Cool History!

On a side street between downtown Helena and the Capitol building, an unassuming former storefront belies an important story for Montana African-American history. Dorsey’s Grocery Store was once a thriving business run by Walter and Almira Dorsey, two of the town’s leading Black citizens. Both were Easterners who struck out for Montana from Maryland and Missouri about 1890. They landed in the capitol city and were married on New Year’s Eve, 1891, beginning a life together as prominent members of Helena’s Black community. In a time when neighborhood groceries were common, Walter and Almira launched their own. They first rented a place on Rodney Street and then moved to 843 8th Ave, living in the back and selling groceries up front for 5 years. Their industriousness paid off, giving them the chance to buy a vacant lot down the street at 900 8th Avenue and create a permanent home for themselves, their family, and their business. Walter and Almira Dorsey assembled their grocery store in 1904 by moving a store building and a gracious Victorian house onto the property and joining them together. The W. R. Grocery was soon open for business with a full range of “Groceries, Provisions, Salt Meats, Canned Goods, Fruits, Vegetables, Confectionary, Tin and Granite Ware.” Almira and family ran the store until 1932, after which it sold and continued as a grocery until 1961. In more recent times, many Helenans knew the store as the Wise Penny, a second-hand shop that operated here from the mid-1960s to 2002, while for a time, the house and carriage house behind held a photography studio and magic shop.