A.O. Heyer was born Arnold O. Heyer on October 1, 1877, in Madison, Wisconsin. Though his first name was Arnold, he claimed the “A.O” he used stood for “Always Optimistic.” There may have been some truth in that.
He married 21-year-old Laurina Otilda Larson in Barron County, Wisconsin in 1902. The young couple soon headed west.
Heyer had a contract with Lost Cabin entrepreneur, J.B. Okie, to manage Okie’s Lost Cabin Store.
They arrived in Eastern Fremont County in the fall of 1902. While working for Okie, they had two daughters, Viola Margaret, born in 1903, and Ruth Adelaide, a year later in 1904.
While working at the store, Heyer became friends with Charles Berger, a local sheepman. Charles Berger was born May 18, 1872, in Toledo, Iowa. His wife, Etta May Tibbets Berger, was born in 1876. The couple was married in 1897 or 98 in Iowa before moving to Lost Cabin.
They were both enterprising young men, who saw the economic opportunity moving rapidly west in the summer of 1906 with the extension of the Chicago North Western Railroad. Starting in Casper, the rail line eventually terminated in Lander in October.
Berger and Heyer weren’t interested in Lander, but they were greatly interested in the soon-to-boom border town of Shoshoni.
Shoshoni remains a terminus on the road to Yellowstone. Travelers can head southwest to Riverton, then Dubois, Togwottee, Moran Junction, and Jackson Hole to Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks, or they can head north, through the Wind River Canyon to Cody to enter Yellowstone.
There was no Grand Teton National Park in 1906, and the path to Yellowstone went along the Union Pacific to Rawlins, then by overland stage to Lander and eventually to the park through Dubois.
The Chicago North Western railroad changed all that.
An imposing, two-story brick building once stood across the street from the Silver Sage Saloon in Shoshoni. The red brick was decorated with an ornamental upper façade and for 110 years bore the name, “Berger 1908 Heyer” on the highest level.
It was razed with the entire east side of Shoshoni’s once-prominent Main Street business district in 2018, but for most of the 20th century, it was an icon and a popular marketplace for travelers and locals alike.
Heyer and Berger went into business before the railroad reached Shoshoni in the summer of 1906.
Heyer knew the ins and outs of merchandise, and Berger had land and cattle to back one of the first permanent stores in the little border town.
A portion of the Wind River Reservation was purchased from the Eastern Shoshone Tribe for homesteading under the McLaughlin Agreement of 1904, and Shoshoni, nestled less than a mile east of the reservation boundaries, was the setting off point for settlers when the project opened on August 15, 1906.
Berger and Heyer were ready for the influx of an estimated 10,000 homesteaders. Other businesses knew the transitory nature of the people pouring into Shoshoni and built temporary businesses in large wall tents, but Berger and Heyer built a two-story frame structure on the east side of Main Street.
The west side of the street was anchored by Charles H. King’s First National Bank of Shoshoni. A massive brick building that survives today and that was once home of the iconic Yellowstone Drug Store, famous for the “Best Malts in the United States.”
The businessmen did a literal “land office” business during the summer of 1906, and remained viable in supplying farmers in the newly settled lands to the west and to miners working the gold and copper mines of DePass, Birdseye, and Copper Mountain.
Shoshoni’s rail yard was one of the busiest in the state, shipping cattle and bringing in mining and oilfield supplies.
Their dream of a viable, long-term business physically went up in smoke in the early hours of Sunday, March 15, 1908.
A fire started in the rear of Ed Burke’s Saloon on the east side of Main Street around 4 a.m. It quickly spread in both directions, engulfing the wooden structures. The volunteer fire department had no pressurized water and had to use buckets to try to douse the fire. They failed.
The fire spread slowly enough that Berger and Heyer were able to pull all of their merchandise out of the building and into the middle of Main Street.
Business destroyed in the fire along with the Berger and Heyer Store were the Wind River Bank, Davidson Building, Williams Saloon, Hargrove Pool Hall, Famous Clothing, the Marie Hotel, and Ed Burke’s Saloon where the fire started.
Many of the businesses never reopened and the owners left Shoshoni, but not Charles Berger and A.O. Heyer.
“Always Optimistic” Heyer saw the fire as an opportunity.
The two men were determined to build on the ashes of their former business, only this time, it would be in fireproof brick, with a larger retail floor and apartments on the second floor.
Berger had expanded from 1906 to 1908, serving on the first Riverton City Council and purchasing land and livestock near Lander.
