HERON — When Melissa Atkinson was postmaster of the small U.S. Post Office here, she wanted to put a couch in the lobby. She wanted to let people come into the office to visit, or use the bathroom or telephone. But she couldn't, save for the occasional emergency phone call, because after all it was a post office. Such were Heron's glaring but unfulfilled needs during Atkinson's tenure from 2018–22 — four years when the small lower Clark Fork town near the Idaho border had no public businesses aside from the post office and a marijuana dispensary. That's not to mention the homebound seniors and low-income folks with no way to reach the nearest grocery store, across the bridge over the Clark Fork and miles either way on Highway 200, or people who just needed a gallon of milk. The void in public places meant that the small federal building on the west end of Heron was the de facto gathering place for the unincorporated town's roughly 170 residents, plus another 200 or so in the surrounding mountains and valleys also served by the post office. The . It was not rebuilt. "We have the senior center, which is open sometimes, and the library, and I think there’s a workout room that they open once in a while," Shawn Atkinson, Melissa's husband, said, "but no place that’s open enough that people can actually go and gather. Most people run into each other at the post office." The couple rectified that in September 2022 when they left their respective jobs to open the Heron Siding General Store in a leased building a few lots east of the now brush-entombed foundation of the old Heron Store. The store has become the gathering spot Heron needed, they said, with locals chatting away each morning and old-timers swapping stories in the deli cafe, and non-driving residents walking in for essential home goods and groceries. Even Heron's Fourth of July celebration — a small-town mainstay that mostly withered away in recent years — came back stronger last year and is poised to feature a revived parade this summer. "It’s actually really sad, when we got started, that people would come into the store and say, ‘Aw, it’s good to see ya, I haven’t seen you in years!’" Shawn said. "To hear somebody say that in such a small community is wrong. We need a place to gather and just have some fun, that’s what it was all about." Heron might be on the upswing. But 10 miles southeast, its neighbor Noxon is staring down the specter of gradual atrophy after . All that's left are the hardware store, post office and unstaffed laundromat. Noxon residents are hoping to regain the businesses that helped sustain the town, particularly during summer tourism season, . But right now they describe a new and precarious state of inadequate food supply, and feeling cast adrift from the traditional moorings of a small-town community. With the loss of Toby's Tavern, the Angry Beaver General Store and the Noxon Mercantile & Cafe in an early-morning
fire Feb. 27, weekly dinners at the Noxon Senior Citizens Center are one of the only public gatherings, or hot meals, left in town. At one such dinner on March 11, warm light from the senior center's windows lit a cover of slowly melting
SNOW in the dirt parking lot. Turkeys and geese wandered on the adjacent public school
Football field — the largest open space amid Noxon's rambling assemblage of cabins, cottages, trailers and old, ramshackle barns and sheds. Up the timbered hillside on Third Avenue a stout border collie was locked in a silent, one-sided standoff with an unbothered doe. Inside the senior center, 40 people came out to dine on chicken pot pie with fruit salad, mixed vegetables and cake, mostly filling the center's wood-paneled main room full of folding tables and chairs. They lamented the loss of the three businesses, each one for its own reasons, but singled out the general store as a place that brought together the full breadth of the community while offering grocery necessities. "It’s devastating, it’s surreal, because this is a very close-knit neighborhood and everybody knows everybody," said Kelly Randall, who has lived in both Noxon and Heron. "It's our lifeline," she said of the destroyed store. "We always run into each other, we always watch out for each other, and it’s a place where somebody can ask anything, and we all know if anybody needs help, somebody will know through the little town," she continued. "We do more word-of-mouth than we do texting. And actually seeing people, there’s people that notice you if you’re gone, because you’re way out and far in between. So (for) everybody, it’s a base and it’s a necessity. And I can’t even believe we have to drive to Idaho now to get groceries, or Thompson Falls or Plains for a grocery store." Back in the kitchen, lifelong area resident Sharon Tessier was cleaning dishes. She grew up in Heron, where her parents owned the old store there from the mid-'60s through early '80s, lived in Trout Creek for decades, and moved to Noxon four years ago — each a town with its own store. "Typically, little stores, the prices are a little bit higher, but they are just five minutes down the road," she said. "And you don’t realize how much you depend on, well, I can go get bacon or I can go get milk or something in five minutes. Now we have to go to Sandpoint or Libby or Thompson Falls. Well, Trout Creek’s pretty good. It’s devastating." It's a sentiment shared even by those in places closer to large towns and who haven't lost their local store. At the Clinton Market east of Missoula on Monday, Rock Creek resident Calsey McDonald said the community "would be really broken if our little store ever shut down." The market, where she worked briefly after the onset of the
Coronavirus pandemic, doesn't have as comprehensive a selection of items as larger stores in Missoula, she said, but "it’s very convenient. You have to think of the gas that goes into going all the way to town." Plus, she said, the owners are happy to special-order items they don't normally stock. The glue of the community In interviews with more than a dozen residents in Heron and Noxon, and a few in Clinton, small-town and rural Montanans described their local stores as far more than just a place to purchase groceries or grab a snack. They're ad hoc community halls where neighbors catch up with each other and, often, keep tabs on the most vulnerable among them to lend a helping hand. They said the simple act of shopping together in a small, local setting provides a critical sense of community that cannot be replicated at larger, more distant and disparate shopping locations. Such places are "a neutral place, a public place for people to meet," said Judy Hutchins, the 50-year Heron resident who built and owns the new building that houses the Atkinsons' business. "The community doesn’t have