Central Commercial

Henry Lovin and John Withers opened a mercantile here in 1900 and built it into the largest retailer in northwestern Arizona, with branch stores out in Oatman and the other mining camps. Lovin was the same Kingman merchant who grubstaked Jose Jerez, whose lost-burro strike became the Gold Road Mine. In 1917 the partners opened this big modern store, Central Commercial, on Beale Street, taking in the Powers Building on the corner. For decades it was where Kingman and the surrounding mining country came to buy nearly everything.

What the plaque says

In 1900, Henry Lovin and John Withers established Lovin and Withers Mercantile. With its main store in Kingman, and smaller stores in Oatman and other mining towns, it was the largest retailer in northwestern Arizona., In late 1916 they began construction on a new, large modern store they named Central Commercial.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Kingman — steps away
  The working hub of Route 66 in Arizona — a railroad town named for a surveyor, Andy Devine's hometown, and the last real stop before the road's two wildest endings.
• Oatman — 22 mi
  A gold camp in the Black Mountains that outlived its mines, now run by wild burros — reached by the wildest switchbacks left on Route 66, and named for a history worth telling straight.
• Hackberry General Store — 23 mi
  Looks like a junkyard, is a shrine — the 1934 store an artist brought back from the dead, and the Route 66 stop that inspired Fillmore in Cars.

More markers nearby

• Art Hub — steps away
• Depot — steps away
• Miner's Mineral Monument — steps away
• Depot Plaza — steps away