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1880 · two saloons, two hotels, and 200,000 bushels of wheat
The town's food economy enters the record as a county history's arithmetic: Chapman, writing in 1880, counts Walkerton with two saloons, two hotels, three drug stores and four dry-goods houses — the eating and drinking houses of a railroad town of a few hundred people — and counts its trade in grain: some 200,000 bushels of wheat bought in the 1880 season, the farm township's harvest passing over the town's scales. The house that did the passing was C. W. N. Stephens' general store by the CP&C station — at its height, on Kristin Hoganson's account, employing twenty-two men, selling general merchandise, livestock and grain, and occupying two stories of a storefront 44 by 100 feet (the Story of Walkerton section leg carries Stephens himself whole: the West York postmaster who built or moved the town's first store in 1854 — the two tellings printed there, unmerged). By 1907 Howard adds the machine the wheat trade built: a grain elevator "of ample capacity" stood in Walkerton, the skyline fact of every grain town, this one's attested at the county history's strength.
Sources:
- Chapman, History of St. Joseph County (1880) — the 1880 count (saloons, hotels, drug and dry-goods houses; the 200,000 bushels), as read for the Story of Walkerton section leg.
- Kristin L. Hoganson, The Heartland (2019), via Foster & Rotter, "Turning to Asia: The Clash," ch. 7 (Stephens' store: twenty-two men, 44 by 100 feet, by the CP&C station).
- Howard, A History of St. Joseph County, Indiana (1907) — the grain elevator of ample capacity.