Built in 1939, Victor Ward’s Store is located at 7712 Old Watauga River Road.
This is at the intersection of Rominger Road and just downstream of the confluence of Cove Creek and Watauga River. The old building is probably 80 feet from the river and survived the historic 1940 flood without any footnotes.
There doesn’t seem to be much history published about the old store – or at least not that I’ve uncovered. Much of what I’ve learned comes from The Architectural History of Watauga County and Watauga County Heritage, Vol 1. Both were published by the Watauga County Historical Society.
Quoting the former, here are some interesting historical tidbits I found:
“[Victor Ward’s Store] is said to have been built to replace an earlier store that burned down. It was built with lumber milled at Ben Ward’s nearby sawmill on the Watauga River. The store was established by Victor D. Ward circa 1928 and served as the principal retail establishment in the Laurel Township, between Valle Crucis and Rominger.”
The Ward’s Mill Dam is located just downstream of Victor Ward’s Store and is slated to be removed later this year.
As for the latter publication, the section that mentions Victor Ward’s Store and covers the Laurel Creek Township was written by Mattie Hicks and Evelyn Shepherd.
The two wrote that numerous owners and stores served the township since the late 1800s. Some of the owners operated out of their own homes or had separate buildings for their enterprise. They likely were the postmaster and had a post office inside.
“Owners usually ran a barter system in addition to selling for cash. To get items they needed and could not produce at home, customers traded roots and herbs, chickens and eggs and any surplus produce they might have,” Hicks and Shepherd wrote.
Among about two dozen or so shop owners listed in a list of the “best remembered storekeepers” from the Laurel Creek Township from the late 1890s to the early 1980s, the first one noted was V.D. Ward 1928 -1983.
In some old newspaper clippings from the Watauga Democrat, I found unsurprisingly that the Victor Ward’s Store was more than a retail establishment. It was a community center.
Just for a few examples:
It served as the start of an annual farm tour in the Laurel Creek Township, as an established rural “bookmobile” station for the Watauga County Public Library and as a site of a Horse and Mule Clinic for Dr. John G. Martin, a traveling veterinarian, on a January day in 1950.
In 1938, the Watauga Democrat wrote an article titled “Rural Electric Service May Yet Reach Watauga.”
Victor Ward’s Store was among several sites in Watauga County for meetings held by the Caldwell County Rural Electrification Association. The CREA was considering building 100 miles of electric lines in Watauga County.
The point of the meeting was to gauge the public’s interest and justify building those lines.
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