The transformation of Bailey Hollow to Dalton Borough was accompanied by and reflected in the community’s emerging status as the chief trading center for North Abington Township. Expansion and improvements in transportation, public facilities and amenities, emergency services, and residential access spurred a corresponding growth in commerce and other economic activity. Abel Gardner was one of the earliest figures who contributed to the development of business and enterprise in the borough.

Abel Gardner opened Dalton’s first general store in 1849, at the intersection of East Main Street and North Turnpike Road, across from the present (2022) Dalton Pharmacy and in what is now Platt Park. Before 1849, settlers had to buy their necessities at either a store operated by John Stone and William C. Green in Abington Centre (Waverly) or one owned by Davis Dean in West Abington. In the early 1850s a second general store was built by Norval and Leonidas R. Green on the road to Waverly. That store was originally located opposite the Dalton Hotel. In 1855, Norval Green built what became known as the Old Red Store. It stood where the Leach Block would eventually rise (more on that later), and it was ultimately moved to the back of the present Dalton Fire Company grounds. Change became frequent and constant, as Oscar P. Stoll and his father-in-law David Depue first bought out the Green store on Waverly Road and then, in 1872, purchased Abel Gardner’s store. Sealing the locational advantage of their enterprise, Stoll and Depue in 1888 built a new store where the Dalton Pharmacy is now, which housed a general grocery and dry goods business and, on the second floor, a meeting hall for the town’s social, civic and fraternal gatherings. The two entrepreneurs consummated the centering of their business by moving the old Abel Gardner building across North Turnpike Road and situating that structure next to their new building on North Turnpike. They then sold the Gardner building to Tom Purdon, who employed it as a drugstore for several years. Both buildings, the Stoll and Depue store and the Purdon drugstore, still stand today, with the Stoll structure now serving as the Dalton Pharmacy. Oscar Stoll turned to domestic priorities in 1890 by building a home for him and his family in the now-vacant original site of Abel Gardner’s store (Platt Park).

The building that houses today’s Dalton Pharmacy has seen many proprietors over the years since Oscar Stoll and David Depue first put it to use as a general store and dry goods business in 1888. Stoll and Depue sold the store in 1893 to Clarence D. Finn and Sons, who, in turn, sold it in 1902 to Theodore S. Kellogg. Kellogg’s partners were William Mosier and, later, Howard Hungerford, the latter of whom bought the general store in 1919. Hungerford sold the building in 1921 to Walter N. Butts and moved the dry goods portion of his business across Main Street to the Leach Block, while Walter Butts oversaw the general store in the Stoll building until 1926, when one of his clerks, Leo O’Hearn, purchased the operation and managed it until he, too, moved across the street to the Leach Block in 1941. After remaining vacant for most of World War II, the Stoll building was purchased in 1945 by Oscar G. Featherman. It was this gentleman who converted the structure into a pharmacy after having operated a pharmacy in the neighboring building, the same one that had served as Tom Purdon’s drugstore in 1889 and (when located across North Turnpike in what is now Platt Park) as Abel Gardner’s general store in 1849. W. Vincent Arlauskas, who was Oscar Featherman’s pharmacist, bought the business in 1958 and was succeeded in ownership in 1993 by the Dalton Pharmacy’s current proprietors, Mayur and Gita Patel.

As noted earlier, Norval Green opened a general store on Waverly Road in 1855 and then later moved to the corner of Main and South Turnpike Road, the site of today’s Veterans Memorial Park. Green’s new store was known as the “Little Red Store,” and among its busiest occupants were John and Edson Smith, who ran a butcher shop in the basement. John had established his trade as a wholesale butcher and meat dealer by selling his meat and other products from a horse-drawn wagon throughout the countryside. The Little Red Store also contained a barbershop on the first floor and a dwelling on the second. William A. Austin purchased the building in 1895, and it was he who moved the Little Red Store to the rear and began the construction of what eventually became known as the Lynch Block where the Little Red Store had originally stood. Local lore has it that Austin cut his hand off while chopping wood, received a large sum of insurance money, and used that money to bring his dream of a super-structure to fruition. It was a huge project and not one that would be completed until Charles E. Lee assumed ownership in 1898. The finished edifice was in three sections, with three stores on the street level and five apartments above. It became known as the Leach Block after Joseph Leach bought the property in 1910. Among the Leach Block’s early occupants were Ed Smith’s meat market, Howard Hungerford’s dry goods store, Leo O’Hearn’s grocery store, Elmer Driesbaugh’s greengrocer market, and the post office (which was frequently located in a store back in those days). The Leach Block was destroyed by fire in 1944, and in 1945 the Leach family sold the lot to Dalton Borough for a memorial park.

The Leach Block wasn’t the only mega-mart for shoppers in town as the 19th century gave way to the 20th. With the Leach Block commanding the east end of Main Street, J. Merton Purdy gave the west end of Dalton its own imposing commercial center, a Double Store by the creek, across from the intersection of Main and Mill Streets. Once the site of a Jones & Millard Cash Store, the property was the home of J. Merton Purdy’s general store. Fire destroyed that general store in 1895, and in 1896 Purdy replaced the one facility with two commercial buildings. One was what would much later become the Dalton Country Store, whose final existence as a grocery store would be under the purview of George Slocum, and that was sold in 2020 to Glenburn-based Constantino’s Catering & Events for repurposing as Bailey’s Café and Events. The other building, a new addition in 1896, occupied what became the later Dalton Country Store’s parking lot after a devastating fire struck the shopping complex in 1966 and reduced the Webster Ross (as the J. Merton Purdy property was known at the time) Double Store from two structures to the one that is situated there now.

