General Store

If you have watched enough Westerns, you have likely seen a scene or two play out in a general store. In the small towns of the American West, the general store played an important role in everyday life.

As a fan of old Westerns, I find one of the most memorable general-store scenes in the 1953 classic Shane, starring Alan Ladd. Much of the conflict between a powerful rancher and struggling homesteaders unfolds at Grafton’s General Store and adjoining saloon, which serves as the town’s commercial and social center.

Like so many things in history, the general store occupied a particular slice of time that is now gone. It was eventually replaced by stores that were bigger, broader, and supposedly better—but maybe not.

The closest thing to a general store in my world is the Little Burro Country Store, located about an hour south of Alpine in the Big Bend Valley, just north of Study Butte and Big Bend National Park. Our cabin is only a few miles away, and whenever we need something to get us through, this is the place we shop.

The Little Burro carries just enough essential goods to keep locals from making the hour-long drive to the grocery store in Alpine. More than once, however, what I expected to be a quick visit has turned into a much longer stay. I have enjoyed my share of conversations on the store’s front porch—a reminder that a good country store is still more than simply a place to shop.

The Little Burro is a small surviving example of the role general stores played in the history of the American frontier. It provides essential supplies and serves as a gathering place, with plenty of seating where locals and visitors can pass the time.

Old general stores were important for several reasons, not the least of which is that they helped the local economy. Farmers and ranchers bought supplies there. They also sold or traded their own goods. These stores connected small, isolated communities to the outside world, often acting as post offices, telegraph offices, and stagecoach stops.

Genuine general stores are a thing of the past. What remains are some really cool General Stores around the Lone Star State that, once you walk through the doors, revive nostalgic feelings and take you back to a simpler time. Some of these old stores occupy the same piece of real estate that housed them from their beginnings. Others are housed in old buildings that look and feel like an old-time general store.

Cheryl and I hope to visit as many of the remaining general store locations in Texas as we can on upcoming road trips. I have written about a couple of these stores and will follow up with posts on the others as we visit them. I hope you will come along for the ride.

Here is our General Stores Bucket List. Leave a comment with info about any missing from our list.

Hill Country and Central Texas
Camp Verde General Store — Camp Verde, near Kerrville
Gruene General Store — Gruene Historic District, New Braunfels
Luckenbach General Store — Luckenbach
Bandera General Store — Bandera
Fischer Store — Fischer
Kendalia General Store — Kendalia
Garven Store — near Vanderpool
Welcome General Store — Welcome, near Brenham
 
East Texas
Jefferson General Store — Jefferson
T. C. Lindsey & Co. General Store — Jonesville
Edge General Store — Edge, near Hearne
General Mercantile and Old-Time String Shop — Nacogdoches
 
North Texas
The General Store — Fort Worth Stockyards
Texas General Store — Grapevine
Martin General Store — Granbury
 
West Texas
Eggemeyer’s General Store — San Angelo

Gulf Coast and South Texas
Girouard’s General Store — Freeport
Morales Store — Morales, near Edna

Farmers Mercantile is a Texas time capsule — an old general store where almost 90 years of memories compete with merchandise for shelf space. You can feel the past the second you walk through the front door and step onto the old wooden slats that cover the original dirt floor. Once inside you realize that you are standing in a place like few others in the Lone Star State.
Jo Harris along with her mother Lou and brother Bubba are the latest generation to run the old store located in Orange. This historic old town is situated on the West bank of the Sabine River, the waterway that separates Texas and Louisiana. The mercantile occupies a building that was originally a Buick dealership. Jo’s great grandfather bought the place in 1927 and opened his general store in April of the following year.
Five generations of the Harris family have kept the old store running. The store has weathered the Great Depression and other economic lows through the years. However, Jo explained to me that the only reason they weathered the damage of Hurricane Ike in September 2008 was because of the kindness of the community.
The two-plus feet of flood waters dumped by Hurricane Ike rushed into the store and destroyed half a million dollars worth of merchandise. After the flood waters receded, Jo walked in to find the floors covered in inches of mud. Without any insurance to cover the cost of the damage, Jo wondered if the end of Farmers Mercantile had finally come.
And then, something remarkable happened. The people of the community and surrounding farms rallied to the aid of the Harris family. They told Jo and her family that they would help them clean up the mess and get things back in order because Farmers Mercantile was too important to the community. And that’s exactly what they did. Seven days later, Jo and her family opened their doors once again for business.
Today, every shelf in the place is chock-full of the most interesting things — the kind of this-and-that kind of stuff that farming folks need. You’ll find garden supplies, seeds of every variety, corn shuckers, sausage stuffers, hand churns, straw hats, cast iron cookware, rope, saddles, wash tubs, bed bug poison, kerosene lamps, coolers, livestock feed, and much more. The store is, in fact, the oldest seller of Lone Star Feeds in Texas.
The walls are adorned with almost ninety years worth of bric-a-brac — advertising signs, garden and farming implements, leftover automobile fan belts from the days when the Buick dealership occupied the place, assorted framed items, and other stuff. The most treasured is an old clock advertising Calumet Baking Powder. Jo’s grandfather won it in a contest after selling a full barrel of the brand’s baking powder. The clock remains exactly where her grandfather hung it on the wall.
There is one more thing that makes Farmers Mercantile a special place to the folks of the area — and that is the customer service. I enjoyed listening to Jo answer questions about seed and fertilizer and rat poison. Jo and her family know their stuff. They can advise you about what to plant and when to plant it and even tell you how to deal with bed bugs. In the hour-plus that I spent with Jo I was impressed by her knowledge and even more by her concern for every person who walked through the door.
The world outside the Farmers Mercantile will continue to change. There is no doubt about it. However, in this day of constant motion and change, I find it comforting that there are still places like the Farmers Mercantile where what happens inside remains the same. Everyone who walks through the doors can expect to find the same unchanging and time-treasured values that have made this a special place.
Plan to visit Farmers Mercantile and to take your kids along. Jo and her family will be happy to show you around and to answer any questions about what you see on their shelves. It might surprise your kids to see a business that has survived for so long without any modern conveniences — no air conditioning in the summer and only a central stove to heat the place in the winter. It won’t take you long to discover why this place is valued by the folks around Orange and why it continues to endure.