Riverbend Co-op marked 100 years of the Co-operative retail movement in the community by paying tribute to the Davidson Co-op’s 100th anniversary.
“Co-op has had a long history in Davidson and the board felt it should be here to celebrate it with you,” Dale Firby, general manager of Riverbend Co-op, said at the Co-op’s annual general meeting in Davidson March 20.
The event was a sort of homecoming for Firby. He currently resides in Outlook, but Davidson is his hometown. Firby began his career with the co-operative system 30 years ago, April 9 with the Davidson Co-op as a fuel truck driver.
“Davidson Co-op has weathered many storms over 100 years both real and financially,” Firby said.
Incorporated on April 14, 1914 as Davidson Co-operative Association Ltd. its first activities involved buying goods by carlot to share among members. Over the next few years its enterprises grew rapidly beginning with fuel supplies, farm implements, hardware, home furnishings, dry goods, groceries and a bakery, one of the first to be operated by a retail Co-op. In 1928 the Co-op built a new grocery and dry goods building.
The Davidson- Co-op weathered the Great Depression and set up an emergency benefit service for its members during these hard economic times of the 1930s. In the 1940s the Co-op continued to expand its services including egg candling station, distribution of pasteurized milk as well as adding a spur track to accommodate increased carload shipments of fuel and other goods. Each decade the Co-op grew and expanded, adding new buildings and storage sheds.
The windstorm of 1976 that blew through Davidson didn’t leave the Co-op unscathed either and the Co-op had to spend much of the year rebuilding.
To read more please see the March 31 print edition of The Davidson Leader.