Looking Back: The August calendar page

by Marcia Napier, Grain Valley Historical Society

Campbell’s Sho-Me Gun Shop
 
Tim Campbell owned a gun shop at 506 N. Main Street for a number of years during the 1980’s and 1990’s. Thus far, the exact dates have not been determined, but I’m working on that. This building, now home to the Grain Valley Historical Society, requires a bit more researching before I can give you its entire history.

A hundred-year-old plus photograph, the July calendar page, indicates that among other things, this general store sold “Worthmore Shoes"; however, it also pictures a wooden structure, not brick, and it was not attached to the garage on the south side of the building. Photos from later years depict the current brick structure.

In a newspaper article written by Winona Burgess, the first president and a founding member of the Grain Valley Historical Society, she remembered the building as the Frost Grocery Store when she moved to Grain Valley in the late 1930s. I remember this building as the Minter Grocery Store in the early 1950s. Last year, a visitor to the Historical Society said his grandfather had an upholstery business in the store few a few years in the 1970s; however, he didn’t know the exact dates.

Sometime during the 1980s it became the Sho-Me Gun Shop.  It was vacant when the Historical Society bought it in 1998. After a total gutting and an extensive remodeling job which included installing restrooms, a kitchen and restoration of the original tin ceiling, hidden above the 1980s drop ceiling, it opened just before Christmas in 1999 as the Grain Valley Historical Society. 

While it may require quite a bit of research, stay tuned to this column.  I’m on a mission to learn more about this historical old building. When I do, I’ll certainly let you know!