...On May 6, 1921, Vivian Troop sent the first carrier of money through the Merc's vacuo-pressure system.
By then, the store on the corner of Higgins Avenue and East Front Street that we know in 2010 as Macy's owned a long-established reputation as one of the biggest, busiest and most successful enterprises between Minneapolis and Seattle.
"The Merc was the place that people came to shop from all over the state," said Ty Robinson of Missoula, the Mercantile's lawyer from 1948 to 1970. "It was the linchpin of Missoula, no question about it."...
According to local historians, the precursor to the Missoula Merc was built in 1865 or 1866, a year or two after Missoula was founded, when Bonner, Eddy and Daniel Welch arrived by pack train from Walla Walla, Wash. They raised a small log building on West Front, just west of the current Florence Building, and called it Bonner and Welch.
Construction of a larger building at the present site of Macy's began in 1877, the same year that residents of Missoula frightened by Nez Perce Indians in their flight from federal troops found shelter in the half-finished store.
Hammond took charge of the new store, by then called Eddy, Hammond and Co.
Among those he recruited from his native New Brunswick to help was his nephew, McLeod, who arrived by stagecoach on March 29, 1880, and went to work at the store the next day.
The store was incorporated as the Missoula Mercantile Co. in 1885, and McLeod became store manager. He rose to vice president (1889) and president (1906) of the Missoula Mercantile enterprises, and receives much of the credit for building "The Octopus."
McLeod retired in 1941, but his son, Walter, took over the Missoula store until his own retirement in 1962. Walter died the following year, ending an era of McLeods in leadership positions of the Mercantile that stretched more than 80 years.
Excerpts From The Missoulian