a real place like that to go get together, to go get a cup of coffee, and that’s really the glue that I think holds a community together." At the Clinton Market, resident Robert Redfield said, "You definitely have to have that in a community. If people don’t know each other, it’s not a good community. It doesn’t make a community if people don’t know each other. Like the big stores, you walk into them, nobody knows you, nobody cares — like Walmart — they just want you to get through and get out." McDonald said having a local store in Clinton "really brings us together" as a community. It's a phenomenon Shawn and Melissa Atkinson see daily, except in winter when they're closed on Sundays. Shawn recounted a group of older regulars, one of whom died recently, that meets at the store. "They would take turns trying to sneak to the register to buy each other’s breakfast," he said. "And it was so fun to see that and then hear the stories get passed along from a generation that’s been around for a while. Some of their stories are incredible." The swapping of stories and getting to know neighbors doesn't just help folks connect, Melissa said, but also keeps the town's history alive. "We have one customer ... he’s been here for 40-some years and he used to be a regular every day at the old store and he is a regular every day here," she said. "And the stories he tells are amazing, and he knows everybody, and now the kids that he knew are adults and having babies, and it’s great to hear the stories and who they were." But, underlying the need for community cohesion, there still remains one of the most foundational human needs: food. And food can be hard enough to find even when small towns have stores. Food insecurity In contrast to Missoula's or Kalispell's supermarkets and Walmarts, Sanders County and its lower Clark Fork region where the river winds toward Idaho has a high rate of food insecurity, according to state and federal data. The " where 15% of residents county-wide lacked adequate access to a grocery store, according to 2018 data. The figure was 92% for children whose families were deeply impoverished. In many food deserts, . In Sanders County, more than 12% of people lack health insurance — well above the state average — according to the U.S. Census Bureau. In the western part of the county, around Noxon and Heron, 2,949 people could not reach a grocery store within a 1-mile walk or a 10-mile drive, , the most recent available. Of them, 1,200 were also low-income — about 20% of the area's population. And 702 of those low-income and food-insecure people lived more than 20 miles from a grocery store. Despite the isolated and rural nature of the region, residents say many households do not have a reliable vehicle, with some lacking motorized transportation altogether. More recent data from the Census Bureau showed that 15% of Noxon's 255 residents in 2020 were living in poverty. The town's population is also older than the state median. In Heron, according to the agency, more than half of the town's 173 residents were living in poverty in 2020. Data showed that 35.6% of Noxon residents and 27.1% of Heron residents lacked health insurance. The profound lack of resources for many area residents — whether it be income, transportation or both — makes local stores like Heron's new one and Noxon's burned one all the more vital to their communities. "We have a lot of older people and they really relied on that store to be close by," said Noxon resident Jenny Richter, who works at the Quik Stop gas station on Highway 200 across the river from town, where the food selection is little more than chips, processed snack food and a few canned goods. "They would walk there from town and it’s convenient for them, it’s all they can get to. I think they’re going to miss it the most. So that part is really sad." The same need was why the Atkinsons opened their store in Heron, Melissa said: "Especially in the winter when the roads are bad, they don’t have to go without anything." "It was a need around here to have someplace where somebody can come either be safe, warm, or have a meal," she said. "There’s a lot of people that just don’t have a cooked meal every now and then, or go without. Everybody has to wait to go to town until they have enough reason to go to town. At least here you don’t have to go without. "I know we have one customer, if we didn’t have the store, they don’t have any vehicles even to get to the store. We are their only source of food." Rebuilding Hutchins said she was motivated to provide a space for a new store to spring up in Heron after the old one closed and burned. She had an unused corner lot and decided to build just as the pandemic hit, which slowed construction a bit. "A store was needed, we need to have a local store," she said. "It’s hard to drive 15 miles if you need a gallon of milk, or there’s a neighbor who needs his lotto ticket." The building has a fire-hardened exterior and a backup generator that can also power the town's telephones through a prolonged power outage. Its bathrooms are open to the public and there's a small laundry room with two washers and dryers. The cafe and deli were the idea of builder Tom Wilson and Shawn Atkinson, the latter of whom helped construct the building before deciding with Melissa to run the store in it. There's also free wireless internet. The store carries basic groceries, cold beer, a bit of fresh produce and animal feed. A bulletin board outside hosts a variety of community ads, notices and other flyers. And the food service has been a massive success. The Atkinsons expected to sell a handful of sandwiches daily. Instead, more than 100 freshly made sandwiches cross the counter each day. Even here, an hour from a supermarket, one can buy a fresh avocado or order it on a sandwich. It used to be a similar scene at the Angry Beaver General Store, where residents and visitors alike came in for an even wider variety of goods, according to owner Teresa Jackson. "We made fresh deli products, so we had fresh sandwiches, wraps, we did hot food specials, so Friday’s was pulled pork," Jackson said. "Everything was made in house from fresh ingredients. We sold camping stuff, we sold fishing stuff, we did fresh baked goods and desserts. We did our homemade French bread every Tuesday and Friday. People still walk up to me and say, ‘We’re going to miss the French bread so much.’ We did a lot of things. We were getting ready to set up the apartment upstairs for rental or Airbnb to add to it. We were looking into adding kayaks and bicycle rentals this summer." With tears quick to well up in her eyes as her store still smoldered a few days after the fire, Jackson lamented the "nightmare" that befell her and Noxon. But, she stressed, she would find a way to rebuild.