Long time residents fondly remember the Rio Blanco Store as a place to get gas, eats, and treats. It was located along Highway 13 near the intersection with the Piceance Creek road, north of the Rio Blanco School. There is nothing left to see now. The State scraped away even the foundation when the road was realigned. It was once a very popular gas stop halfway from Rifle to Meeker. I heard a story about an older teenage girl who lived on Piceance who needed to gas up the family car in preparation for a trip to Town later. It was early in the morning and the teen was told to put on some clothes and take the car to the Rio Blanco Store to fuel up the near empty tank. It was a short distance, and the teen did not feel the need to put on more than a robe over her night attire. The mother sternly admonished the young lady to put on proper clothes. The advice went unheeded. As the car approached the Rio Blanco Store, the car sputtered and stopped. The girl had no choice. She walked the rest of the way and walked into the store to seek a gas can. As she walked in, the morning customers turned and stared at the bathrobe. Duly humiliated, the teen retrieved the car, filled the tank, and learned a lesson that day: Mothers are always right.
Today the store is long gone. There are a few pictures around of this modest frame building. It served motorists on the way to Rifle and neighbors along Piceance Creek. This small place housed a general store, post office, café, living quarters and a garage bay to handle oil changes and tires. What it didn’t have was a source of water. No well. A kind neighbor had a good spring and allowed the Rio Blanco Store to pipe in some of the water. It did have a leach field across the road but no well. For people along the Piceance, the Rio Blanco Store was the closest grocery. In the 1960s, Claude Riemer delivered the rural mail along Piceance Creek. Residents would call up the Rio Blanco Store, order groceries and Claude would take the mail and groceries and place them in the mailbox. To accommodate large orders, ranchers would make big mail boxes, some of them were big enough that small children would shelter winter storms while waiting for a bus. Friends often would pick up other items in town and use the oversized mailbox as a drop off point. Kind of like Amazon shopping 60 years in the future. If you drive along Piceance today, you just might spot one of these old oversized mailboxes.
I could not find a solid date when the Rio Blanco Store was built. I will speculate that it was built to fill a need when motor vehicles began to replace the horse drawn stages and freight wagons along the Government Road (known today as Highway13). Harp Transportation company had been running freight service and passenger stages along Government Road from Rifle to Meeker for decades. Teddie Roosevelt arrived in Meeker by stage to hunt lions here. There was a hotel on what became known as the Alley Place, a ranch where the Piceance Creek road and the Rifle-Meeker stage road (known as the Government Road) met. Joseph Alley bought the ranch from Frank Morgan. The Hotel served the needs of many weary travelers. Meals were available and if someone needed to stay the night, rooms were rented. The stage would change horses there before the last half of the journey to Meeker. So, it acquired the name Halfway House. Harp bought his first motor vehicle in 1906, a Stanley Steamer. So, the store was probably built between then and 1915. I found the first mention of the store in print in October 1915. Next week, I will detail some of the owners. It changed hands many times.
Sources: This Is What I Remember Books; Rio Blanco Historical Society; the Brennan family; Stephanie Withrow Oldland; US Postal Archives; Coloradohistoricalnewspapers.org; Mike and Jackie Brennan; Rio Blanco County Clerk; Ridgeway family; Dan at the Northwest Colorado Museum; Meeker Herald; Coloradohistoricalnewspapers.org;
