Sears was once considered one of the most innovative and modern retailers in America.
All that excitement and innovation seemed forgotten when Sears ended its run in Casper with barely a whimper after locking its doors in the Eastridge Mall for the final time at the end of December.
Chicago-based Sears Roebuck & Company grew into a retail behemoth in the first half of the last century thanks in part to smaller communities such as Casper.
Through the Sears mail order catalog, people in rural America could have access to nearly every essential or luxury item imaginable.
From guns to radios, jewelry to clothing, tools to furniture, and even entire houses sold as kits. Even if you lived in basically the middle of nowhere with just a saloon, post office and tiny general store on main street, you could get almost anything from your Sears “wish book.”
A double-truck page from a 1916 Sears catalogue shows several models of Craftsman homes offered by Sears. The company’s Craftsman bungalow-style homes, which were sold as kits by mail, are now part of the fabric of many historic neighborhoods across the country. (Flickr) 
A Sears catalog from 1960 is seen here. The iconic Sears catalog was part of American homes for decades. (Pintrest)
It was after its catalog business became a retail force when Sears started expanding its brick and mortar presence in America’s towns and cities.
The news of Wyoming’s first Sears store hit the front page of the Casper Star-Herald on Sept. 17, 1952. Wyoming was one of the last states without a Sears at the time.
According to the article, talks to bring Sears to Wyoming had gone on for several months. The air-conditioned building at 320 South Center would be nearly a block long, include a service garage and parking for 300 cars.
The land was purchased from Fred Goodstein, a prominent Casper businessman who would eventually develop the neighboring concrete Goodstein Building (now renamed Mobile Building), and the modern Petroleum Building on Center and Second Street a few years later.
Land for a future Sears department store is prepared in late 1952. Note the Republican election signs in the background. Eisenhower and Nixon were elected in Nov. 1952. (Casper College Western History Center) 
The new Sears department store is seen under construction at the corner of Midwest and Center in 1953. It opened in October of that year. (Capser College Western History Center)
“Sears Building is Ultra Modern” and “Casperites are Style Conscious” gushed some of the headlines in a big special section marking the Casper Morning Star on Oct. 7, 1953 for the grand opening of the new store.
“The $750,000 building (nearly $7 million in today’s dollars according to the CPI inflation calculator) features a floor space of some 71,000 square feet that will be covered with numerous display cases of birch and oak construction,” said an article in the Morning Star. The 12-feet-tall glass wall along Center Street, florescent light fixtures, forced heat and air and fireproof construction were also touted.
Though all surviving photos are in black & white, newspaper articles of the time describe a colorful and bright interior.
“The interior of the handsome two-story structure is one vast, pleasant adventure in color: various tints of blues, grays, greens, reds and yellows – each with a story to tell and a definite mission to accomplish,” read the Casper Star-Herald.
Grand opening day started on Thursday, Oct. 8, with an 8 a.m. breakfast for city officials, Sears corporate hotshots and all 72 employees at the swank Crystal room in the Gladstone hotel, followed by a 10 a.m. ribbon cutting ceremony at the new store.
The newly-completed Sears Roebuck & Company department store is seen in this architecture glamour shot by Ken Ball Studios in 1953. (Casper College Western History Center) 
This undated photo likely made in the mid-60s shows the corner of Midwest and Center Street. Note the Goodstein Building now behind Sears. (Casper College Western History Center)
Times and trends change, and three decades later Casper’s Sears succumbed to call of the indoor mall.
The grand opening of the new Eastridge Mall’s Sears store was still an event, but not quite as revolutionary as when Sears first built their mid-century modern retail palace downtown.
A rendering of the Sears anchor store in Casper’s Eastridge Mall, Oct. 12, 1982, Casper Star-Tribune.
In an Oct. 10, 1982 special advertising section, Sears stressed its energy-saving technology in both the new building and merchandise, as well as its experienced Casper staff led by the steady hand of longtime store manager Hal G. Williamson.
An unidentified boy plays Space Invaders on the Sears Video Arcade II system during Sears’ grand opening at the Eastridge Mall in Oct. 1982. The Sears game system was a rebranded Atari 2600. (Casper Star-Tribune Collection, Casper College Western History Center) 
Customers line up in the hardware department at Sears in Eastridge Mall during its grand opening in Oct. 1982. (Casper Star-Tribune Collection, Casper College Western History Center) 
Customers line up at the registers during the grand opening of Sears in the Eastridge Mall in Oct. 1982. (Casper Star-Tribune Collection, Casper College Western History Center) 
The exterior of Sears is seen during its grand opening at the Eastridge Mall in Oct. 1982. (Casper Star-Tribune Collection, Casper College Western History Center)
Sears was at the height of its power by the time it opened in Casper’s mall, but over the next few decades things would start to turn.
By the 1990s the massive company lacked focus and innovation. Competition from newer big box stores like Walmart and Target took away customers. In 2004 Sears was acquired by Kmart Holdings and became Sears Holdings. By this time, Amazon was already revolutionizing and disrupting retail shopping.
The company closed hundreds of stores across the country, and in October Sears announced it was closing its Casper store.
The excitement and fanfare of its 1953 arrival and 1982 expansion is now remembered by few. The Eastridge Mall store quietly closed at the end of December after a weeks-long liquidation sale.
The sleek original 1953 store still stands. For years it was occupied by the local furniture chain Mossholders. It is now a Slumberland Furniture showroom.
(Dan Cepeda, Oil City) 
The former Sears store at the Eastridge Mall opened in 1982 and closed at the end of 2018. (Dan Cepeda, Oil City)
A Slumberland Furniture showroom now occupies the former Sears building on the corner of Midwest and Center Street in downtown Casper. (Dan Cepeda, Oil City) 
The former Sears department store, now a Slumberland, is seen between the Mobile Building (formerly Goodstein Building) at left and the state office building at right. All were constructed within several years of each other during the post-war boom in Casper. (Dan Cepeda, Oil City)
