Scheufler Supply Then and Now

311-319 W Trail Street

Ham Bell’s Elephant Livery Stable has been thoroughly documented so I’m not going reinvent the wheel. The original sod structure at the southeast corner of Third Avenue and what was then Locust Street, later Santa Fe Trail Street, and now just Trail Street was replaced by a wood stable around 1877. It was expanded around 1884 to accommodate nearly every animal west of the Mississippi.

Henry Sitler and Ham Bell built a fancy Victorian building directly east of the stable in 1886. Bell’s furniture and undertaking business was located on the main floor and he lived upstairs. I wrote about that beauty back in 2022 but my focus was more on the east end, which stood until 1989. If you’re a longtime reader, you may recall my confusion over when and why the west end of the building disappeared. I’ll get back to that shortly.

Ham Bell relocated his Elephant Livery to what is now Central Avenue and Gunsmoke Street in the 1890s and sold the old location to Joe Miller in the Summer of 1897.

The 1899 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map shows the Sitler and Bell Block at what was then 345-346 Locust Street. At that time, the main occupant was the Park Hotel. Rooms were upstairs and the west storefront space was vacant. Directly to the west was a carriage painting business. The next storefront at 343 Locust was used as an implement warehouse. The main part of the livery stable stretched all the way from Locust to Maple Street. I should also note the block of Maple directly behind the stable was closed because the street had been fenced off for the horses and mules.

The hotel changed hands several times and operated as the Palmer House and the Grand View.

Ultimately, the Sitler and Bell Block was separated into east and west parcels. By 1914, Joe and Mary Miller were also operating a rooming house above the west end. Sam Stubbs, Jr., who owned the South Side Grocery in the east storefront, rented rooms at the opposite end. Joe Miller and Henry Stein sold the stable business to J. L. Wright in August of 1914 but Miller retained ownership of the property.

By 1917, the stable had been replaced by H. Williams Feed Store with a feed grinding operation and storefront at the north end of the building. Hay was stored in the south end.

Mary Miller continued operating the rooming house after Joe died of Bright’s Disease in 1919. The feed store was briefly operated by the firm of Hensley and Hensley and ultimately became known as Bernard Askew’s South Side Feed Store in the early 1920s.

An intense fire destroyed the feed store on October 31, 1931. Firefighters were able to prevent the flames from reaching Mary Miller’s boarding house next door.

Mrs. Miller listed the entire property west of Otto Souder’s grocery for sale with George Cochran soon after but there were no takers.

The 1932 Sanborn shows the four empty lots with the west side of Sitler and Bell block still intact.

The Dodge City Parts Company, which was located in the building just to the north of the Globe on Second Avenue, merged with Scheufler Supply Company and Woolwine Supply Company in the Spring of 1936. This created a new entity called Woolwine, Scheufler and Dunn, commonly referred to as the WSD Parts Company.

This growing company needed more space and Mary Miller still had four lots and a rooming house for sale on Trail Street.

George Scheufler bought the four vacant lots in August of 1936.

That November, implement dealer Claud Cave’s name popped up in relation to the site. Both Scheufler and Cave were involved in highway commission business and also Kansas is a small state.

Claud Cave (left) and his son, Ellis, are pictured here with some of their equipment in Sublette.

If you’ve ever wondered why the parapet of the Scheufler building has stones spelling “CAVE” in a spot just left of center, it’s because that slightly taller section was built to house Claud Cave’s implement dealership.

This answers my question about the west end of the Sitler and Bell Block. The section sold by Mary Miller was demolished to make room for this new Cave Implement building which was completed in 1937.

Scheufler Supply Company bought out WSD in April of 1940.

At some point, Scheufler expanded into the old Cave Implement building shown here in 1947.

The remaining east half of the Sitler and Bell Block was designated a historic landmark by the City Commission in 1978. This designated landmark became a victim of demolition by neglect in July of 1989.

You can see the Cave-Scheufler building smashed up against what was once the central staircase wall.

Scheufler Supply became Big A Auto Parts in 1979 but people talked about going to Scheufler’s as long as the store was open on Trail Street.

Big A moved to 50 N Second Avenue around 1986 leaving the Trail Street building vacant for a few years. Around 1990, Virginia Korf-Melton opened the Happy Trails Flea Market and Designs by Virginia gift shop in the massive building. Virginia sold the flea market to the Besser family and they operated it until around 2015.

Since the flea market closed, the building has been used for various sales and events. People were carrying out party tables and supplies when I stopped by to grab some photos.

This is how the Cave-Scheufler building looks today:

In a determined effort to focus on what we have rather than what we’ve lost, I will simply remind everyone that the east wall of this unassuming building includes a thin brick sliver of the Sitler and Bell Block. That’s all I have to say about that.

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