JC Penney to leave Rock Springs after 113 years

"It's going to be sad not having J.C. Penney anymore," Rock Springs Historical Museum technician Janice Brown said. "I guess that's what it is."

For decades it served as a mom-and-pop shop across the Union Pacific Railroad tracks on North Front Street before expanding and relocating to White Mountain Mall in 1978.

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After graduating high school in Hamilton, Missouri, James Cash Penney worked as an apprentice at a dry goods store for J.M. Hale and Brothers, where he learned about business. He later worked for Guy Johnson and Thomas Callahan, who operated dry goods establishments called Golden Rule stores in Colorado and Wyoming.

Penney relocated to Kemmerer and helped operate a new Golden Rule store, which opened April 14, 1902. The one-room frame building was located between a laundry and boarding house off the main business district. He stocked merchandise and marked the price on every item, one price charged to all.

Penney operated a cash-only store, due to his opposition to credit, and within a year Johnson and Callahan made him an offer — improve profits at the Rock Springs Golden Rule store at 313 N. Front St., and Penney would become a part owner. In January 1906, he bought Johnson and Callahan's shares, worth $30,000, and took over Wyoming stores in Kemmerer, Cumberland and Rock Springs.

"You will have to accept my name on this note as your guarantee of payment," Penney said. "I will not give you a lien on the stock in any of the stores because you know, as well as I do, that to do that would hurt my credit."

Six months later, Penney's cousin William Partin came to Rock Springs and became his partner. Parton brought his sisters Belle and Anna to help him run it, and in 1910, Parton sold Penney his interests in the Kemmerer location while Parton acquired Penney's interest in the Rock Springs store.

Penney decided to change the name from Golden Rule to J.C. Penney and Company in 1912 because he felt the name was too common across the west and wanted the company to establish its own identity.

The first J.C. Penney's chain store in Rock Springs opened Jan. 7, 1928.

The 8,483-square foot building was located on 421 N. Front St., where Willow Ridge Crafts now resides. It had a first floor, basement and two balconies. It sold materials and patterns on the ground floor as well as operated a zip line, which was used to finish transactions between the store and customer.

The two-story brick building with a flat roof built was originally made out of wood frame in 1909 before being remodeled in 1929 with a brick fa?ade and solid masonry walls.

At one point the upstairs was used for apartments.

In 1929, Partin sold his interests in the company to P.W. Memovich, who remained at the store for nearly 20 years. Francis H. Switzer, Richard Hobbs, Marion A. Burt, Vernon A. Harmer, Floyd B. Weed, L.R. Redmond, Bruce E. Hand and Tom Trueblood operated the store at the North Front Street location.

"It is bigger than anything one individual could never create or be,"

Penney said. "Whatever I had to do with its beginning, by injecting a few cardinal ideas into the selling of merchandise, has come back to me a hundred gold in the confidence — and I think I may say, humble, the love — of my fellow associates."

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Seven years after the death of J.C. Penney, the department store relocated to the White Mountain Mall on March 29, 1978.

Managers who ran the 33,949-square-foot location include Trueblood, Mike E. Quickenden, Beverly Lyndes, Kathy Paul and Troy Jones, who has been in charge since July.

In 1981, owners reorganized their executive structure around the office of the chairman and began changing the company from a mass retailer to national department store. The change from mom and pop to corporate was fully complete.

In January, the parent company announced it will close seven stores across the country.

"It's never easy taking actions that directly impact our valued customers, however, we feel this is a necessary business decision," Carter English, JC Penney public relations manager, said in January.

Despite the closure, J.C. Penney will always be a part of Rock Springs.

"It is a staple of this community," Jones told the Rock Springs Rocket-Miner (http://bit.ly/1YgImUW). "I think the community will miss it for sure."

The J.C. Penney legacy will continue to live on.

In the introduction to "Main Street Merchant: The Story of the J.C. Penney Company," Penney offered words of encouragement.

"What is needed today, as always, is the ability and the will to work hard toward the achievement of a goal, any goal, which is right and clean and decent and worthwhile."