The history of the Thomas Mercantile Co. is one that weaves through three generations of lives, two world wars, the Great Depression and more. It features strong family ties, tragedy, heartache, love and community.
It begins with Samuel Thomas riding into the tiny hamlet of Swan Lake in south Bannock County on a bright and sunny morning in 1909 and purchasing a little store. For more than a century, three generations of the Thomas family kept the business — which area residents referred to as the Swan Lake Mall — up and running before it closed its doors in 2017. Now, the mercantile has found itself in good hands once again, with a new owner overseeing the restoration of the historic building.
‘THE CENTER OF TOWN’
Kaarin Engelmann — a native of East Idaho who bought the building from the Thomas family — is hoping to revive the store so it can once again be the centerpiece of Swan Lake, while also providing for the people who live there and in the surrounding area.
According to historical documents written by members of the Thomas family, throughout its 112-year life, the mercantile has always been the hub of the community. People have long gathered there to discuss the world’s problems or to watch sports with their neighbors.
In its early years, there was a large pot-bellied stove in the center of the store. Men would gather around to visit.
Then in the 1950s, Thomas Mercantile became home to the first television in the area, and all the area’s farmers would come over on Friday nights to watch fights.
After the turn of the 21st century, you could find men watching sports in the evenings on the large-screen TV hidden in the back of the store.
In a history of the store written in the early 2010s by Kim and Mary Thomas — the last Thomases to own the store — they write: “These days, you can still come in and find farmers sitting on the radiator, having 'town meetings', trying to solve the problems of the world. It is still the central hub for the Thomas family, with various members of the family working the store at any given time. Although much has changed in the way of technology and around the world, some things will always stay the same.”
Engelmann says that keeping the radiators was of utmost importance to local residents.
“For many years, this was basically the gathering place in Swan Lake,” she said. “... And one of the things that they did was sit on these radiators. And so I've had many people say, ‘You're gonna leave the radiators, right?’ ‘Yes, we’re going to leave the radiators.’”
‘STRENGTHEN COMMUNITIES’
Engelmann said that at first she wasn’t interested when the idea to buy the building was suggested to her. It needed a lot of work, and it was a big commitment. Eventually, though, she talked herself into it for three reasons:
1. She began talking to members of the Thomas family and saw a lot of herself in them. She grew up in Blackfoot and American Falls, and her father ran a printing shop.
“It was in our house, and then he moved it into another building,” she said. “But we grew up with that as kids and worked for him all through and it was the same with the Thomas kids, you know. They grew up working here for their dad, so I got that initial feeling of affinity.”
2. If you live in the area of Idaho around Swan Lake, access to affordable and healthy food can be hard to come by. Most of the towns have some sort of place to at least grab the basics, but not if you live in Downey, which is located about 10 miles north of Swan Lake. The grocery store there closed a couple years back.
“You have to go at least half an hour to get your groceries, and that's weighed on my mind for a long time, so this was a solution to that: Bring back a grocery store here,” Engelmann said.
3. She began talking to the residents of Swan Lake, and those conversations moved her.
“I started to just feel really deep down inside that this was what I needed to do,” she said. “It felt like it wasn't just a store, it wasn't just an old building to restore, which is what I had initially been looking for. It was something that just was good for the community, it was kind of back to basics. That's where I am in my life right now, where I feel like it's so vital to strengthen communities and strengthen local areas.”
That was that. She was sold.
“It just sort of all snowballed and even though my husband thinks I'm crazy, and I think I'm crazy most of the time, it just felt like the right thing to do,” she said
A NEW LIFE
When Engelmann bought the Thomas Mercantile in early 2021, things were in rough shape. Sometime before Kim Thomas retired and shut down the store in 2017, there had been a small earthquake that had made some bricks fall down, and they went unfixed.
Because of this state of the bricks, a lot of the wood underneath was rotting. Engelmann and her crew decided to replace the whole facade of the building. Additionally, the roof needed to be replaced.
“We've tried to leave as much of the original brick as we could,” she said. “We took off the top couple of feet, because we put a new roof on. The roof was pretty leaky. When I first came over a lot of big metal poles, several big metal poles that looked like they were holding up the roof. It turned out, they weren't actually holding up the roof. They were kind of holding up the ceiling to keep it from drooping.”
Once the poles were removed, it really opened up the space. However, whether all of Engelmann’s big plans can fit in the building remains to be seen.
“It felt really big until I started planning to put things in,” she said.
One of her big plans is to get the mercantile — which she hopes to soft open early next year — on the National Register of Historic Places. To help her, she’s hired Pocatello-based Myers Anderson Architects, which has done numerous well-known projects in East Idaho.
While Engelmann wants to provide people with groceries, that’s definitely not all the mercantile will be offering.
Previously, the business had a small eatery, mostly serving up burgers and the like. Engelmann is bringing that back, but it will be bigger and better.
“I decided that I wanted to have a little bit more of a kitchen,” she said. “So I am still going to have a burger cooker but I'm going to serve casseroles and soups and kind of healthier things that's not fried.”
Additionally, Michelle Furniss from Rae’s Little Rock Cafe in McCammon will provide baked goods.
There will be plenty of seating (both on the radiators and in real chairs) so people can hang out, eat and make themselves at home. In the summertime, there will be seating outside as well.
Area residents will also be able to get their hunting and fishing gear, as well as licenses, at the shop. Engelmann said eventually she’d like to get a propane exchange and sell gasoline. There’s also officially a handicap-accessible bathroom.
“We're still going to be a mercantile,” she said. “It's not going to be a straight grocery store or a straight convenience store. Whatever you need, we'll try to fulfill that. And that's my goal. I'm not going to have every brand of something, I'm not going to have everything, but I'm going to try to have what you need and interesting, cool things.”
Engelmann also wants to sell items from area residents. They already have agreements with area farmers and ranchers to sell their pork and beef.
“We've been talking to lots of local vendors about selling produce and to the farmers and people with big gardens and in the fall we’ll sell their stuff or whenever it’s ripe," she said.
‘CONNECTING US TO OUR PAST’
When you talk to Engelmann, it’s clear that she has a passion and a drive to keep the past in the present. A project like this isn’t for the faint of heart.
She said, “I've had more than one person tell me, ‘Wouldn't it have been cheaper to tear it down and start over?’ And I say, ‘Yes, but that wasn't the point.’”
She talks to people sometimes who are upset when old buildings are being torn down, and while she agrees, she recognizes the reality of the situation.
“I agree with you, that you need to keep old buildings, because it adds character to wherever you are but somebody has to be willing to fix them up and to inhabit them,” she tells them. “If nobody is, the town is going to tear them down.”
Engelmann also runs what she calls “a teeny tiny little organization”: Idaho Aviation Heritage. Her dad was a pilot. Her reason for being part of that is the same as her reason for restoring Thomas Mercantile.
“For me, it's that connecting us to our past makes our present more interesting,” she said. “And so that's what I'm trying to do.”
Thus far, it seems like lots of people are excited to connect to the history of the mercantile.
“I've had railroad people come in and say, ‘Oh, we can't wait to stop here again. We used to come here all the time,’” Engelmann said. “I've had truckers do the same thing. Lots of people stop in and say, ‘Hey, how's it going? What are we doing? When do you think it'll open?’ People are really excited.”
She also has some sage life advice for us to take with us:
“Stay off the (interstate), support your local stores, support your neighbors.”
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