At The Close Of Business

The history of every town can even be viewed, in part, by its business climate. Through the course of time and the passing of generations, so many businesses come and go, and very few endure for even a few decades.

According to NerdWallet, the average lifespan of a small business today is only about 8-10 years, with about 50% of them failing within the first five years. (On the other end, Google informs me that the oldest continuous business in the world is Kongo Gumi, a Japanese construction company founded in 578 AD.)

Those statistics put Cimpl’s 75-year run into good perspective, suggesting it did something right for a very long time. Alas, it was done in, at least for now, by changing times in the livestock market.

FRAGMENTS OF THE PAST

Across its relatively long history, Yankton’s life has been defined by its businesses.

The Press & Dakotan, which began operation in 1861 shortly after Yankton was declared the first capital of Dakota Territory, is likely the oldest business in the community. It wasn’t the first enterprise here — Yankton was first settled in the late 1850s — nor was it the only business when it started. But the P&D has endured while so much else, even the capital, has come and gone.

In the early years of this newspaper, other businesses included hotels, drinking establishments, dry goods stores and flour and flax mills, to name a few.

A vital economic cog in those days was the steamboat industry, which was essential to transportation and commerce in this region. The ships prowled the Missouri River, the only highway through the wilderness in Dakota’s earliest days. But its indispensability began waning when the railroad arrived, and steamboat operations all but vanished by the early 20th century, their usefulness having metaphorically sailed.

Industries which were once lucrative and essential to everyday life eventually faded away with changing times. This included, for instance, companies that harvested ice from the frozen Missouri River during winters and stored the blocks for use in the summers, livery stables that worked with horses, and businesses that dealt with buffalo hides and furs. The ends of those individual stories tell us as much as their beginnings.

In fact, you could look back on a roster of businesses from any given year and discover numerous enterprises that would be completely unfamiliar to you now. That’s what late local author Bob Karolevitz did in 1999 for a Press & Dakotan column detailing the rampant business optimism in the community in 1900 at the dawn of a new century.

At the time, Yankton was known as the “Cement City” because of a local cement plant (which actually didn’t last long), and the community was served by three railroad lines. There were also popular hotels like the Merchants, Germania House and Farmers Phoenix, and a host of other stores and services ...

“Other business firms were thriving in Yankton at the turn of the century,” Karolevitz wrote. “Among them were the Fred Burgi and Loonan & Smith lumber yards; the F. A. Brecht Drug Co.; Carney the Grocer; Fred Scheel, the merchant tailor who sold suits for as little as $5; the Louis Moritz Brewing Co., which was advertising for barley; the Troy Laundry in the Madison House; the Isaac Piles clothing store … and the Walter Dean fuel firm which sold ‘coal like father used to burn and wood like mother used to split.’”

They are all fragments now of a distant past. They disappeared one at a time, gradually, and were replaced by newer business dreams that may well be gone now, too.

COMMUNITY PILLARS

There were also signature businesses that were longtime pillars of life here. Some still exist, like First Dakota National Bank, which was founded in the 1870s, or WNAX, which has been here for more than a century. But there are so many that began and ended, like Excelsior Mill, the railroads and the Gurney Hotel, or more recently, the likes of Fantle’s, Globe Clothiers, George Mean’s Fine Apparel, the Yankton Drive-In theater and others.

Most notable, perhaps, is the Gurney Seed & Nursery Company. It was founded in the 1860s in Iowa and was transplanted in 1897 to Yankton, where it blossomed into one of this community’s most recognized businesses. The catalogs it sent out each winter were anxiously awaited lifelines for so many gardeners. A busy mail-order empire, the Gurney’s facility even had its own zip code. The firm was eventually sold to other interests who, in 2000, closed up shop, leaving a lot of people out of work and a lot of tradition scuttled. Few people here may realize that it’s still in business and based in Indiana. (However, the Gurney name, separate from the old firm, still lives on locally.) Nevertheless, the old Seed & Nursery will always be a glorious piece of Yankton’s story.

It would be fair to say that Cimpl’s was a staple business here for seven decades, and its demise this week is a sad piece of local evolution.

But there’s always a chance for second acts. (For example, Yankton had some brewery ventures once upon a time before they vanished decades ago, but modern microbreweries have revived the prospect.) With hopes being expressed (at least publicly) this week that the Cimpl’s plant could perhaps be sold and reborn someday, there’s always the chance that the story isn’t over and that a new chapter of history could be written.  

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