Wyoming has always been a beacon for people from the Sandhills and further east in Nebraska. At turn of the 20th century the Cowboy State caught the eye of a young druggist. Ira Burleson started his career as a druggist in Omaha, then took a position in Sheridan, with his young wife Loretta. The couple moved to Casper with their son Robert where Ira again worked in a Natrona County pharmacy.
In 1915, Ira, Loretta and six-year-old Robert moved to Riverton where Ira opened his own business. In May 1915, Burleson’s Drug opened on the south side of Main Street across the street from the Teton Hotel on the 300 block.
Burleson’s held only the seventh pharmacy license issued by the state of Wyoming in its first 25 years since territorial days.
Ira was much more than a simple druggist. He was a skilled businessman with his hand on the pulse of the young agricultural community. He struck up a friendship with legendary Riverton physician Dr. Albert Tonkin soon after Ira set up his business. Dr. Tonkin and Ira became so familiar that Tonkin simply wrote numbers for oft subscribed medicine and Ira filled them from memory.
“We found the formulas for Dr. Tonkin’s medications at the store,” grandson and fellow pharmacist Bill said. “He had a great relationship with Dr. Tonkin and Dr. Ashbaugh.”
Riverton was just nine years old when Burleson Drug opened its doors.
Ira filled prescriptions, offered medical advice and served the needs of the young, growing community in myriad ways. He also sold radios, phonographs, home appliances, typewriters, paper, candy and soon opened a soda fountain that was a hit with people of all ages.
The Chicago North Western railroad offered daily service to and from Riverton and Ira used the railroad to deliver newspapers from Casper and Denver. The Casper Daily Tribune’s morning edition was available by noon in Riverton and the Denver Daily Times and Sunday News arrived the day following publication.
Loretta worked in the store and her window displays were the height of Main Street during holidays. The front window of Burleson’s reflected the season, and the enticing items on display were offered inside.
“At Christmas they put shelves on the booths to hold all the toys,” Bill said.
Seasonal Displays at Burleson’s – h/t Bill Burleson 
One Saturday morning, Bob was sweeping and moping the floor. As he threw wastewater out of the mop bucket in the alley, he saw the owner of the pool hall next door throw something into the alley.
After the man left, Bob walked over and discovered a pile of pennies the man had thrown out. After that, Bob checked the alley regularly and collected the discarded cents.
During World War I and for a few years after the Armistice was signed, Loretta served as the chair for the Riverton Women’s Patriotic League.
The league worked as an early type of USO for the boys and men headed off to the trenches of World War II. Dances, receptions and parties honoring the 66 Riverton men who headed off to war were organized by Loretta and most of the women of Riverton.
Ira was busy with another American institution, the Boy Scouts. Ira was Riverton Scoutmaster. He organized fundraisers, outings and camping excursions. The Boy Scouts particularly enjoyed week long bivouacs near Atlantic City where they explored abandoned mine shafts, camped out and caught trout.
Bake sales, raffles and other civic events were always supported by the Burleson’s.
The Burleson soda fountain was popular with people of all ages, and more so when Prohibition shut down the saloons and dried out the pool halls.
From the opening of the store in 1915 until reliable electricity and refrigeration arrived in the mid-1920s, Loretta had to pack the ice cream in ice each night. Ice was delivered from the ice storage plant each day and kept the ice cream cold.
When refrigerators arrived at the store it lifted a heavy burden that Loretta took on each day.
The soda fountain provided after school and weekend jobs for dozens of girls through the years. Patrons of the soda fountain. Cokes, sodas, malts and lemon sours were all mixed in front of customers sitting on the eight stools at the counter or in one of the five booths. Root beer was especially favored by many mothers since it hid the flavor of the Castor Oil that Ira often had mixed into it for their children. Cherry Cokes were the most popular offering.
“Dad always said when it came to the point where we hard to sell a malt for a quarter, it was time to shut the fountain down,” Bill said.
In 1927, Ira and Loretta moved the business next door to the Acme Theater across Main Street. The new location was larger and the overflow crowd from the Acme often stopped by the soda fountain after an afternoon matinee. There was an entrance into the lobby of the theater from Burleson’s.
Ira became friends with Lee Mote, husband of Acme owner Belle Mote. Lee sometimes worked at the drug store.
That same year, Bob headed off to the University of Wyoming to study business. He decided to follow his father and take up the family business and attended a six month long pharmacy school after graduating with his degree from UW.
He graduated with a pharmacy degree in 1932 and became partners with Ira in the drug store.
In 1939, Marian Lambie arrived in Riverton from Long Beach, California with a contract to teach at Riverton High School on the top of the hill on Main Street.
“Mom was the first female PE teacher in Riverton,” Bill said.
In 1941, she and Bob were married.
Marian arrived in Riverton in nearly the same style as the pioneers of the 19th century. She took the Union Pacific to Rawlins, staying at the Ferris Hotel before she boarded a bus for Casper. The bus driver and a couple of cowboys on board entertained the young California woman with tales of the Old West and a few yarns about the present situation in Fremont County that didn’t quite pan out as they described.
