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Shayla’s Grocery Store Article and photo by Ella Mae Howard For one hundred and twelve years, the Ashland Mercantile has been part of the small southeastern Montana town of Ashland. The Merc, as it is known by locals, started out as a grocery store in a two story wood frame building on the east side of Ashland’s main street. Today, the business of
the Merc is still groceries and it is still in the same building. The list of Merc owners is short. Joe Holtz, one of the early owners sold it to Tom and Cecil Moore in 1944. In Beyond Echoing Footsteps, 2010, Nancy Nordeen, daughter of the Moore’s wrote: “Since it was a general store it provided a variety of merchandise from canned goods, produce, and meats to dry goods. As a baby I would sleep in one of the glass show cases in the store as my parents worked.” In the mid-seventies, the Moores listed the Merc for sale in the Billings Gazette. This ad enticed Gordon and Shayla Hagen to make the 635-mile move from White, North Dakota to Ashland, Montana to add their name to the list of Merc owners. The Hagen’s had been vacationing in Yellowstone National Park in 1975, picked up the Gazette, and when they got home Gordon read about a
small grocery store for sale in Ashland. Soon, he convinced himself that he wanted to see the store, got in the family car, and headed back to Montana. He saw the store, visited with the Moores, and liked the story. Gordon returned to North Dakota intent on convincing Shayla to leave their small gas station in White for the Ashland Mercantile. Shayla had clerked and stocked shelves in small town grocery stores, and knew how much hard work and time they took, so her first inclination was not to leave her life in White for the Ashland Mercantile. But four months after seeing the ad, the Hagen’s were on their way. Shayla says, “I will never forget the day, December 15, 1975, southeastern Montana had been hit with a bad snowstorm, the Lame Deer Divide was icy and I was petrified. Oh yea! I had my doubts.” After owning the store for six months, the Hagens concluded they had made a mistake. They wrote an ad to sell the store. But, as Shayla very quickly says, “It was only for sale for two months.” The Hagens pulled the ad, mostly because the store had started to feel like home for the young blue-eyed woman from North Dakota. “I had fallen in love (Continued on page 40)