More Than A Store Colbert Trading Post Is Both A Business And A Piece Of History

A few years ago, Alethia Roselle — better known as “Granny” — was cleaning out a drawer at The Colbert Trading Post when she discovered a note.

“Colbert, Washington, located near Highway 6-10-195, about 13 miles north of Spokane. Fifty years ago this town had five saw mills, three saloons, three livery barns, two blacksmith shops, two whorehouses and five stores. The mills closed down and a few residents live among the ruins.”

It might be hard to imagine that Colbert once had an element of rabble-rousing. But when it did, the store was at the hub of such activity.

The Trading Post, located at 18711 N. Yale Road just east of Highway 2, once had a horse track, post office and brothel.

Those days are long gone.

Today, it’s a quaint but dusty store. Shoppers can get beer and Doritos, but they also can buy wide-mouth Mason Jar lids for home canning.

Pig and rabbit food aren’t for sale anymore, but dog and cat chow is.

As recently as 1975, when Joy Wood owned the store, some of the shelves were still stocked with old button shoes, said Wood’s son, Ben Tipke.

Tipke lives across the street from the store. He remembers hanging out there as a boy and buying countless amounts of penny candy. Before his mother owned the trading post, her sister, Ethel Miller, ran it.

Ethel was the postmaster in Colbert for 30 years before retiring in 1977.

The store has a rich history. The current owner, Randy Freeland of Nine Mile Falls, doesn’t have a long history with the store, but realizes it’s a special place for the community.

Freeland has previously worked at large supermarket chains. He said there is a big difference between the relationship customers have with big stores compared to smaller ones.

“It’s more personable here,” he said. “I’ve watched kids come in here as elementary school students, graduate from high school and then start their own families.”

Tipke said he still feels at home at the store.

“The sawmills, taverns and barns were long gone when I was growing up around here,” Tipke said.

But there was a train depot, called the Dean Depot, which used to be located not far from the post. There, railroads cars from Northeast Washington would pick up and drop off goods before continuing into Spokane.

There’s a series of black and white photos in the store today taken of a train derailment in the early 1960s near the depot.

In order to clear the mess, a heavy crane simply removed the boxcars from the track and lined them up against the side of the depot.

As for Roselle, though she doesn’t live in Colbert, she has become sort of a Colbert historian just by working at the store. She said the store is a tremendous resource.

“This has probably always been the biggest store in Colbert,” Roselle said. “Store owners used to live in the building.”

And they left personal belongings behind.

Like the white, porcelain commode with an advertisement from a company named Beethams Glycerine and Cucumber - M. Beetham and Son, Chemists.

Stamped on the side of the commode, an advertisement for this skin treatment reads: “It’s superior to every other preparation for rendering the SKIN SOFT, SMOOTH AND WHITE. No lady who values her complexion should ever be without it.”

Flanking the commode is a battered, “Handy Andy Tool Set” a child once played with, along with an empty Schwan’s Ice Cream can.

In the rear storage room is a stack of Spokesman-Review newspapers from the late 1930s. Years ago, Freeland pulled up a part of the floor and found the papers.

The headline of the lead story on Sunday, Nov. 23, 1930, read: “Dynamiting of Spokane Chronicle Building Foiled In Time.”

The paper said 200 sticks of dynamite were wired to explode the day before.

“One of two battery terminals was found to have been broken off when the trunk was opened. The turn screw had been mashed off near the terminal end, thus disconnecting it,” the story said.

On Page 2 of the same edition was a short story about federal tax investigators trying to confiscate money from Chicago gangster Al Capone.

“This stuff just amazes me,” Roselle said. “I like looking at the ads for women’s clothes.” In 1930, a woman’s formal dress could be purchased for $4.85.

Now, residents come in mainly for packs of cigarettes, beer and potato chips. A lot of shoppers said they had no idea the Trading Post had such a rich history.

But as the Colbert Trading Post begins operation in its third century, it is clear some things haven’t changed.

The Colbert Trading Post is still around, serving a community, and candy can still be bought for a penny.