What became known as the King Store was built on the northwest corner of 200 North and Main Street by John (Jack) Wehrli Carpenter.
Jack was born in Millcreek in 1857, the oldest of eight children of Anna Catherine Wehrli and John Sincere Carpenter, and with his family, was among the early settlers of Kamas.
Jack became an important businessman in Summit County. His first enterprise was a small sawmill in Beaver Creek, started in 1885 to supply the Park City mines. In 1892 he went into business with another Kamas entrepreneur, George Caleb Pack.
In 1895 he built his first store, extended in 1896.
In 1897 he built a larger store – a two-story building, which was at one time the best-stocked in the county.
John owned and operated this store for several years, until selling it to Robert LeDru King in the early 1900’s.
Robert was born in 1867 in Missouri. He trained as a teacher and eventually came to Utah, where he worked first in Wanship and then in the Kamas Grade School. He also worked part time in Carpenter’s store and saloon. He bought the store in 1907 and operated it as the R.L. King General Merchandise store.
At first, Robert and his family lived in the building next door before commissioning a splendid new house from L.E. Fitch. Later he expanded the store with a larger, cement block building.
The store carried a full line of merchandise: dry goods, shoes, ready-to-wear clothing (for men and women), tobacco, food, kerosene, as well as wagons, farm implements and hardware – and even sported a Conoco gas pump.
Candy was kept in five-gallon buckets lined up under the counter, and every Christmas King’s tore would donate enough candy at the children’s dance for each child to have a treat.
Robert’s daughter Emma King Maugham remembers that the store drew customers from many miles around. Native Americans from the Uintah Reservation would even come purchase staples such as flour, salt and coffee.
Portions of the building were used as office space by Dr. C. F. Wherritt, a dentist, and Morgan Parke, the forest ranger.
Emma Maugham wrote that: “There must have been some kind of gentleman’s agreement between the dentist and Dad, because Dr Wherritt took care of [our] teeth…in exchange for office rent. I don’t think there was ever a bill exchanged between the two”.
Robert died in 1943 and his son, Virgil Afton King
operated the store for a while. In the late 1940s it was sold to Ruth Blazzard and Henry (Bill) Emerson Weaver who renamed it Weaver Thrift Corner.
The building was torn down in 1985.
Sources
- Beverly Bemis
- family search
- utah digital newspapers
- chronicling America
Kamas Valley History Group 