In The Valley Where Time Stands Still
The Company Store
Hours
- Wed. through Sunday: Open 10am - 2pm
- Monday and Tuesday: Closed
Here is where miners, farmers, and townspeople came to purchase or trade goods.
Like today, some came weekly, some monthly, some never again, to settle their accounts, after
their crops sold, their mines hit paydirt, or they went bust. Not every shaft found a deposit.
The original Valles Mines General Store housed the Civil War shootout
between Confederate Bushwacker Sam Hildebrandt and Union Army soldiers.
The original building met with 2 tornadoes in 1911 killing seven with only one survivor.
By 1914 the Valle Mining Company rebuilt the present building on the same site with General Store in the front half, a blacksmith's forge
in the middle, and a stable in the rear.
The Company voted to rebuild the Company store for William H. Bunt,
proprietor, whose very large family operated it for years as well as the Boarding House and the School. The building got
renovated in 1975 as a residence after the unsolved arson of the Welton Rozier
House across the street.
Miners, after registering
their claims on the property at the Paymaster's Shack, purchased
tools and blasting powder in the earliest days and later dynamite after the 1870's at the
Company Store. Valles Mines was once called "Boom Town" after that product showed up
in the store.
While the Company weighed the lead ore and bought
it, others like Baker's, Carter's in the village at Tunnel Station,
Eaton's, and Tarpley's Store down the street accepted it as well. Lead was considered
a local currency and was carried and traded as galena nuggets, the lead ore, was
heavy and compact. It also traded for different
prices at different stores and 'Seller Beware!' DD Frazier
recalled that, "Baker's and some others advertised they paid
a penny more but their scale was so off that you actually did
better at the Company."