The Sioux Falls Paper Company was founded in 1894 in an old livery stable at 210 E. 10th St. Its owner, Louis W. Chambers, could see that a small community needed paper products for many and varied reasons. The town’s bakers needed wax paper for wrapping bread and other edible items. New houses being built needed both felt and tar paper. Businesses needed forms for invoices and receipts, and households needed stationery and toilet paper.
Louis Chambers was born about 1866 in Muscate, Iowa, a short distance southwest of Davenport on the Illinois border. He was the son of Vincent Chambers, Muscatine’s first lumber merchant. Louis was educated in the local schools and worked in the grocery business for eight years before leaving to seek his fortune in Minneapolis in 1889. He married Muscatine girl Anne T. Stockdale on October 4, 1893. A year later, the pair moved to Sioux Falls, where Louis established his business.
Sioux Falls Paper Co . started modestly with $3,000 in stock, roughly equivalent to $98,000 in 2022 dollars. Louis slowly built his territory, traveling to sell his products to other communities in the area -three states, plus parts of North Dakota and Nebraska. In addition to the paper needs of the region, every year he would order a train car full of Christmas trees and holly. There was hardly any left until the end of the year.
More: Weather balloons and personal skating rinks: A Look Back at the creation of Raven Industries
Year after year, the business grew. By 1902, two in-house salesmen had been hired. In addition, the third seller travels to communities in the area and sells the company’s goods. Louis often did the traveling work himself, returning to the office to personally ensure that the items he had just sold were shipped. His wife was concerned that he was working too hard. By 1903, he had begun to show signs of paresis, or muscle weakness. His doctors agreed with Anne. Today, the cause of paresis can be traced to any number of afflictions, but in the early days of the 20th century, any treatment to alleviate the symptoms were purely experimental. For the most part, he was able to work through the condition. In December, 1905, he showed signs of improvement that offered hope for a full recovery, but by January those hopes were dashed.
On January 2nd, Louis was taken to the hospital in Yankton to convalesce. On January 23rd, Anne was sent away, as Louis’s condition was getting worse and he was not expected to last another day. She took the Omaha Road through Salem, arrived at his bedside from 5 p.m. He was careful enough that, with Anne’s help, he could arrange his affairs. Around 11 p.m., Louis died. He was 40 years old.
More: Sioux Falls’ oldest restaurant — The B&G Milkyway — is frozen in time, and that’s what makes it special
After this sad turn of events, the business was sold to Fred G. Kimball and Harry Pomeroy. These men took the business that Louis created and held onto it as it grew exponentially in the years to come. By 1910, The Sioux Falls Paper Company was incorporated with Kimball and Pomeroy, along with newcomer James Smeed, who had recently been added to the team.
In 1918, a location was opened in Fargo to help manage the company’s expanded operations. By late 1925, construction was underway for a new base of operations at the northeast corner of 1st Avenue and 11th Street. The new building will have 52,000 square feet of usable space with its own Rock Island Railroad spur at its back door. When finished, the building would have three floors above ground, and a basement. The main floor will be used for retail space, general offices, and showrooms to display the company’s many products to interested customers. The other floors will be used for the storage of its extensive stock. The new excavations opened to the public on July 31, 1926.
More: Rushmore Motel in Sioux Falls began life as a tourist park: Looking Back
Business grew and grew at a good clip for the Sioux Falls Paper Company. Its owners, upon retiring in 1946, sold the company to The Book Store. The building at 11th and 1st remained until the late 1970s, when Watertown’s Midland National Life expanded its operations to Sioux Falls. At that point, the city bought the old building of Sioux Falls Paper Company and gave it the old urban renewal treatment so Midland could have parking spaces.
