News

Sigurdson's Drug Store and its role in Bottineau's downtown business section

By Scott Wagar

03/04/2014

The site where Thompson Drug stands today holds a long history of being a drug store, which gained dominance as a drug store in the early 1900s when a young immigrant from Iceland came to Bottineau and opened a drug store which he and his family owned and operated for over 50 years.

Sigurdur Sigurdson, known as Sig to the local community, came to Bottineau from Minneapolis in 1912 and opened Sigurdson Drug Store on Main Street where Don Thompson continues to run his drug store today.

Sigurdson was born as Sigurdur Siem Simonson Islapson Sigurdson on Sept. 19, 1887 in Norvick, Iceland. At the age of 10, he migrated with his parents to Winyard, SK, Canada, and eventually came to America when his family settled northwest of Grand Forks in Mountain, N.D.

As a young man, Sigurdson went 15 miles southeast to Crystal, N.D., where he accepted a position in a drug store where he stocked shelves and worked as a handyman. While working in the drug store, he gained an interest in becoming a pharmacist and made the decision to attend school in Valley City and started an apprenticeship at the Dakota Drug Store in the community.

Once his apprenticeship concluded, he studied pharmacy at North Dakota State University and completed his studies at the Drew School of Pharmacy in Minneapolis.

Upon graduating from Drew, he moved to Bottineau and purchased a drug store from an individual on the Main Street site and started his business. (The owner of the drug store in 1912 is unknown, but according to the 1910 Bottineau County Atlas, a drug store was already located in that location when Sigurdson purchased the building and property.)

Sigurdson’s drug store was a typical drug store of the 1900s where he not only compounded and dispensed medications, but also sold a number of merchandise items, some of which included  confectioneries, tobacco, cosmetics, perfume, clothing, school and office supplies, newspapers and magazine, groceries and refreshments.

Sigurdson’s Drug, like many drug stores of the time, also had a soda fountain which served ice cream treats and colas. The soda fountain in his store was well known in Bottineau and many patrons from the local area came in to enjoy Sig’s treats at his counter which had a long row of stools for shoppers to sit down and enjoy some ice cream.

The soda fountain played a major role in the livelihood of the store and community and brought in kids, teenagers and adults alike for social outings, especially on Saturday evenings when the farm and townspeople came together to visit and shop in the stores.

In the early days of drug stores, the business was important in all communities, especially in rural areas where medications were hard to obtain. However, for pharmacists in small towns, selling only pharmaceuticals, wasn’t enough income to keep their stores open. So, they filled their stores with an abundance of merchandise and eateries to make a decent living to keep their stores open.    

As a pharmacist, Sigurdson had a number of duties in his store when it came to preparing and selling pharmaceuticals. He also worked through some of the worse epidemics known in the world at that time like tuberculosis, polio, diptheria, whooping cough, chicken pox, measles, typhus, cholera and a number of pandemic flus, which in Sig’s future would affect his own life personally.
In his private life, Sigurdson married Kathryn Scully in 1918.

Shortly after they were married, the 1918 Influenza spread across the world, killing over 30 million people, including Kathryn when the virus made its way in Bottineau.

Four years later, Sigurdson married Mena Krogen who was working in the office of Dr. J.A. Johnson, a local physician in the area who came to Bottineau from Cook County Hospital in Chicago.

Once Mena married Sig she went to work in the drug store. The Sigurdsons had two sons, Robert and John. Robert became a pharmacist and worked in his father’s drug store, while John became an architect and lived in LaMesa, Calif.

Sigurdson operated his drug store until 1962 when Robert purchased the store and became a second generation pharmacist in Sigurdson’s family. He and Mena spent their winters in Arizona but continued to live in Bottineau during the summer months until their deaths. Mena died in 1969 and Sig in 1974.

Robert owned and operated Sigurdson’s Drug until 1971 when he sold the business and moved to Phoenix.

Since the early 1900s, the building has stayed a drug store with a variety of pharmacists owning the building. The structure of the edifice has changed here and there over the years, but how it conducts business has stayed closely the same from its early days.

The drug store also holds the honor of never being a corporate drug store in its century old history, staying an independently owned drug store for well over a 100 years.

Today, Thompson’s Drug store still holds to the traditions of historical drug stores of the early 1900s with confectioneries, merchandise, groceries and pharmaceuticals.

The only thing missing is the soda fountain. However, if one listens closely while in the store, one can still sense Sig and his customers as they created a drug store that brought medical assistance, enjoyable commodities and fun times to Bottineau’s downtown business district.