After 141 years, a landmark Colorado grocery store is ready to be sold

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GEORGETOWN

The door creaks and in amble a couple of friends, smiling in their beanies and parkas. 

“We just wanted to check in,” one of the women says. “We are so glad to see you in here, still doing this.”

Wendy and Smoky Anderson, standing at the same counter of the grocery store their great-grandfather and grandfather opened in 1893, chatter about neighbors and business. The Anderson siblings smile as they talk about their sister, Coralue, who died on Nov. 7, her 87th birthday. 

The women promise to return soon and head out. It’s a simple interaction and one that has been part of the Anderson family for four generations. Coralue, an avid skier and Georgetown historian, loved those little chats. Even as she lost a touch of her energy in her late 80s, she always had time to catch up and share some stories. For more than 30 years, she was behind the counter at Kneisel & Anderson grocery every day. 

“This store was her life,” says Wendy, who spent many years as professor of Swedish studies at the University of Washington before returning to the home where she was raised in Georgetown. “Skiing, the store and the history of Georgetown. Those were really important to Coralue.”

The loss of their sister has Wendy, 74, and her brother, Smoky, 77, thinking about a change. They say it’s time to sell the family business and the building built by their great-grandfather, Henry Kniesel, in 1893. Kneisel and his son-in-law Emil Anderson — Smoky and Wendy’s grandfather — opened the Kneisel & Anderson grocery in 1883 and moved it across the street 10 years later. In 1912, the two men bought the hardware store next door. 

And now, for the first time in 141 years, there might not be an Anderson behind the till in Georgetown. 

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Smoky and Wendy aren’t going anywhere though. 

“I can’t imagine where I’d go,” says Smoky, who still skis regularly at Loveland, where, on opening day this season, they draped Coralue’s signature purple ski jacket on the first chair.

“We both really like Colorado weather,” Wendy says. 

“And we like small towns. Georgetown is a really special community,” Smoky says. 

The two siblings often speak like that, finishing each other’s sentences and voicing each other’s thoughts. They get quiet as the words of change drift through the store that has anchored not just their family, but the historical integrity of Georgetown.

“We have tried to maintain the store as long as we could,” Wendy says.

Georgetown’s grubstaking grocer  

Henry Kneisel was a baker from Germany when he landed in Georgetown in the 1870s, working for the Guanella family. He hired a young man named Emil Anderson, who ended up marrying his daughter, Cora Kneisel. The two ran the grocery store, with the help of their kids, until 1950 when Emil Anderson died. Then their son Henry took over, enlisting his kids — Coralue, Henry, who has been called Smoky all his life, and Wendy — to help run the shop. 

Smoky used to carry buckets of coal from the pile in the basement to the heating stove in the back of the shop. Then Georgetown got natural gas and the family bought a furnace and dropped the ceiling to hide ductwork. 

All the Anderson kids went to college and had jobs outside the store. Coralue graduated from the University of Colorado and taught elementary and middle school in Georgetown for 32 years. Smoky was a sales rep for outdoor gear. All three of the Andersons came back to the store in 1993 when their father died. 

Not much has changed in the store since it started grubstaking ambitious silver miners in the late 1800s. “That’s what you get when you have an account and you let people charge and then hope that they come back,” Smoky said. 

Supplying miners with tools, food and gear in the hope that they returned to town with precious ore helped the Andersons prepare for hard times. In the Great Depression, the grandparents offered many lines of credit. The Anderson family helped a lot of their neighbors weather those hard times. 

“They definitely let some bills for stressed families slide,” Wendy says, showing off a black-and-white photo of her aproned dad and his grocer brothers standing in front of the store.

Remnants of the olden days are all over the shop, from the scale for weighing gold to the hand-cranked coffee bean grinder in the front window that their dad used to churn out rationed soap. It’s not only relics that linger. The shop only takes cash and checks. 

“We still have a ledger,” Wendy says, lifting a well-worn carbon-copy receipt book. “We send out statements once a month to a few people. Once upon a time that was all we did.”

“They are in our DNA here”

In 1966, the National Park Service designated the Georgetown and Silver Plume area as a registered National Historic Landmark District. In the early 1970s, a developer wanted to build more than 50 townhomes on the hillside above town and local officials denied the proposal, citing the lack of alignment with the historical architecture of the town. The developer sued and the case eventually landed in the Colorado Supreme Court in 1978, which affirmed the town’s ability to preserve and protect its historical character.

Historic Georgetown now owns those lots, as well as more than 4,000 mining claims around the town. The organization — more than 50 years old — has thrived in its mission to protect the historical character of the town’s downtown, issuing grants for easements that protect both facades and some interior features.

Having one family own the same business for five generations certainly helps in safeguarding historical integrity, says the group’s 14-year executive director Nancy Hale.

“They are in our DNA here at Historic Georgetown,” Hale says of the family. She is restoring a home once owned by the Anderson family. 

It can be a challenge to maintain that historical focus when a building or business in downtown Georgetown changes hands. When a new owner spends big on a historic structure, they might chafe at easements or limitations that narrow avenues for revenue. But those easements and historical preservation can be opportunities, Hale said. 

The gambling-funded State Historical Fund has distributed more than $365 million to 5,259 projects — including dozens in Georgetown.  

“We have all these different mechanisms in place so when a new owner comes in we can show them the opportunities and they too soon become shareholders in the same vision,” Hale said. “We have created an historical ethos here in Georgetown.”

Historical preservation grants — secured primarily to improve the Kneisel & Anderson building’s facade — require that whoever takes over the business to respect the historical integrity of things like the shelves and bins that once held bulk beans, flour and sugar. Henry Kneisel had the bins designed to his specific grocery-store needs when he built the building in 1892. 

