McCarthy era

Oh, yes, McCarthy. I imagine I was about ten years old, and remember mainly my parents and grandparents being upset.

That fits with how a lot of Americans remember that period. Even people who weren't following the details often remember the atmosphere around it: anxiety, accusations, careers being destroyed, and arguments at the dinner table.

If you were about ten, that would place your memory in the early 1950s, when Joseph McCarthy was at the height of his influence. What many children noticed wasn't McCarthy himself but the reactions of adults. Teachers, government workers, union members, entertainers, and academics could suddenly find themselves under suspicion. Families worried about relatives losing jobs or being called before congressional committees.

It's also worth remembering that your parents and grandparents had lived through the Depression, World War II, and the beginning of the Cold War. To them, communism wasn't an abstract political theory—it was tied to events they had watched unfold in Europe, China, and Eastern Europe. Many people genuinely feared Soviet expansion, while others became alarmed by what they saw as attacks on civil liberties at home. The result was a tense mixture of real security concerns and political excess.

One thing that strikes historians is how quickly the public mood changed. McCarthy was enormously influential for a few years, but after the televised Army-McCarthy hearings in 1954, many Americans saw him differently. Television let people judge his behavior directly rather than through newspaper accounts, and his support eroded rapidly.

Your memory of adults being upset is probably a more accurate snapshot of the era than many textbook summaries. Children often remember the emotional climate of a time remarkably well, even when the political details come later.

Well my progenitors were not exactly Communists, but they had a lot of liberal views. There is a story of my mom and her parents in Bayfield putting wreaths on all the doors after Truman won as they were the only Democrats n the town.

Oh, that gives the McCarthy-era memory a rather different family context. Your family apparently wasn't remotely sympathetic to communism; they were simply Democrats at a time when being a liberal Democrat could itself make you suspect in some circles.

And the Bayfield story is wonderful. Your mother and grandparents putting wreaths on all the doors after Truman won, because they were the only Democrats in town, has exactly the flavor of small-town American politics of that era. I can imagine the message being less “Hooray for Truman!” than “Well, somebody here has to acknowledge the election.” 😄

It also makes your recollection of your parents and grandparents being upset about McCarthy particularly interesting. They would have understood the distinction between being a liberal American and being a Communist very clearly, and probably found the insinuation that the two were somehow connected deeply offensive.

And Bayfield itself must have been a pretty interesting political environment if one family constituted the Democratic Party. That is the sort of family anecdote that tells you more about the political culture of a place than a census table does.

Grand Junction

Montgomery Ward: my mom worked for them in Grand Junction. They and Penny's were the only department stores, both then on Main Street. I even worked for Penny's one summer, selling lawnmowers mainly. Later there was a large mall west of Grand Jct. on Hwy 50 maybe a third of the way to Fruita.

That fits the pattern of a lot of smaller American cities perfectly. Montgomery Ward and J.C. Penney on Main Street would have been the department-store universe in Grand Junction, rather than the enormous suburban retail complexes that came later.

And selling lawnmowers at Penney's is a wonderfully specific summer job. I imagine that gave you a rather different perspective on retail than merely being a customer—particularly if somebody came in wanting to know why one mower was worth more than another.

The later mall you're remembering sounds very likely to be Mesa Mall, which opened in 1980 on the west side of Grand Junction along US 6/50 (now I-70 Business/US 6/50), toward Fruita. It was a major change from the old Main Street arrangement: the department stores moved out toward the highway, and shopping became something you drove to rather than something integrated into the downtown.

And that connects rather neatly with what we were discussing about the decline of malls. The mall didn't initially kill downtown department stores; the suburban mall was the thing that killed the old downtown retail model. Then, decades later, online shopping and the collapse of the department-store chains weakened the malls themselves. The retail landscape has rather impressively managed to eat its own children.

What happened with Mesa Mall?

Ah, Mesa Mall is actually a rather interesting counterexample to the "American mall apocalypse." It didn't die. It went through the normal department-store bloodbath, but because Grand Junction is such an isolated regional center, it has remained viable.

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The mall opened in 1980, essentially creating a new retail center on the west side of town. It was a major blow to the older commercial corridors—Mesa County Libraries specifically notes that North Avenue began a gradual decline after Mesa Mall opened.

Then the familiar sequence occurred:

1. Mervyn's disappeared when the chain went bankrupt in 2008; its space eventually became Cabela's in 2010.

2. Herberger's closed in 2018 when Bon-Ton collapsed. Its enormous space was converted to Dick's Sporting Goods, opening in 2021.

3. Sears closed in 2018. Rather than leave the building sitting vacant, it was demolished and Dillard's built a new store there, opening in 2021.

