Little shop of history: Students sold on the past in visit to J.W. Green Mercantile

Kids from a high-tech generation learned a little bit about low-tech history at the J.W. Green Mercantile in Buffalo Creek.

Fourth-grade students from Elk Creek Elementary School visited the mercantile to see Colorado history up close in the form of an old-fashioned post office and dusty wooden shelves semi-full of canned goods. The kids learned how the mercantile was the Walmart of its generation.

Mary Green now runs the mercantile, a store her great-grandfather and father operated since 1883. She said this was a great chance for kids to learn about the area’s history.

“This community has jumped on the bandwagon to help teach kids,” said Dude McGowan, a volunteer who helps with the annual educational event.

Built in 1898, the stone structure was constructed to replace a wood structure built in 1883. It is now on the National Register of Historic Places. McGowan knows about the history of the area because his grandfather came to the area in 1898.

“The kids come here wide-eyed, and we just love it,” McGowan said.

McGowan explains about the building’s stones, cut from a quarry 2 miles down Foxton Road and from a smaller quarry just around the corner from the store.

Other buildings that once stood in the area included the train depot, a saloon and an ice cream parlor, according to volunteer Gail King. Kids looked at images of buildings from more than 100 years ago, including structures that are still standing. King helped the kids imagine an earlier era in the area, which was a bustling rail town.

Michele Altenhofen and Bev Ahl, fourth-grade teachers at Elk Creek Elementary, prepared students for the field trip by teaching a unit on Colorado history using a timeline of events, from mining and mountain men to trains.

Foxton Road, the route the trains took to bring passengers up to the mountains and take natural resources down to the flatland, was partially traced by the students on the way to the mercantile.

Vicki Porter greeted students at the door and handed out a scavenger hunt checklist. Kids had to find a wood block used for chopping meat, a wooden freezer, phone booth, an old Coca-Cola sign, woodstove, box of nails, bags of feed, old-fashioned glass candy counter, letters and documents from the late 1890s, an old cash register, and mailboxes.

The old post office inside the mercantile is much as it was when Green’s dad, Don, was in charge of stamps and letters. The full-service post office is divided from the rest of the store by chicken wire and a wood door, and students can watch Green sort mail by hand. A Rocky Mountain News full-frame black-and-white print from the 1980s shows her dad standing in front of the same calendar that sits next to the picture.

“My dad began working at the store in 1950 and worked every day until he died in 2008,” Mary said.

An eerie echo, the post office of 30 years ago doesn’t look all that different from today.

Green recently found some old letters and bank notes from a time when banks issued their own currency in the late 1890s. According to a post office statement, in the quarter ending in September 1896, $39.16 worth of 2-cent stamps and other postal items were sold. Among the curly lettered pages were notations of eight letters delivered on Nov. 1, 1896.

Also on the scavenger list was the 1890 cash register with the name of J.W. Green embossed on the front, something that was done when a cash register was purchased. The highest sale the register could record is $19.

Kasim Rana and Gavin Bowen, both 10, talked about the people they imagined once walked through the store. They thought that miners, tourists and people who came up from Denver probably shopped there for food and tools.

“The coolest thing I’ve seen is the telephone booth. You don’t see many of those these days,” said Gavin.

Green isn’t sure how old the phone in the phone booth is, but she knows her uncle and grandfather helped string the wire for it sometime around 1930.

Joe Mead, 10, thinks he could live the way the people who first came here did. He liked being in the store and was able to find all items on his scavenger hunt list.

“I like learning about the olden days,” Joe said.

Tessarose Guernsey, 10, looked high and low for the old Coca-Cola sign and thought the store was really cool. She wondered about items in the store and was curious how some of the old antiques worked.

“I’m glad I got to see what a general store was all about,” Tessarose said.

After the mercantile visit, students journeyed down the road to Pine Grove to have lunch at North Fork Volunteer Fire Department Station 2, which formerly was the old railway depot. They walked the dirt streets of Pine Grove and stopped at the Pine Emporium, the cemetery, the Dake House, Pine Grove School and Pine Grove Community Center.

“Learning about people who lived is really important,” Gavin said.

PS-I didn't take the images for this story; they were all very well done by Photo Editor Matthew Jonas.