Part museum, part Scandinavian bazaar

Kneisel & Anderson has become a must-stop shop for anyone seeking hard-to-find Swedish foods. The store’s coolers have jars of pickled herring and imported cheeses. The shelves have all varieties of Northern European delicacies. There are also racks of Colorado-made jellies and honeys. 

Many shoppers are out-of-towners coming by to find things they can’t find even on the internet. 

“People stop off when they are driving and they get the cheeses they want. They stock up on their Honeyville honey, which they can get online but they don’t have to pay for shipping,” Wendy says. 

The store is more than part museum. Coralue was an archivist.

“She saved everything,” Wendy says. 

At the end of the counter, there’s a crowded shelf with antique food items — cans of Reese Brand chocolate covered caterpillars, a can of plum pudding, a can of roasted whale meat with a painting of a harpoon gun under the word “seasoned” — with a handwritten note from Coralue that the items are not for sale but “enjoy looking.”

Lining the shelves behind the counter are hundreds of business cards, tucked in a sort of store-long address book. Some of the most yellowed and curling business cards are more than a half-century old, with numbers like “Ohio 212.” 

“My dad used that as his Rolodex,” Smoky says. 

“There’s every kind of profession up there,” Wendy says. “It’s an interesting collection. Sometimes people look up and say ‘what is all that?’”

The Anderson family has had a front seat to the slow and steady death of small retail shops in rural communities. It started with interstate highways speeding drivers past downtowns. Then the arrival of big-box everything stores on the edge of downtowns dealt another blow to local retailers. And the steady creep of online shopping has delivered all sorts of goods to front stoops, adding to the struggle of local retailers. 

“All that has led to all the little mom-and-pops closing up,” Smoky says. 

“We hear that story a lot from people out in rural areas,” Wendy says. “Everyone was so excited because they were going to have a job with Walmart. They have a job, but they don’t have a downtown anymore.”

They are the heart of Georgetown.

Laura Russette, community member

As the Andersons prepared for the annual Georgetown Christmas Market, the was stocked with fresh lingonberries, potato sausages, Swedish cardamom and limpa breads and all sorts of imported cheeses and jars of pickled fish. The market, held the first two weekends of December, draws hundreds of visitors to Georgetown and sometimes the line at Kneisel & Anderson stretches out the front door. 

“Every once in a while we’ll have to walk along the line and say ‘OK, so we are old-fashioned here. We only take cash or checks. No credit cards or electronic anything,” Smoky says.

Smoky and Wendy would love to find a buyer of their historic property and business who could continue the specialty food business. But they are open to new ideas for their old store. 

Smoky spent many years working as a sales representative for outdoor brands and he sees maybe an opportunity for a gear shop opening in the historic building. 

Maybe a ski or bike gear shop can carry the same vision of a community-centered, locally owned business.

“A lot of these old towns have some beautiful outdoor shops in historic buildings. And their communities really rely on those shops,” Smoky says. “Having grown up in this business and also worked as a sales rep … I see those shops getting squeezed by all the big boys and I know how important they are.”

“A walking history lesson”  

Laura Russette moved to Georgetown in 2016 after nearly 40 years in Summit County. She spent a few years working with Coralue at the Kneisel & Anderson grocery. 

“It was such a kind place to work. It still is,” she says from behind the counter at the Stonehenge Gallery across the street. “I hope the store stays the same.”

Russette spots something outside the shop and dashes for the door. A man is walking his two Labradoodles. Russette reaches into her pockets and offers them treats and tells the man of course he can bring his dogs into the gallery. 

“I hope this place stays the same. Maybe the K&A is not going to be what it used to be,” she says. “I guess we just have to roll with the changes, you know. They (the Andersons) are the heart of Georgetown.”

Gary Haines steps out in front of his photography studio and art gallery. Henry Kneisel built that building and started his bakery there before moving across the street to open the grocery. Haines talks a bit about leaving his shop on snowy nights with flickering lampposts casting shadows on 150-year-old buildings.

“It makes you feel like you are on a movie set,” he says. “Such a classic historic feel here. Coralue, she was an anchor for us all. Whenever they close they are going to be missed.”

On the sunny sidewalk, Haines recalls movies filmed on the street. A big brawl from Clint Eastwood’s “Every Which Way But Loose” was filmed in the alley “right here,” Haines says. Danny Glover filmed some scenes for “Switchback” in the town’s historic downtown. John Denver starred in “The Christmas Gift,” which was filmed in town in the 1980s.

The producers of the John Denver movie didn’t like the facade of the Trading Post, so they paid to cover the building with old wood, giving it a more rustic feel. That same old wood is up there, peeling and curled. China Tipton bought the Trading Post business three years ago and she acquired the building one year ago. She’s thinking about working on a grant to replace the weathered wood with something more historic.  

Coralue, she was an anchor for us all.

Gary Haines, who owns a photography studio and art gallery

Tipton joins Haines on the sidewalk across the K&A. She’s got stories about Coralue, too. 

“She was a walking history lesson. Everything she said was so fascinating,” says Tipton, retelling a story shared by Coralue about her as a teenager walking alongside a grocery-delivering panel truck driven by her dad in a snowstorm, staking out the edge of the road on a steep with flags so they could make it back home. “It’s hard to quantify just how much that family has contributed to this town but I know it was a lot.”

Wendy and Smoky are melancholy about stepping away from a role they have held for decades. They hope they can find someone who can honor the traditional path followed by so many in Georgetown. It’s a path their family helped clear. 

“People, they are just amazed when they do get in here to town, what it’s like, and they just can’t believe that it’s still like it is. It’s like what they saw in the movies, or when they think of small towns,” Wendy says. “And you know, hopefully that’ll be beneficial to us, to be able to keep that going without succumbing to the real fast development.”