Over the years from 1896 to 1966 this Double Store hosted a passing parade and bustling potpourri of merchants, restaurants, tradesmen, and specialty shops. Among them were:

J. Merton Purdy’s Grocery & Bakery, Howell’s  Fruit Market, the Haynes Confectionary Shop, Fred and Nora Erb’s Fedora Shop (they also opened an ice cream store and paper outlet in that location), Herman Taborne’s restaurant, an Acme Market, a General Union store, Slade’s Restaurant, Abram G. Twining’s general store, Driesbaugh’s Green Goods, an A & P, Parkton’s Plumbing Supplies (George Parkton started with a hardware and paint store, the Dalton Supply Company on Waverly Road), Irene Sportswear, Don Wescott’’s general store, Bud Zang’s coffee shop and ice cream nook, and George Hesser’s Market. In 1922, the Dalton Fire Company purchased a fire truck and housed it in the left-hand side of J. Merton Purdy’s store until 1928,when the Fire Company established headquarters at the old (1846) General Six Principal Baptist Church edifice on South Turnpike Road (now the Dalton Fire Company Hall). The Dalton Library reposed for a time in the Purdy complex, too, moving there from its original location in the Northern Electric Trolley building on Main Street in 1958.

Hardware stores, especially those that doubled as agricultural-supply outlets, were essential to a growing and farming community like Dalton. Already cited were Forest Mosier’s large barn facility across from the Dalton Hotel (1915) and George Parkton’s hardware and paint store on Waverly Road (1900). The first hardware and agricultural-supply store, though, was founded in 1873 by Calvin Briggs, a Civil War veteran, DL&W station agent and Dalton postmaster. His store would eventually become George Slocum’s Dalton Country Store. In 1887, Jasper Shoemaker built what would first serve as his son Samuel’s 2-story hardware store on Main Street (it would ultimately become the Dalton Borough Building). When Samuel Shoemaker decided to plant new roots out west, Edward H. Addelton bought the hardware store and ran it until 1924, when Ivan and Frances Wescott purchased his inventory for their own venture, and the Central State Bank moved into the Shoemaker building. The Wescotts’ venture was the purchase of a large 2-story frame hardware store that had been built by E. Howell Fisk on the corner of Main and Mill Streets in 1909.

Blacksmiths performed some of the functions of hardware stores in Dalton’s early days, particularly before the automobile supplanted the horse for commuter travel and the first rough trucks replaced wagons for hauling and deliveries. The town’s first blacksmith shop struck its anvils in 1852. It was operated by Daniel Patterson and was located near today’s Dalton Borough Building. George Franklin and William Vosburg had their blacksmith shop and foundry here in the 1880s. In 1898, Harvey Van Fleet opened a blacksmith shop near the entrance to Fuller Road … and, as noted earlier, Forest Mosier bought the Dalton Hotel’s stable barn in 1915 (across from the hotel) and used that for his blacksmithing business.

Having mentioned Ivan Wescott’s hardware store on the corner of Main an Mill Streets, it’s worthy of note that the hardware store occupied only part of the structure that had been raised by E. Howell Fisk back in 1909 and later expanded for additional uses (today, in 2022, the entire property is known as the Aikman building). While the part of the property that housed the hardware store stretched around the corner of West Main Street onto Mill Street, the rest of the property was fronted by Main Street and was put to many commercial and professional uses over the years. The left-hand side (facing Main Street) was home to enterprises like Recycle American Antiques and Conklin’s Coffee Shop, professionals services like Aikman’s architectural office, and many others. The right-hand side contained the Dalton Post Office for some time but usually was the spot where the bewhiskered and well-haired could challenge local barbers to ply their trade – from Otto and Fred Brauer in 1900 to the most recent, Robert Aikman (“Caveman”), who worked as the town’s barber from 1988 to 2018. Harper Wall, by the way, like the Brauers, was among the earliest tonsorial specialists in the borough, but his location was elsewhere on Main Street, on the north side of East Main, where Mike Reider once managed a watch shop.

Commercial progress was not inimical to farming interests as Dalton came of age in the late 1800s and the early decades of the 20th century. After all, the more developed and diverse an urban center is, the more opportunities that agrarians have to reach out for provisions an services they can’t supply for themselves, not to mention an expanding population’s beneficial impact on a farmer’s bottom line. That bottom line could reflect improved profits for dairy farmers. Among these rural resources were two high-grade dairy farms just before and after the turn of the 20th century. James H. Bunnell tended to his Homestead Dairy on Turnpike Road, and Loren W. Moyle introduced some competition in 1922 with the acreage and facilities he maintained along the Lackawanna Trail. Each conducted door-to-door delivery service for his milk, butter, and eggs. A typical bill for this service was one that Jim Bunnell gave to Ray Stevens in 1902: fifty quarts of milk for $2.50 and a dozen eggs for 26 cents!