When the fire consumed their business, he kept his other enterprises, but moved back to Shoshoni.
A.O. Heyer was the force behind the new store, Charles Berger, the financier.
They built one of the finest early buildings in all of Fremont County, opening it in the fall of 1908. It featured four huge, plate glass showroom windows, and took the style of a general store of the old west, only with much more pizzazz.
Berger and Heyer sold everything from farm implements to the latest ladies’ fashion. They specialized in boots, shoes, women’s clothing, and home hardware, competing well with Charles King’s Shoshoni Lumber just across the street to the south.
A December 9, 1927, story in the Shoshoni Enterprise praised the efforts of A.O. Heyer as a local businessman.
“He has been identified with this future metropolis since its founding and has been a participant in its varied fortunes for the past twenty-two years. He owns considerable valuable real estate other than the two-story brick building which his store occupies, consisting of one of the largest stocks of general merchandise to be found in central Wyoming. Together with a competent corps of clerks, he enjoys a liberal patronage. Through his thrift, enterprise and business acumen he has built this prosperous enterprise from a small beginning and is justly proud of his achievements. He has long been identified as Chief of Boosters for Shoshoni and has given very freely of his time and money for the advancement of the town and surrounding county. He has occupied numerous positions of honor and trust among which are: Postmaster of Shoshoni 10 years, several terms on the school board and city council, and was one of the Representatives in the 1924-26 session of the Legislature for Fremont County.
It was glowing, but well-deserved praise.
Heyer was the Fremont County Federal Fuel Commissioner during World War I, and the chairman of the local draft board. He served as Fremont County Republican Party Chairman for two terms.
He established business connections across the state and he and Laurina were active in civic, business, and fraternal groups.
Laurina was an integral part of Shoshoni civic functions and very active in their church.
In 1926, with business stable along the Chicago North Western tracks to the south of their store. Laurina and A.O. opened what is thought to be the first franchise store in Fremont County, with another Berger and Heyer Store, this one, three miles away in Bonneville.
A branch store just three miles away would seem insane today, but A.O. Heyer knew the power of railroads.
In 1914, the Chicago Quincy and Burlington Railroad connected New Orleans with Seattle, and the major terminal in Western Wyoming was at Bonneville, three miles due north of Shoshoni.
After grinding their way through the Wind River Canyon for two years, the line opened with coast-to-coast travel available. The rival Chicago North Western reached Chicago and connected to points all along the East Coast, but it ended just 50 miles west of Shoshoni in Lander.
J.B. Okie had gambled on the Chicago Quincy and Burlington rolling through Lost Cabin, but the tracks were laid a few miles away in Lysite. Okie promptly bought the store at Lysite and continued to trade, closing the one Heyer had worked out in Lost Cabin.
Heyer took note, and when the time was right, purchased a lot near the Bonneville Station and began another lucrative business in Fremont County.
Heyer moved the Bonneville Post Office into his new building, a trick small-town store owners used to increase business across the west. He hired A.E. Madison, the Bonneville Postmaster to manage his new store.
In his spare time, A.O. Heyer was an accomplished wildlife and nature photographer, capturing many images of early Fremont County.
Photography by A.O. Heyer – h/t Hot Springs County Museum
The Bergers left Wyoming for Van Nuys, California.
Though only in his 50s, A.O. Heyer began to weaken, and fell ill. He died on March 14, 1938 and is buried in Shoshoni.
His beloved Laurina remained in Shoshoni another 35 years, passing in 1973.
Their daughters married and moved away to Ohio. Ruth married Roy Elmer Henderson in 1925 and moved to Ohio. Viola married Frank Milton Andrews and moved to Cody.
Viola Margaret Heyer Andrews passed in 1962; she is buried at Mountain View Cemetery in Riverton. Ruth Adelaid Heyer Henderson passed in 1984.
In 1979, another fire on the east side of Main Street in Shoshoni closed the Berger and Heyer Building for good. It started in an apartment above the restaurant next to Nick Svilar’s Derby Bar on the south end of Main Street.
Gambles owner Sid Humphrey used the building for storage, keeping a huge variety of western boots on shelves in the back of the former store. They lay untouched for years in the store before an auction in 2004 liquidated the inventory.
As late as 2015, one of the apartments Berger and Heyer built above the store still had tenants.
Now, nothing remains of the iconic store built by Arnold O. Heyer and Charles Berger on the bustling streets of a town desperately hoping to boom.