Completed in 1940, the Lynden Post Office is an unaltered example of a small town single-purpose post office. Although the building is similar in its modernist design and detailing as the Renton and Central post offices, the Lynden building is unique as only one of two post offices in the state constructed totally of poured-in-place concrete. The built has a prominent mural depicting “three ages” of one of the founders of Lynden and relates the history of Lynden through visual presentation. The design of the building was patterned after one of several standardized plans developed by the Department of the Treasury. The Lynden Post Office, as most of the buildings constructed during the Depression era, utilizes Classical symmetry and proportion.

The Lynden Department Store is an excellent representative example of a highly significant phenomenon in the history of commerce in rural western towns in the United States – that of the independent, small-town department store that served as a social and commercial landmark in these towns. The Lynden Department Store was a classic example of a commercial and social town center, anchoring the town with a centrally located emporium of goods ranging from farm and “city” clothing, to dishware, to groceries, to farm equipment, to grain, to horse buggies (and eventually an early form of rural automobile dealership). The Lynden Department Store is also the largest (and sole surviving) building developed by William H. “Billy” Waples. Mr. Waples was the driving force behind the Lynden Department Store, his operation that spanned seven decades. Billy Waples also founded and co-owned the Lynden Mill and Light Company and established the first electric light service in Lynden in 1903. Waples was also instrumental in bringing passenger and freight rail service to Lynden in 1904 – and in starting the Northwest Washington Fair, still thriving and still one of the largest and most successful country fairs in the Northwest.