Mammoth Mart

When it comes to choosing topics for stories, they usually come to me. I rarely go looking for an idea, but some tidbit of information, some little morsel of history falls into my lap, gets overheard, or otherwise organically presents itself.
And so, a friend recently asked me to scan some old photos for him to donate to the county library’s digital collection. These are largely a collection of snapshots he took in the 1970’s relating to the Union Grove Volunteer Fire Department on the northern end of Iredell County. They include pictures of people from the department, the trucks in use at the time, and construction work done to the old fire department building. Most interesting to me were a couple photos of an “Emergency Vehicle Road-Eo” that took place in Statesville in 1975 in which he participated. In this series of photos there’s a store building I wasn’t able to identify until he told me where it was located. Plastered across the front of it was a name I had never heard before. Mammoth Mart.

So today we’re going to engage in a bit of retail archaeology and dig up the bones of Statesville’s Mammoth Mart.

Mammoth Mart was a retail chain of discount stores that first opened in 1956 in Framingham, Massachusetts, and grew over time to have numerous stores in the northeast and at least three (that I know of) in North Carolina. Ultimately the chain fell victim to a bad economy and some bad acquisitions that left them bankrupt in June of 1974. Mammoth Mart was purchased by another chain called King’s shortly thereafter and was rebranded. The purchase ended up bankrupting King’s, and they filed for Chapter 11 in 1982.

But let’s talk about the Statesville location.
The commercial space where Mammoth Mart was located (called Town & Country Shopping Center) is on highway NC-115 just north of Statesville proper. Back then, it wasn’t inside city limits, and this probably lead to an easier process for development. Nalley Commercial Properties of Easley, SC broke ground on the new shopping center in April of 1972. The project was planned to cost 1.5 million dollars (about 11.5 million today when adjusted for inflation) and Nalley hoped to have it open by that Thanksgiving. The architect for the project was Joe W Hiller and the local firm Bell Construction was contracted to prepare the site. Quality Construction of Easley, SC would handle the building construction.
Mammoth Mart was what we would today call the “anchor chain” with a second building eventually housing a grocery store called A&P Foods, and a Revco drug store. It was envisioned there would also eventually be six more spaces for other retailers.

Hiring of hourly employees began in October 1972. In total, Mammoth Mart would eventually employ 130 locals.
Roy Johnson (formerly of Detroit but who had been in NC for the previous 5 years at other Mammoth Mart stores in Hickory, Jacksonville, and Lumberton) was selected as the manager.
The grand opening was held on Monday, November 20th, 1972, and it was a bigger deal than I bet anyone thought it would be. The influx of cars actually caused a moderate traffic jam and required not only county but state law enforcement to help the thousands of shoppers get in and out of the area. The traffic was still a problem by the weekend of Sunday the 27th as people both local and from outside of the area made a beeline down or up I-40 to check out the new discount store.

I’m not sure the exact date for Revco’s opening but it was before the A&P, which opened for business the following April after Mammoth Mart.
A&P as a company had been in business since the late 1800’s and had expanded into NC at least as early as the 1920’s. There had been several smaller A&P’s in Statesville as early as the 1930’s, most in the downtown area, but this was a much larger location that could compete with stores like Winn-Dixie.

Mammoth Mart seems to have done well in Statesville. There were numerous events put on in the parking lot, portrait studio sessions in the store, and constant mentions in the newspapers. It really seemed the retailer was going to be a major part of the local economy for a long time going forward.

Unfortunately, as you know from the history I mentioned above, even though individual locations might have been healthy, the company as a whole was not. Mammoth Mart bought the Boston Baby chain of children’s clothing stores in 1970 and tried to expand it. For various reasons, this didn’t work out and they were already liquidating those stores by 1973. By 1974, the company was bankrupt and by summer of that year, Statesville’s Mammoth Mart was closed. The lifespan of the store that seemed so promising lasted less than two years total.
By 1975, when the county put on its “Emergency Vehicle Road-Eo” in the parking lot, the only thing left of Mammoth Mart was the sign out on the road at 115, and the letters across the front of the building.
The location sat empty for a couple years before K-Mart expressed interest in it. The city gave K-Mart their approval for an expansion of the building in May of 1977 and by August 31st of the same year, the Mammoth Mart signage had disappeared and a new K-Mart opened in its place.

History is full of what-might-have-beens, and one can’t help but wonder about Mammoth mart. If its parent company had been more profitable, the store could have been a name people in Statesville still remembered along with K-Mart, Roses, Sky City, and Brendle’s. The location was good, business was brisk, and there was definitely a market here for what they were selling. But it just wasn’t meant to be, and now Mammoth Mart is just a tiny footnote in the retail history of Iredell County.