Museum Minute

1966 Opening Day Woolworth Retail Store Photo

Do you know someone who worked at the Sheridan Woolworth Store in 1966? Help us identify some of the employees in the opening day of Woolworths photo. This black and white photo was taken by Don Diers, a local photographer. The employees are posed around the stairwell with its original chrome handrails. This photo was shared by community member, Linda Grosso as her memory of the Woolworth Retail Store for the current exhibit “History of 171 North Main Street.”

To help identify the Woolworth employees in the photo, you can see the photo by stopping by the museum’s new location at 171 North Main Street to look at the photo in person.

1888 Downtown Sheridan Diorama

Can you imagine downtown Sheridan Main Street in 1888? The Museum at the Bighorns has a three-dimensional model representing Sheridan’s first three streets, Loucks, Brundage and Works. This three-dimensional model is also known as a diorama and was created by Tom Warneke in 2004. The diorama is part of the current exhibit “History of 171 North Main Street.” A mingling of residential and business wood structure buildings is seen up and down Sheridan’s Main Street in this 1888 representation.

To see the diorama by stopping by the museum’s new location at 171 North Main Street to look at the photo in person.

Original Brick Building at 171 N. Main Street

From a county government building to a hotel, these were some of the uses of the original brick building at 171 North Main Street. Sheridan County was created by the legislature of the Wyoming Territory on March 9, 1888. With this newly formed Sheridan County government, Peter Demple constructed a two-story red brick building at 171 North Main Street. The main floor was used for the courthouse offices, and the second floor was used for dances. In 1890, Peter Demple and T.C. Diers opened the Citizen’s State Bank at this location. From 1911 until the early 1960s the Ideal Hotel & Cafe’ occupied this site. In 1965 a new building replaced the red brick building for Woolworth Co., a former American chain of retail stores.

You can see the photo of the brick building by stopping by the museum’s new location at 171 North Main Street to look at the photo in person.

Ideal Hotel, Lupton Collection, CIRCA 1960s, Photo Courtesy of the Wyoming Room, Sheridan County Fulmer Public Library.

Woolworth Retail Store at 171 N. Main Street

From the mid 1900s to 1960s, the original site of Woolworth Company in Sheridan was 109 North Main Street, currently where The Best Out West store is located. in the early 1900s the store was known as F.W. Woolworth Co. 5 – 10 &15 cent store. By the early 1900s Woolworth chain stores populated the United States to become one of the largest retail chains in the world throughout the 20th century. Increased retail competition led to its decline and going out of business in the 1990s. Sheridan’s Woolworth Company was located at 171 North Main Street from 1966 to the late 1990s.

You can see two photos of the locations of Sheridan’s Woolworth by stopping by the museum’s new location at 171 North Main Street to look at the photo in person.

Woolworth at 171 N. Main St., Lupton Collection, 1971, Photos Courtesy of the Wyoming Room, Sheridan County Fulmer Public Library.

Wooden Blocks - Sheridan Main Street Cobblestone

Sheridan Main Street wasn’t always paved with cement and asphalt. At one point Sheridan’s Main Street’s cobble stone was wooden blocks. These 4 inches by 8 inches by 2-inch-deep rough wooden blocks paved the main street for pedestrians, horses and wagons to travel on. The most famous local photos of these wooden blocks are from the 1923 flood. Sheridan had one of the largest floods from the Big Goose and Little Goose Creeks. The photos after the flood show the wooden blocks washed away from their grid like pattern to a pile of them on one side of Main Street.

Sheridan Flood of 1923, Museum at the Bighorns, 2003.058.028, 1923.

Collection of Sheridan’s Woolworth Memories

Do you have a memory of the Woolworth Retail Store? Museum at the Bighorns current exhibit “History of 171 North Main Street” not only highlights the two buildings and the businesses that once occupied them, but the museum is collecting community members memories of the Woolworth Retail Store that was there from 1966 to the 1990s. So far, the museum has collected a range of memories from Christmas shopping to shoplifting. And we can’t forget about all the cafe’ memories about eating grilled cheese to drinking malt shake.

You can see the Woolworth Memories by stopping by the museum’s new location at 171 North Main Street to look at the photo in person.