJK09 (talk) 14:51, 12 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of California-related deletion discussions. CJK09 (talk) 14:51, 12 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Rename or merge with Phillips, California. It appears that old name of Phillips Station is still in use, based on Associated Press coverage from this January. As for the merge option, 1.6 miles away from Phillips Station is Phillips. I assume there is or was a railway station in there at Phillips Station (now Little Norway), and that it just serviced Phillips. -- Zanimum (talk) 15:23, 12 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. A post office would normally only be established if there was a community to be served, so I think that the community must once have existed. Once notable, always notable. Little Norway is also the endpoint of this trail managed by the United States Forest Service Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit. This article (page O-8, page 242 of PDF) about Bullthistle (Cirsium vulgare) , an invasive species, says: "One of these specimens, as noted by Smith (1984) was collected in El Dorado County, along US Highway 50, near Little Norway (west of Echo Summit); ...:" Eastmain (talk • contribs) 15:30, 12 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - Also called "Phillips' Station"; several commercial enterprises occurred there, including a post office. It was also a stop on the Pony Express. See [1][2][3] Magnolia677 (talk) 23:13, 15 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Comment (@Zanimum, Eastmain, and Magnolia677:) I've done some research and Phillips Station is the same place as Phillips, California, several miles to the west. The listing of Phillips Station as an alternate name for Little Norway appears to be a GNIS error; Phillips/Phillips Station/Vade is a separate location from Little Norway. From this document on historical post offices of El Dorado County, these passages are relevant:
(page 21) Little Norway: This high mountain post office, sixteen miles east of Kyburz and five miles west of Meyers, was established on Sep. 2, 1961, when the mail was moved here from the Vade Post Office (Phillips), three miles to the west. Don Peterson was the first postmaster. The Little Norway Post Office is now closed

(page 33) "Vade: This post office at Phillips Station, located seven miles southwest of Meyers, was established on Sep. 3, 1912 with Sierra Nevada Phillips Bryson serving as the first postmaster. . [ . . . ] When she tried to get a post office in Phillips she was told that name was taken. Consequently, when the post office was established it was named Vade - her nickname. On September 2, 1961, the post office was moved three miles east and renamed Little Norway, a post office that has now closed. Phillips, also casually known as Pow Wow, after the restaurant and gas station located there ("Eat at Pow Wow and get gas" the sign said for years), is the location of Sierra at Tahoe (formerly Sierra Ski Ranch).

(page 12) "Echo: [ . . . ] On Dec. 11, 1926 it was reestablished and renamed Echo Lake Post Office. On Jan. 31, 1961 it became a rural station of the Vade (Phillips) Post Office. On Sept. 2, 1961 it was changed to a rural station of the Little Norway Post Office.

Furthermore, the mere presence of a post office doesn't indicate a community per se. I have personally been to at least one non-notable business establishment that houses a post office (the general store in Tuolumne Meadows within Yosemite National Park). "Little Norway" presumably was simply a convenient place for a post office (which, if similar to Tuolumne meadows, was just a desk and a pickup/dropoff window within the establishment, not a full-fledged building) for the dispersed collection of houses comprising the informal community of Echo Lake, California. CJK09 (talk) 17:13, 12 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Merge to Phillips, California or Echo Lake, California. It was the site of a lodge and "nothing more than a bar, restaurant, motel, ski shop and gas station", a resort site which buses took skiers to, but no indication it was an independently notable community. Reywas92^Talk 02:14, 13 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Sources that actually discuss "Little Norway" (here's another one) clearly describe it as a very small resort/hotel/gas station, not a community. The existence of a post office isn't significant in this case since it moved around over the years and Little Norway was simply the building that happened to house it.

I appreciate the efforts that have been put into finding sources for this location, but it's also important to approach these topics with a critical eye. The post office list and topos make it clear that this is not the same place as Philips/Vade (these were actually different locations where the post office was housed), and the claim that a post office indicates the presence of a community is unsupported by any sort of evidence. This type of reasoning is what got us into the whole GNIS mess in the first place. As always we need to search for significant coverage or solid evidence of legal recognition that would meet our notability standards, and I'm not finding any here. –dlthewave ☎ 02:37, 13 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Keep I found one source that discusses Little Norway as a place preceding the resort, a source about a different, earlier fire there, and then there's all the other sources other people have found. Even if we do consider this place to be a resort and not a community, we're getting to the point where we're finding enough sources that it meets GNG regardless. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 01:17, 14 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep lots of sources found talking about both the resort and the small community near the resort. We have a decent article that may even be out of stubland, and lots of other potential available sources (though there are a fair few false hits.) SportingFlyer T·C 08:47, 15 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@SportingFlyer: Which source mentions a "small community" nearby? –dlthewave ☎ 14:32, 15 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The one that comes to mind specifically is the 1967 fire. SportingFlyer T·C 14:34, 15 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I can't access that article so I don't have the exact context, but based on my local knowledge of the area (I've been back and forth through the area many times, and I've gone up to Echo Lake once or twice) I strongly suspect that the nearby "small community" is Echo Lake, California. My understanding of the area is that Little Norway was a lodge/station very close to the small community of Echo Lake, and I haven't seen anything to change that. CJK09 (talk) 14:49, 15 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

There's still lots of coverage of Little Norway over many years with residences, businesses, post offices described. It's still a clear easy keep - WP:GEOLAND doesn't demand much in terms of notability, and WP:GNG is passed anyways. SportingFlyer T·C 15:04, 15 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Here's the clipping about the 1967 fire. I'm not finding any sources that describe multiple residences and businesses; from what I recall about the area, it's common to find mid-20th-century lodge/roadhouse type establishments that include some combination of store, restaurant, guest rooms, gas station, tire chain rental and post office on the property. Most of the local coverage doesn't go into detail about what exactly Little Norway is, but phrases such as "extensively damaged Little Norway", "the inside of the building was gutted" and "the building's owners" (emphasis mine) wouldn't make sense in the context of a community. –dlthewave ☎ 17:14, 15 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not going to nitpick over what one specific article says - what's clear is that this geography, whatever it might be, passes WP:GNG if not WP:GEOLAND. The sources cover it like a community (versus that of a resort), there's plenty of press, and we have a perfectly valid article. SportingFlyer T·C 23:10, 15 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.