Paul Warren Herder was born to German immigrants on April 20, 1900, in Johnsonville Township near Redwood, Minnesota. His parents, Ferdinand Carl Herder and Theresa Luise Emilie Scharfe, settled in the area just outside the Twin Cities in the late 1880s.
Ferdinand and Theresa met in Redwood and were married on December 30, 1891. They eventually had eight children.
Paul was the third of five brothers. He had three younger sisters.
His wife, Margaret, was seven months older than Paul. She was born in Hot Springs, South Dakota, on September 4, 1899.
Paul grew up in Minnesota, leaving home at 17.
In 1918, he was working as a bookkeeper for the Bank of Hyannis in the western Nebraska town of Hyannis. He registered for the draft on September 12, 1918, but the war was over two months later, and he was never inducted.
Paul Herder’s Draft Registration Form – 1918 
Paul and Margaret were married in Minnesota in 1919.
The couple eventually had five children, Margaret, the eldest, born in 1924, Theresa, 1926, Paul Wayne Jr, 1932, and Gerald, 1933. Their fifth child, Agnes, passed before her first birthday in 1931.
Life was good in the banking business during World War I, especially in agriculture, where corn, wheat, wool, and beef prices soared during the war years. Farmers kept producing, but markets didn’t support the growth, and farms began to fail, with prices dropping in a true display of the power of supply and demand.
Paul and Margaret moved to Edgemont, South Dakota, where he learned the grocery business working at the M.R. Carroll Grocery Store.
As bad as the years after World War I were, the mid-1920s were worse, and the Great Depression awaited the Herder family in the 1930s. Edgemont was on the edge of the Dust Bowl.
Paul surveyed possible spots to open his own grocery store in South Dakota, Nebraska and Wyoming.
Pavillion experienced a boom the decade before while the Midvale Irrigation Project was built. Despite the efforts of many locals, along with businessmen in Shoshoni and Riverton, Pavillion never took off as they had hoped.
The stores, movie theaters, gas stations, restaurants, and dance halls were all fading away by the mid-1930s.
Paul saw an opportunity in the little town.
In June 1937, Paul Herder, a man who would become one of the most prominent citizens in Pavillion’s history, arrived with his wife and four children.
Herder purchased the original Rex Theater in Pavillion. The Rex was built by Mildred and Lee Mote in 1925 at the height of the irrigation construction period. The Motes sold it when talking pictures arrived in 1928, and it quickly failed as a movie theater.
The building took on new life as the Lloyd Theater, then the Armstrong Café. In 1931, local businessman A.M. Trejo opened the Pavillion Cash Store. He closed the store in May of 1933.
Trejo rode out the hard times of the early days of the Great Depression and reopened the store in 1935.
In the summer of 1937, it was Paul Herder’s time to try running a grocery store in rural Fremont County. He opened Herder’s Dance Hall and Herder’s Cash Store.
Herder had underground fuel tanks set in front of the store and began selling gas, oil and kerosene.
By 1942, business was booming at the store, but the absence of most of the young men of the community, off to North Africa or the Pacific to fight in World War II, cut down the attendance on Friday and Saturday night dances. In 1942, he closed the dance hall and expanded the store.
Herder was a likeable, engaging man who believed and trusted people. He began opening lines of credit for many customers who were either short on cash, or who were farmers with a single income coming each year at harvest time.
Herder was a friend to the Native Americans on the nearby Wind River Indian Reservation as well, offering them the same line of interest-free credit.
Eugene “Snowball” Ridgley, who grew up on the reservation, remembers Paul Herder and Herder’s Cash Store well.
“He was a good man,” Ridgley said. “He gave my dad credit at the store, and once a month, dad would come in and pay the bill. He did that for everyone.
Herder’s Cash Store pre-dated rival country stores at Missouri Valley, Midvale, Kinnear, and west of Kinnear at Gardner’s Market.
It was Paul Herder who got Eldon Jones his start in opening the iconic, legendary Pavillion business, the Basketeria.
Dennis Jones, Eldon Jones’ son, recalled how his father started in the grocery business, thanks to Paul Herder.
“Dad came and didn’t have much of anything to do, he was hoping to get a job at Herder’s Store. He told Paul Herder he wanted to get into the store business. Herder said I’ll give you a case of peaches, when you sell that, I’ll give you something else. Dad sold the peaches, then he sold more peaches and beans. Herder “angel funded” dad in that first year,” Dennis said. “Herder said I’m doing this because I want out. He liked Dad and decided that Dad should be his follow-up. He was looking to get out, and Dad was looking to get in.”
Herder didn’t get out right away. For almost two decades, the two grocery stores provided everything rural customers could ask for just a few dozen yards apart on the North Second Street Block of Main Street in Pavillion.
Herder’s sold canned goods, fresh produce, meat, dam canvas, nails, screws, hardware, milk, cheese, eggs, and ice cream.
The dairy products came on a twice-weekly truck from the creamery in Riverton. Bread was a proprietary item for every rural store in Fremont and neighboring counties, it was usually Sweetheart or Bunny bread, based on the retailers’ personal preference and with an eye to their customers.
The canned goods and hardware came from Billings, Salt Lake, Casper, and a few suppliers from Idaho.
They sold smiles as well. Herder was a friendly, helpful man who enjoyed talking to people.
Herder’s was a familiar place for the kids at the nearby Pavillion Elementary and High School to stop by after school, or before athletic events and school functions.
Paul Herder was all about community and developing Pavillion into a prosperous little town. It wasn’t a motto he created, but he often repeated it, “Make a Million in Pavillion.”
Herder and Jones were best friends, business rivals and men who served their community.
They share the longest tenure as mayor of Pavillion. Herder served as mayor from March 1947 to June 1960. Jones from January 1961 to May 1974. If you do the math, their terms were identical, 13 years and three months each.
Herder had a cold storage, locker plant near the store that local farmers and ranchers used to keep meat frozen in the days before electric freezers were common.
“Electricity arrived across the valley from 1948 to 1951,” Larry Shuttlesworth said.
Shuttleworth’s parents, Bolly and Helen, opened the Missouri Valley Store in 1955, taking over from a previous owner.
“Herder used the same suppliers my folks did. They traded a lot to keep up their inventory,” Larry said.
Bolly bought bacon, ham, bologna, and longhorn cheese from Triangle Packing in Worland, which was also one of Herder’s suppliers.
Paul and Eldon often shared the expense of trucking goods to Pavillion on the same order.
Herder was remembered as a dynamic mayor and excellent businessman with a kind word, open hand, and helpful demeanor to customers and competitors alike.
In 1960, Paul resigned as mayor, closed his store, and retired.
He sold the store to the American Legion. The Pavillion Legion Post used the store until 1966, when it was purchased by Ralph Hunt who tore it down and repurposed the lumber elsewhere.
Next to the store Hunt purchased was the smaller store that Herder had initially opened.
“Mom was a little bit out of her element living at the store,” Dennis said of the Basketeria, “The house across the street was Paul Herder’s old store. I’m not going to be pregnant living in the basement, she said. Dad took the store and moved into it as a house.”
The Herder children had all graduated from Pavillion High School. Paul and Margaret packed up and moved west to Vacaville, California, a small farming community between Sacramento and San Francisco.
Margaret passed away on April 22, 1967, Paul 11 years later, on December 1, 1978, in Vacaville. Today, there are no stores remaining in Pavilion; there are none between Shoshoni and Pavilion or Shoshoni and Riverton. Only the Kinnear store remains in business between Riverton and the Crowheart Store.
It’s an era that fell victim to better roads, faster cars and centralization. The choices might be greater, but the smiles and connections will never compare.