Guymon Petro Mercantile Co. Then and Now

314 Front Street – Dodge City, Kansas

Before you all start thinking I’ve lost my mind, this story is not about the building at Fourth and Trail. In March of 1884, the widow Anna Robbins bought a Front Street lot between Second and Third Avenues from Robert M Wright. There had once been a blacksmith shop on that site and Mrs. Robbins, mistress and business partner of the infamous Perry Wilden, had plans for a new grocery store.

The single-story wood frame structure faced Front Street and covered less than half the distance north to Chestnut. Wilden, sardonically nicknamed The Merchant Prince of South Dodge, opened the store that May.

Fraudster Wilden expanded rapidly and every single thing he purchased was on credit. His grocery store and around seven other buildings were destroyed by a fire on January 18, 1885.

Wilden was widely believed to have set the fire intentionally on a Sunday morning so it would burn undiscovered while most of the town was at church. Robbins carried insurance on the building and Wilden had a policy for the contents. Some of the neighboring business owners carried no insurance at all.

Within a week, newspapers reported Wilden planned to erect a two-story brick building on the same lot. However, Robbins was the one with the money and construction of her new building began in July of 1885. This new structure also faced Front Street and only covered about 60 percent of the lot space going toward Chestnut.

By August, creditors had seized the contents of Wilden’s South Dodge grocery. He left town with his wife and children later that month. Meanwhile, construction continued on the Robbins building and Ham Bell planned to use the main floor for his furniture and undertaking business along with the new Ford County Bank.

Bell did briefly occupy the Robbins building but he and Henry Sitler constructed the Sitler & Bell Block in 1886. The bank never really got off the ground.

Wilden fled to Syracuse to obtain a quick divorce from his wife, Mary, in June of 1886. He then married Anna Robbins in Colorado later that month, skipping the mandatory waiting period. The two were later arrested for bigamy.

T. C. Owen moved his barber shop from the Delmonico Hotel into the basement of the Wilden building in May of 1887. He closed the shop that August and it was reopened by Lawrence Leppert a couple weeks later.

The Wildens’ exciting personal lives left little time for property management and the Front Street property was sold to Fred T. M. Wenie in September of 1887, shortly after a cigar factory in the building failed to get traction.

Leppert’s barber shop moved to the main floor in the Summer of 1888 after a huge rainstorm flooded the basement.

The building was underutilized with Sims and Shinn (later Sims and Sims) using it as a warehouse for flour and feed. Fred Wenie moved to Kansas City around 1889 and stopped paying taxes. The building went up for sheriff’s sale in April of 1893 and creditor Charles Colladay took possession of the property at that time.

Patrick H Sughrue moved his real estate office to the second floor of what was being called the Sims building around 1902.

He and his wife, Margaret, owned the building for several years. It’s difficult to see but the sign at the far left reads “BUY TOWN LOTS & FARMS FROM P. H. SUGHRUE.” If you look closely, you can see the rear of the building didn’t extend to Chestnut.

James L Meairs moved his grocery store to the main floor of the Sughrue building around 1905.

Although he retained ownership of the building, Sughrue moved his office to the Hoover building in February of 1908. J. H. Evans moved his poultry, eggs, and hides business into a section of the Meairs grocery in 1911.

John Reynolds opened a general repair shop in the basement of the building in January of 1915.

In September of that year, the Sughrues sold the property to the Guymon Petro Mercantile Co. for around $6,300. An electric elevator was added along the east wall along with new office spaces. They just about rebuilt the entire structure.

Once that work was completed, L. J. Upp was awarded the contract to extend the building north to Chestnut Street. Over the years, space at 315 W Chestnut Street was rented to businesses like Drake Motor Supply Company, Noel-Ward Tire Service Company, and the Williams Cash Store.

The sign on the front of the light-colored building in the middle says “THE GUYMON PETRO MERC. CO. WHOLESALE GROCERS.”

By the mid-1940s, Guymon Petro occupied the former Dodge City Fruit Exchange building at 500 W Trail Street. Hall’s Home and Auto Supply then opened a second location in the former Guymon Petro building. The company owned by Jack and Lester Hall was more commonly known as Hall’s Firestone.

By 1950, Hall’s had consolidated operations in the location at 315 W Chestnut and 314 Front.

Photos by Hoover Cott, Ford County Historical Society Troy Robinson Collection

The store continued to operate in that spot until the building was demolished as part of the Urban Renewal project in 1970.

The 1990s demolition of the flour mill ruined this vantage point for everyone except drone operators.

This is how the site of the original Guymon Petro location looked in February of 2025:

Based on what’s been happening downtown over the past several years, it is clear that we’ve learned from the Urban Renewal disaster. I encourage everyone to patronize businesses in the surviving buildings so we can avoid losing more of our history.

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