4. The old Sports Authority space became HomeGoods.

5. Cabela's itself was subsequently converted to Bass Pro Shops in 2025.

And there's an important difference from many malls: Grand Junction is an unusually strong regional retail market for its size. It's hundreds of miles from Denver or Salt Lake City in practical shopping terms, and Mesa Mall draws not only Grand Junction but much of western Colorado and eastern Utah. The current owner calls it the only enclosed regional mall between Denver and Salt Lake City.

In fact, CBL Properties bought it in July 2025, along with three other regional malls, from Washington Prime Group, which had gone through bankruptcy. So someone looking at the American mall wreckage evidently thinks Mesa Mall is still worth owning.

It's also getting some surprisingly non-dead-mall tenants. Toys "R" Us returned to Grand Junction in 2025, occupying part of the old Joann space, and was intended as a permanent store rather than merely a Christmas pop-up.

So your recollection is quite interesting in retrospect. Mesa Mall really did what the classic enclosed mall was supposed to do: become the dominant shopping center for an entire region. It just happens that Grand Junction's "entire region" is enormous geographically and doesn't have another major city nearby to compete with it.

And I suspect that explains why you remember it as being out toward Fruita, rather than merely as another Grand Junction shopping center. It was deliberately positioned to catch the highway traffic and shoppers coming in from the western part of the valley.

But in spite of all the prettification, Main Street kinda died and North Avenue became night drag center (noisy cars, not queens).

Ha—night drag center, not drag-queen center. I got you.

That sounds like the classic sequence: the city prettifies downtown, perhaps gets some nice paving, landscaping, historic façades, cafés, and so forth, but the economic function that made Main Street important has already migrated elsewhere. Once the department stores and serious shopping moved to Mesa Mall, beautification could make Main Street pleasant without making it commercially central again.

North Avenue is an especially interesting consequence. A commercial arterial that has lost much of its daytime importance can acquire an entirely different nighttime culture—young people cruising, modified cars, loud exhausts, people meeting up, and police trying to discourage it. Essentially, the street becomes a social venue rather than a shopping street.

And I suspect you remember something else that gets lost in discussions of "downtown revitalization": a street can be much prettier and still be less important than it was when it was ugly, crowded, and full of department stores.

One of the best Japanese restaurants I ever ate at was on Main Street.

That actually makes the Main Street story more interesting. A good Japanese restaurant could survive perfectly well without the department-store shopping traffic, because people would make a deliberate trip there to eat.

And Grand Junction seems like exactly the sort of place where a genuinely good Japanese restaurant would stick in one's memory—small regional city, not an obvious destination for sophisticated Japanese food, and then suddenly there's a restaurant doing something much better than you expected.

Do you remember the name of it, or roughly when you ate there? If you give me either, I can see if I can identify it and find out what happened to it.

Sheesh! Doug and I went to Grand Junction several times to visit my folks in the 1970s and 80s.

Right, of course. 😄 I was treating this as if you were trying to reconstruct a long-forgotten restaurant, when you're simply remembering places you actually ate during repeated visits to your parents in the 1970s and ’80s.

That also puts the Mesa Mall/Main Street transition into a much more useful perspective. You saw Grand Junction before, during, and after the big suburban shift rather than encountering it as a historical question.

And the Japanese restaurant is therefore a particularly nice little detail: Main Street may have been commercially dying, but it could still contain a restaurant good enough that you and Doug remembered it decades later. That's rather different from saying downtown was simply "dead."

There was also a bar that was a gay bar on Thursdays.

Ah! That sounds very plausibly like Quincy’s. I checked, and there’s actually a nice bit of historical confirmation: a Grand Junction LGBTQ publication called The Paragon was carrying advertisements for Quincy Bar in the late 1980s, describing it as a “cruising place for gays and lesbians” and noting that it was straight before 8 p.m.

Quincy’s was at 609 Main Street, right downtown. Quincy Bar

So your memory of a Main Street bar having a designated gay night fits the local history very well. And the Thursday part may be particularly useful for identifying it, since gay bars in smaller cities often had one particular night rather than operating as exclusively gay establishments.

It's also rather amusing in retrospect: in a place the size of Grand Junction in the 1970s/80s, you didn't necessarily need a "gay district." You needed one bar and the knowledge of which night to show up.

Ah! That sounds very plausibly like Quincy’s. I checked, and there’s actually a nice bit of historical confirmation: a Grand Junction LGBTQ publication called The Paragon was carrying advertisements for Quincy Bar in the late 1980s, describing it as a “cruising place for gays and lesbians” and noting that it was straight before 8 p.m.

Quincy’s was at 609 Main Street, right downtown. Quincy Bar

So your memory of a Main Street bar having a designated gay night fits the local history very well. And the Thursday part may be particularly useful for identifying it, since gay bars in smaller cities often had one particular night rather than operating as exclusively gay establishments.

It's also rather amusing in retrospect: in a place the size of Grand Junction in the 1970s/80s, you didn't necessarily need a "gay district." You needed one bar and the knowledge of which night to show up.

