MIDWAY — For 121 years, it has stood there, as indelible a part of the landscape as the rolling meadows ablaze with wildflowers, the dairy cows, frilly architecture and Sno-Cone mountains that earned this place the reputation of Little Switzerland.
It's the corner grocery store occupying the spot at 1st and Main, come floods or fires or snowdrifts to the rooftops.
Bonner Bros. Mercantile, Ivers Merc, Midway Market, lastly Winterton's Market.
The names have rolled through the decades.
Now, with thunderclap suddenness, it appears that bloodline has ended.
"Quitting Business. All Prices Slashed," read the handmade sandwich-board-style sign sprouting Monday outside Winterton's Market.
"There are reasons you don't see mom-and-pop stores anymore, and I guess we've found out some of them," said a saddened owner, Kent Winterton, watching customers cross the squeaky, old, original hardwood floor and hunker to the counter with armloads of goods.
Winterton's had been excitedly planning something far different, an expansion to a 14,000-square-foot full-service Associated Foods-affiliated grocery, on 5.5 acres at approximately 500 E. Main.
The family had been anticipating breaking ground this fall and having the store up and running next spring/summer, serving this community of approximately 2,500 as it encounters its expected growth years.
"But our builder backed out on us and the developers ran away and we can't wait anymore on our loan. We're sunk. This is the end of it for us," Winterton said.
"We've already poured tons of money into this. We can't afford to put anymore in and wait and hope," he said.
So ends a lifelong dream for Winterton, 37, who's never wanted to do much besides the grocery business. Especially in the area where his family ties go back to great-grandfather William Winterton, who moved from herding sheep in Provo to help homestead Charleston in 1867.
"My lifelong goal hasn't been to open a grocery store. It's been to open a grocery store in Midway," Winterton said.
"My strongest memories as a kid are going down to the river bottom on my grandfather's property. The willows on the river banks pretty much walled off the world. I played 'army' there and loaded up the cattle truck with a tent and a little food and stayed down there nights by myself. It was heaven to me."
The corner grocery, then Ivers, was where Winterton went for after-school treats.
"I came to the corner store for Swedish redfish, the quintessential penny candy, and an Orange Crush," he said. "I loved that life and I wanted to keep it going."
After serving an LDS mission in Belgium and France, Winterton lived in Holladay, Provo, Layton and Orem. He started learning his trade as a bagger-checker for Days and then worked in several managerial capacities for Tom Winegar's stores in Layton. Winterton moved back to Charleston in '92 to help his folks, Sharron and Norita, on the dairy farm, Winterton's Holsteins.
He and brother Paul opened Winterton's Market five years ago. Losing it affects some folks almost as much as them.
"I will definitely miss this place. A small town like this, you don't have much entertainment. The post office and the corner grocery are pretty much it for stopping to gossip with your neighbors," Karen Ridge, who was reared in Heber and spent the past 21 years in Midway, said on a recent stop at Winterton's.
Cheryl Whiting has lived all her life in Midway, the earliest portion almost literally in the corner store. Her grandfather was Lee Ivers, who owned the market for a time.
"I grew up in that house right there," Whiting said recently, pointing to the house adjacent to Winterton's at 45 N. 100 East. "I hate to see the old times go. The corner store was a playground and a wonderful world for me."
Few will feel the pangs more than Kaye Bonner, 60, who lives at 110 E. Main, where she was born. Her grandfather, George Bonner, built the first store on the northwest corner of the intersection in 1879.
"Time was when Bonner Corners, with three houses and the store, pretty much was Midway," Bonner said. "The store sold everything from grain to horseshoes to furniture, clothes and food. Shoes cost $1.75. It was your typical old-time country store."
Now that heritage is vanishing.
"No one's hurting more than I am," Winterton said.
E-mail: gtwyman@desnews.com