INGOMAR, Mont. — The top U.S. Postal Service official on Thursday took his case for rural post office closures straight to those it will hurt most, telling residents in Montana’s capital and one of its smallest towns that thousands of post offices nationwide must be shuttered to cut costs.

Rural residents answered Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe right back, saying cuts should be made elsewhere because their post offices provide a much-needed lifeline.

One woman from the southwestern Montana town of Basin told Donahoe she has no Internet access and relies on the mail. But like many other rural residents, she does not receive mail delivery.

DeDe Rhodes said if her post office closes, the next one is more than 10 miles away, making her regular trip to pick up mail much more costly.

“I need you to really consider what we are saying. People need their rural post offices,” Rhodes told Donahoe at a morning gathering in Helena. “Let’s look at the urban areas. Maybe they don’t need as many post offices because they get their mail delivered right to their door, or at least to the curb.”

In Ingomar, residents said losing their post office could be a deadly blow to the tiny eastern Montana town that began to decline even before the railroad was abandoned in 1920.

Worried residents from small towns as far away as Wyoming swelled Ingomar’s numbers to more than double its normal population of about 100. They packed the town’s gymnasium and greeted Donahoe with a picnic table piled with home-cooked goods, treating him as a visiting dignitary while urging him to change his mind.

Several tried to persuade him to consider an alternative, including a suggestion that the federal agency charge an annual fee for mail delivery like people pay for a post office box.

Donahoe said that idea had been considered internally, and that a $5 annual fee would raise an extra $800 million in revenue.