Jackson General Store

The store's first site was the original White Deer, a railroad town placed by a water well. Kansas capitalists of the Purcell Company bought land in 1886 and 1887 for the right-of-way of the Southern Kansas Railway of Texas, and because the county's first water well had been drilled nearby, the railroad chose the spot for a depot, built in 1888. The first general store and a lumberyard opened that December, with a post office. The place was called Paton, then Whig, before taking the creek's name, White Deer, in January 1889.

What the plaque says

Jackson General Store This commercial structure was built at the original townsite of White Deer (0.5 mi. E). It was moved here in 1908, when the present townsite was established. It housed the general merchandise business of J. C. Jackson (d. 1966), a prominent leader in the development of White Deer. In his career as a public servant, Jackson was mayor, postmaster, county judge (1935-41), and precinct commissioner (1947-66). In addition, he and his wife Dolly (d. 1957) were founders of the First Presbyterian Church. The Jacksons maintained their home in the general store building for many years. (1986)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Carson County Square House Museum — 13 mi
  The 1880s ranch cottage that is the oldest house in the town of Panhandle, at the heart of a twenty-one-building museum of the plains from mammoth hunters to the oil boom.
• White Deer Land Museum — 14 mi
  The 1916 Pampa office of the land company that sold a foreclosed British ranch to wheat farmers, with an annex holding one of the Panhandle's largest Red River War collections.
• Woody Guthrie Folk Music Center — 14 mi
  The old Harris Drug Store in Pampa, where a young Woody Guthrie jerked sodas and found his first guitar, now a folk music center with Friday night jam sessions.
• Hutchinson County Museum — 20 mi
  Borger's museum on the three-mile Main Street of a 1926 oil boom town that drew 45,000 people in ninety days and was put under martial law in 1929.

More markers nearby

• White Deer — steps away
• First Presbyterian Church — 0.3 mi
• Polish Settlers of White Deer — 0.4 mi
• White Deer United Methodist Church — 0.5 mi