Julia Wright didn’t grow up in Unity but she quickly learned, after moving to the tiny town in southern Baker County five years ago, about the legacy of Stratton’s Store.

So when Wright and her partner, Joe Wenzler, bought the store last December — about 22 years after it closed — they knew that its new name wouldn’t be new at all.

The name, Wright said, was as irreplaceable as the store’s creaky wooden floor.

“We really wanted to honor the Strattons,” Wright said on Tuesday, July 22. “We wanted to honor the tradition.”

After a major renovation of the 1890 building, Wright and Wenzler opened Stratton Station over Memorial Day weekend in Unity, population about 40. The town, along Highway 26 between Vale and Prairie City, is about 46 miles southwest of Baker City.

The business retains something of the flavor of the store that Homer Ray and Tot Stratton bought in 1965 and ran with their son, Larry Dean Stratton.

Larry Dean continued to operate the store until 2003. He died Sept. 14, 2023, at age 82.

Stratton Station sells the necessities for a remote retail store that’s 36 miles from the nearest grocery (in Prairie City) — cold drinks, including beer, candy and snacks.

But Wright and Wenzler have augmented the basics with sourdough bread, cream pies and other baked goods fresh from the ovens of three local bakers.

They sell a variety of coffee drinks, both hot and iced.

And the merchandise isn’t limited to the edible.

Stratton Station also features what Wright calls an “eclectic mix” of items, including necklaces, pottery and other works from local artisans, as well “vintage finds right out of people’s barns.”

A student from Burnt River High School has a bait shop on the premises.

And Wenzler, a mechanic who works on motorcycles and other ATVs, runs his small engine repair business next to the store.

Wright, 56, said her goal was to “create a space that’s a positive place for families and kids.”

She taught at Burnt River School for four years before shifting to a career in retail, and she understands the challenges of living in a small rural town.

“I think community is important,” Wright said.

Wright and Wenzler, 50, live about 7 miles north of town, near Unity Reservoir.

She said they plan to expand their business soon to add something the Strattons also sold — gasoline.

Wright said that although she understood the prominent position Stratton’s Store played in Unity’s history, she was still surprised at the reaction from local residents after opening the new store.

“I had no idea how positive the response would be,” she said. “People are so happy. They smile as soon as they walk in the door, from the great memories they have. It’s been amazing.”

Stratton’s Store history

Larry Dean Stratton, who was born May 21, 1941, in Prairie City, moved with his family to Unity in 1944. He stayed for more than three quarters of a century.

Larry Dean was the first mayor of Unity when the town, which dates to around 1891, was incorporated in 1972. Stratton contributed a brief autobiography for “Lest We Forget: Remembrances of Upper Burnt River,” the peerless local history compiled by the Burnt River History Group and published by the Burnt River Heritage Center in 2007. The nearly 600-page volume is a comprehensive chronicle of the Burnt River country’s history.

According to an account in “Lest We Forget,” the business that became Stratton’s Store started in 1898 when a store was built to replace Unity’s first store, which was built several years earlier but burned. The newer store was sold multiple times and became known as the Burnt River Mercantile. Fred and Cleta DeMeyer owned the business from 1946 until 1965, when they sold it to Homer and Tot Stratton.

This was not the couple’s first business venture in Unity.

According to “Lest We Forget,” the Strattons had owned a gas station and general store across the street from the Burnt River Mercantile since March 1945. The Strattons bought the former business, called the General Supply Store, from Frank Elms.

Larry Dean Stratton, in the autobiography he wrote for “Lest We Forget,” said his parents asked him in 1965 to be a partner in the new venture, what became Stratton’s Store.

Larry Dean continued to operate the store after his parents died — his father on April 12, 1991, and his mother on June 19, 1993. His parents, married for 55 years, were buried at the Canyon City Cemetery.

Larry Dean closed Stratton’s Store on Dec. 31, 2003, and, as he wrote in “Lest We Forget,” “retired to a slower pace.”

An icon in the community

Stratton surely deserved a more leisurely life, considering the countless hours he devoted to Unity over many decades, Mark Bennett, a former Baker County commissioner who has a cattle ranch near the town and has lived there since 1989, said in a 2023 interview after Stratton’s death.

Stratton’s roster of volunteer activities was nearly as long as the list of items he stocked in his store.

“He was just an icon in the community,” Bennett said of Stratton. “He was constantly involved in things. You could always count on him.”

Besides serving as Unity’s first official mayor, Stratton was instrumental in the local fire department, which Bennett said was Stratton’s “real passion.”

Stratton also helped the city improve its sewage disposal system after local wells had been polluted, Bennett said.

He also recalls seeing Stratton, on frigid mornings, plowing snow from the parking lots of Unity churches, the city hall and the solid waste transfer station.

Bennett said Stratton never sought recognition for these and many other services.

“It was really important to him that things were going well in the community,” Bennett said. “He really cared about the place.”

In that sense, Stratton carried on the legacy that his parents started, said Bev Duby, who was a classmate of Stratton’s at Hereford Union High School.

She laughed as she recounted a favorite anecdote about Homer Stratton, Larry Dean’s father.

Duby said Unity kids would collect soda cans and bottles near the lumber mill, then take them to Stratton’s Store to collect the deposit.

She said Homer Stratton would then scatter those containers in the same area around the mill, ensuring the children could continue to put nickels and dimes in their pockets.

And since some of those kids undoubtedly swapped some of those coins for candy at Stratton’s Store, Homer was, in effect, subsidizing their affinity for sweets.

Homer also bought basketball uniforms for the Burnt River School and contributed in many other ways to the school and to other activities that benefited local youth, Duby said.

“I can’t emphasize enough how community oriented the Strattons were, and Larry Dean continued that,” she said. “It was just a wonderful community, and the Strattons were an integral part of that.”