PONDOSA — Bob Bennett is just three years older than the Pondosa Store, where he’s been selling cold drinks and ice cream since 1983.

Bob, 98, was born in 1923.

The store was built in 1926 to serve Pondosa, a mill town about 25 miles north of Baker City on Highway 203, a couple miles from Medical Springs.

Pondosa as a town no longer exists.

But Bob is happy to share the story with anyone who happens by his remote store.

Although Pondosa was home to 500 people at one time, it was wholly dependent on a lumber mill.

The mill closed in 1959 — just one year after the area was named the geographic center of the United States with the addition of Alaska and Hawaii.

“They were going to name it Centerville, USA, but the town closed up,” said Lori Brock, Bob’s daughter who moved to Pondosa several years ago.

Lester Gaddy, brother to Bob’s wife Jean, saw an advertisement in the Eugene Register-Guard.

“The whole town. For sale,” Lori said.

Lester, she said, “traded three city blocks for the whole town.”

Lester died in 1982, and left his property to his only sister, Jean.

Jean and Bob Bennett faced a decision: sell the Pondosa property, or sell their Eugene home and move to Eastern Oregon.

“I had a debate on it,” Bob remembers.

He’d lived in Eugene all of his life, and had recently retired from Georgia-Pacific, a timber company.

But he was tired of the rain west of the Cascades.

So the couple sold their place and moved to Pondosa in 1983.

“All this nice sunshine and fresh air,” Bob said. “It was a good idea. I kept busy over here.”

Although the houses had been sold and moved to other towns nearby, Bob discovered a huge pile of sawdust left at the mill site.

He can point it out, too, on the aerial photo of Pondosa that hangs on the wall of the store.

He set to grinding up that sawdust and started selling it as garden mulch.

“I’d deliver it in five-yard loads all over,” he said.

That kept him busy for a while, until the pile finally disappeared.

“It took 20 years,” he said with a smile.

While he worked at that, Jean ran the store.

“People yet talk about her. She’d visit with everybody,” Bob said.

Jean passed away in 2015. During her illness, she and Bob lived in Nampa with Lori and her husband, Dennis.

After Jean died, Lori thought her father might stay in Idaho with her.

But he returned to Pondosa in the winter of 2015.

The store is warmed by three wood stoves, so Lori and Dennis came as often as they could to help haul firewood and move the snowdrifts.

That lasted only a few months before they decided, in February 2016, to move to Pondosa.

Prior to her marriage, Lori had lived in Pondosa for a time, and she met her husband in Baker City.

“Twenty-five years later, we’re back,” she said with a smile.

The Pondosa store has 15 bedrooms. During the days of the mill operation, the 12 bedrooms upstairs were rented to single men — two to a room. They all shared one bathroom.

In addition to the store, the town boasted a gas station, meat market, and post office.

“That old vault is where they stored the payroll,” Bob said, pointing to a structure just across the driveway from the store.

Although the store was closed for a bit when Jean was sick, and again in the depths of the coronavirus pandemic, it is now open seven days a week.

“Once we got Dad vaccinated, we opened back up,” Lori said.

Lori, who is a registered nurse, administered her dad’s second dose, on Feb. 11 at the Baker County Health Department in Baker City.

“We’re here and adding to our business,” Bob added.

Lori said the store stocks “mostly refreshments and snacks” — soda, ice cream, candy and chips. But Bob can serve up burritos, too, and he offers some essentials such as flour, sugar, milk and eggs.

They’ve also applied for a liquor license.

The store is open daily from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Offerings have expanded outside as well. This spring they developed three campsites, and Lori posted the availability on the website hipcamp.com.

“We get campers off the freeway,” Lori said. “North Carolina is the farthest away.”

Between the store and campsites is a deck surrounded by trees and flowers in an area dedicated to Jean’s memory.

“We fixed up Mom’s little park,” Lori said.

She said it’s proven popular as a resting spot for touring car clubs as well as travelers on motorcycles and bicycles.

“It’s like a little oasis in the middle of the desert,” Lori said.

For updates on the store, check the Facebook page: Pondosa, Oregon: the geographic center of the United States.