Once in Casper, Marian bought a ticket for Riverton on the “Galloping Goose” the Chicago North Western passenger train that stopped at Arminto, Moneta, and Shoshoni before arriving in Riverton.
Loretta and Ira were involved in the building of the Riverton golf course, the first community pool just east of the high school that was eventually enclosed and part of the building, they sponsored 4H Clubs and Little League Baseball.
Bob and Ira were great partners, but the elder Burleson had to take on pharmacist duties alone when Bob entered the U.S. Army in 1942 during World War II.
Bob’s first assignment was as an Army pharmacist in Medford, Oregon. Later, he was assigned as the director of a hospital in Los Angeles at an Italian prisoner of war camp. Marian followed Bob to Oregon and California. Their son Bill was born in Los Angeles.
When Bob was transferred to the Philippines, Marian and infant Bill returned to Riverton. Bob was in Japan on September 2, 1945, when the Japanese surrendered and the war ended.
Back in Riverton, Bob and Ira remained partners until Ira retired in 1949. Ira still helped around the store in his final years.
The shelves at Burleson’s – h/t Bill Burleson 
Bob kept the community spirit alive in Burleson’s Drug Store that his mother and father began years before. Bob enjoyed hunting pheasants and the area of Riverton near present-day Ashgrove Elementary School was prime ringneck habitat.
In 1957, Bob and Marian decided to move the store once again. Years before, Ira and Loretta had purchased a couple of city lots near Main Street on South Broadway.
They moved into the new building, now the location of Bar 10 and operated it for another two decades.
Bill followed his father and grandfather into pharmacy.
“When I was 15 or 16, I decided to become a pharmacist,” Bill said in a 1990 interview with the late Carolyn Tyler. “That happened in Bob Mower’s chemistry class. I liked chemistry. That’s not a prerequisite, but it helps.”
Bill headed off the University of Wyoming after graduating from Riverton High School in 1963. He earned his pharmacy degree from UW studying in the university’s modern five-year program.
He married his wife Elissa while attending UW. Like his mother, Elissa was from Southern California. They had their first child, a son Robbie while attending the university.
Bob passed the pharmacist exam and took his first job at Osco Drug, in Mankato, Minnesota.
While in Mankato, Bob was drafted into the U.S. Army.
He was assigned to Fitzsimmons Army Hospital in Denver. It was his first introduction to hospital pharmacy, something he would eventually pursue back home in Riverton.
After six months at Fitzsimmons, Bill was sent to Mannheim, Germany where he was the pharmacist at a dispensary in Heidelberg. Elissa and Robbie joined him for the final eight months of his 14-month hitch in Germany.
The couple had a second child, a daughter Blaine.
After his service, he returned to Osco Drug, this time at a new store in Clinton, Iowa. After nine months, Osco reassigned him as assistant head pharmacist in a large store in Galesburg, Illinois with five other pharmacists.
In one of those seemingly unrelated events that can change the course of someone’s life, the head pharmacist’s wife was the sister of Dorothy Wimpenny of Riverton. It was all the coincidence that Bill and Elissa needed, and they returned to Riverton in 1973.
Bill worked with his father Bob at location on South Broadway for five years. In 1978, life took another turn for Bill and Elissa.
“I got really interested in the hospital. In the time I was working with Dad I started with the hospital,” Bill said. “The state said a hospital had to have a pharmacist on site 10 hours a week. Then they made it 20. I liked it so much that when they made it a full-time position, I took it.”
Bill worked at the hospital from 1978 to 2009.
Bob’s health was failing, and hospital pharmacy called to Bill. He decided to take the job as pharmacist at Riverton Memorial Hospital. Bob and Marian closed Burleson Drug the following year. In 1979.
“When we closed, we found all of grandpa’s prescriptions from Dr. Tonkin, “Bill said. “Dr. Tonkin #1, Dr. Tonkin #17, Dr. Tonkin #12. They kept a book of Dr. Tonkin’s formulas in the days when a druggist was an apothecary. I watched him make powder paper. Paper folded with a drug you mixed with water.”
They donated the old soda fountain counter to Central Wyoming College where it was used in the CWC Food Court.
Other keys components of Burleson Drug, some dating back to the opening of the store in 1915, were donated to the Riverton Museum. Many of these items are now prominently displayed on the main floor of the museum.
As head pharmacist, Bill had input into the design of the pharmacy at the site of the Riverton Memorial Hospital when it was opened in 1983.
He continued until retirement and came back to work part-time for Sage West before retiring permanently.
The soda fountain is gone, the neon marquees that lit up Main Street are just memories, and the evening window shopping is no longer a feature of downtown Riverton, but the three buildings that were Burleson’s Drug Store for 64 years remain under different purposes.
It was a business that fit the times and served the needs of a growing community with integrity, honesty and a sense of community that every business should strive for.