McGill Drug Store Museum

Location: #11 Fourth Street (Hwy 93). On east side of Main Street in McGill.

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The McGill Drug Store was an operating drug store from 1915 until 1979 when the windows were boarded up after Kennecott Copper closed down. But instead of getting rid of all the inventory, owner Elsa Culbert left everything just as it was and it sat untouched until the mid-1990s.

It was then that Richard Goddard, an anthropologist, was working on a study of McGill. He met Culbert and following her death in 1994, he urged her sons to sign the building and all its contents over to the White Pine Public Museum.

Then, with help from local volunteers including Daniel Braddock, Goddard began an inventory of the store. They logged more than 30,000 items.

After Goddard moved to Idaho, Braddock became the curator and caretaker of what is now the McGill Historical Drug Store Museum.

Now the museum gets thousands of visitors stopping to take a trip down memory lane as they see everything from jars of Dippity-Do (industrial-strength hair-styling get) to prescription records going all the way back to 1915.

This is also a research facility for anyone studying prescription medications and how medical and prescription practices have changed through the years.

Sources: American Profile Magazine, article by Richard Menzies.