WALSH, Colo.—A town can do without a movie theater, even a pharmacy, but without a general store it isn’t really a community.
This town of about 700 near the Oklahoma and Kansas borders lost its grocery store last year. Earlier the pharmacy and lumber store closed. And the movie theater stopped showing films years ago.
And then the blizzard hit the agricultural town last on New Year’s Eve.
“It was just overwhelming. It pretty much brought everything to a halt,” Mayor Clarence Jones said, recalling the snow storm that hit shortly before New Year’s Day dropping close to three to four feet of snow on ground that had previously dealt with seven to eight years of drought.
“It was tough, really tough,” James Hume told KUSA TV.
But the town knew what it had to do as soon as the snow melted.
“People just became acutely aware of just how fast we were declining,” said Jones. “That’s when this community spoke as one.”
They knew they couldn’t survive driving 20 miles to get groceries in Springfield.
The town set up a board of directors to finance a store, and it opened June 27.
“It was overwhelming the amount of money that came in that quick. Typically if you try to raise a thousand dollars to do some little project, that’s pretty tough. We had $150,000 raised in a matter of 45 days,” Jones said.
A party celebrating the opening of the Walsh Community Grocery Store was held Wednesday.