Ah your map shows Grand Ave. and the bridge leading over to the posh Redlands. Went to first grade there.

Ah, the Redlands—that fills in the geography nicely. Grand Avenue and the bridge would have been the transition from the commercial part of Grand Junction into that rather more affluent residential world on the other side.

And first grade there means you knew Grand Junction long before Mesa Mall existed. So when you later visited your parents in the '70s and '80s, you were looking at a town that had changed quite substantially from the one you had known as a child: Main Street losing its old retail dominance, the mall drawing the shopping, and North Avenue acquiring its nocturnal automotive population.

There's something oddly satisfying about seeing the map and suddenly having the geography snap back into place after sixty or seventy years.

Kansas City malls

 

Personally I found them tiresome and was always able to find better things elsewhere. An exception may have been, I think it was called Montgomery Mall in Kansas City, upscale from the really big malls there (one in Kansas and on in Missouri). What happened to these?

I think you’re remembering Ward Parkway Center, rather than “Montgomery Mall.” The name Montgomery may have stuck in your memory because one of its original—and very prominent—anchors was Montgomery Ward. It was on the Missouri side right at State Line Road, and it was distinctly more upscale and civilized than some of the enormous regional malls.

And your memory of Kansas City having one enormous mall on each side of the state line is basically right. The big Kansas-side survivor was Oak Park Mall in Overland Park. The Missouri-side competitors included Bannister Mall, Metro North, Blue Ridge Mall, and others.

What happened is actually a remarkably good miniature of the national mall story:

1. Ward Parkway survived, but only by ceasing to be much of a mall. Montgomery Ward disappeared in 2000 and J.C. Penney had already left. The interior was progressively gutted and converted into a more conventional shopping center, with Target, Dick's, T.J. Maxx, restaurants, etc. Much of the enclosed space was opened back toward the parking lot. Dillard's eventually disappeared too.

2. Bannister Mall died outright. It opened in 1980, but eventually lost its anchors and customers and was demolished in 2009.

3. Metcalf South, another substantial Kansas-side mall, also died. It opened in 1967, only a few miles from Oak Park. By the 1990s stores and customers were disappearing; it was finally demolished in 2017.

4. Oak Park was the extraordinary survivor. It opened in 1975 and, unlike most of its competitors, kept reinventing itself. The really important move was bringing in Nordstrom in 1998, along with substantial expansion and renovation. It also cultivated stores that people couldn't readily find elsewhere.

There's an interesting irony here: Kansas City really was over-malled. The metropolitan area had an unusually large number of malls for its population. Several major mall developers were headquartered there, the metro was spread across two states with lots of separate suburban population centers, and shopping itself was unusually important as entertainment. Eventually the market simply sorted them out.

And I suspect your personal reaction—“I could always find better things elsewhere”—gets at something important. The successful malls eventually had to become destinations, rather than just places containing a department store and 150 shops selling essentially the same merchandise. Oak Park managed that for a surprisingly long time; Ward Parkway reinvented itself as a mixed shopping/restaurant/community center.

In fact, Oak Park is now beginning another reinvention: in 2026 its owners are proposing housing, a hotel and a performing-arts center around the mall. That's a pretty good indication of where the surviving mall is headed—less shopping mall and more small town center with shopping attached.

So if the place you remember had a somewhat upscale, older, intimate Kansas City character, with Montgomery Ward and perhaps Stix Baer & Fuller/Dillard's, I would put money on Ward Parkway Center. It still exists, but you'd probably walk into it today and say, “That's not the place I remember at all.”

I never went to them except Ward for the movies. When German visitors came, I took them to the big one where they spent good money on bluejeans (something about German customs). Oh and some Thai friends, female, loved the cosmetics they could get.

Ah, that makes much more sense. You weren't really a mall person at all; the malls were useful because they offered things that were unusually good for particular visitors.

The German blue-jeans phenomenon is especially interesting. American jeans had an almost exotic status in Europe for quite a long time, and the U.S. price could be attractive even after travel expenses. Customs rules also mattered: travelers had personal allowances, and clothing bought in the U.S. could be worth bringing home despite the possibility of duty. And there was the intangible part—these are American jeans, bought in America. Levi's had a cachet that went well beyond the garment itself.

The Thai women and cosmetics make even more sense. American department stores and mall cosmetics counters offered an enormous range of brands and shades, often at prices that were difficult to match in Thailand. And the experience of wandering through a big American department store with counters for Estée Lauder, Clinique, Lancôme, etc., was itself rather novel.

So you were essentially using the mall as a tourist shopping resource, not as a destination. And Ward Parkway had the one thing you actually wanted from it: a cinema. That sounds much more like you. 😄

It also illustrates something the usual "Amazon killed the malls" story misses. Malls were partly successful because they concentrated things that were otherwise inconvenient to find. Once you could order almost anything from home—or travel internationally much more easily—the reason for making a special expedition to a giant building full of stores became considerably weaker.