The Mother Store: J. C. Penney's First Shop

In nineteen oh two, a twenty-six-year-old dry-goods clerk named James Cash Penney opened a single store in Kemmerer, Wyoming, calling it the Golden Rule. He funded his share with his savings plus a loan. The idea was simple: fixed prices, cash only, no credit.

It worked. By nineteen oh seven Penney had bought out his partners and began spreading the model across the Mountain West. By nineteen thirteen the chain was officially named the J.

C. Penney Company, and by nineteen twenty-eight it operated over a thousand stores. The original Kemmerer building is known as the Mother Store.

The district here was declared a National Historic Landmark in nineteen seventy-eight.