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EPHRAIM — A family-owned pharmacy will close its doors Saturday after 109 years of operations, bringing an end to what may be the state’s longest-owned family pharmacy.
As you walk inside of Anderson Drug, which has been in operation since 1910, you’ll feel like you are back in time.
“My great-grandpa, and then my grandpa got his license and then my dad got his license and then I got my license,” said Jeff Anderson, who started in 1976.
But there is someone else who has worked here even longer.
“I could have retired a long time ago,” said Jeff’s mother Marge, who has worked in the pharmacy since the 1950s.
As of Tuesday, at age 95, she was still a licensed pharmacy tech. She’s also the store’s florist, arranging flowers in the back of the pharmacy.
Marge can also tell you all about the days of the drug store soda fountain.
Even though the medications are much different now than in 1910, the Andersons believed their customer service remained the same.
This week, longtime customers are stopping by to tell the Andersons thanks and to take in the nostalgia of this pharmacy dating back more than a century, knowing this corner in Ephraim will never be the same.
An open house will be held on Friday from 4-to-6 p.m.
“We know all of our people, and they enjoy doing business with us,” Jeff said.
But in an era now of corporate contracts with insurance companies, the end has come for Anderson Drug.
“You don’t see many of the small pharmacies anymore, they are about all gone and so we are technically retiring — we have decided it is time to close the store,” Jeff said.
