On January 1, 1901, young Charles E. Blackwell purchases the Ellis & Forde store in Conconully and founds a Central Washington commercial empire. He is already the manager of the store at age 23 when he makes the purchase. Blackwell soon expands into Riverside, Tonasket and Okanogan. He will go on to own nine grocery stores and three department stores, including the flagship store in Okanogan, which will dominate the town's commercial life until 1954.
Blackwell and His Enterprise
Blackwell was born in Chicago and had come to Conconully when young. He became a clerk at Ellis & Forde's store in Oroville and then he talked George H. Ellis into letting him manage the Conconully store.
According to Bruce A. Wilson's definitive history of Okanogan County, Ellis & Forde offered to sell Blackwell the store for $5,000. Blackwell had only $1,500. So he made a midnight ride to the door of a pioneer settler named Alex McCauley and talked him into loaning him the other $3,500.
By 1903, Blackwell had expanded into Riverside. By 1914, he expanded into Tonasket. In 1916, Blackwell moved into a large brick block in the heart of Okanogan, which soon became the chain's flagship store. It had hardware in the basement, dry goods and groceries on the first floor, and furniture upstairs. The company was called C. E. Blackwell & Co., but the store was known simply as Blackwell's.
At the peak of his success in the 1930s, Blackwell had those three department stores -- in Okanogan, Riverside, and Tonasket -- as well as grocery stores in Oroville, Molson, Conconully, Omak, Pateros, Brewster, Twisp, Republic, and Chelan.
Last Years of Blackwell's
Blackwell began selling off properties in the 1940s. Then in late 1954, Blackwell stunned Okanogan by closing the flagship store.
"Probably one of the most frustrating experiences suffered recently by any town in the Inland Empire was felt by Okanogan when its main shopping center closed," reported the Spokesman-Review in 1955. "This was the famed and well-established C. E. Blackwell department store which occupied a full half-block in the main section of town. In its 50 years of trade it was estimated to have done $50,000,000 worth of business. ... Its vacant though quite modern building leaves a depressed block in the center of the community."
On April 23, 1955, just a few months after the store closed, Blackwell died. He had been a household name for more than five decades in Okanogan County.
