The Inter-Mountain photo by Edgar Kelley The Montrose Community Store will host an Open House on Saturday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. The special event will feature vendor demonstrations, raffles, baked goods and more.

MONTROSE — The Montrose Community Store will host an Open House Saturday that will feature vendor demonstrations, raffles and more as the community celebrates one year since the store officially opened its doors.

The public is invited to the Open House, which will take place from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. The store, which is run entirely by members of the Montrose community, will offer an array of candies and baked goods for sale during the event.

“We are hoping to get the word out that we are open and that we offer many different things,” Inetta Fluharty, who is part of the store’s management team, told The Inter-Mountain. “We are kind of out here and there’s not a lot of people, even people that live close, who know that there is a store open at this location.”

Fluharty said the community members opened the business as a convenience store designed to meet the needs of a remote, rural area. The store’s management team answers directly to town council.

“The main reason we wanted to open is because there is no place to get food out here,” Fluharty said. “If you are out of bread you have to go to either Parsons or Elkins, so basically we started because we wanted to have a place for crafters to put their stuff, but we also needed a place with basic items like bread, eggs and milk. We sell basically everything any convenience store would have, like aspirins, band aids, snacks and sodas.”

Fluharty said vendors provide all of the pantry items for the store, which is also approved through the Randolph/Elkins Health Department as a carry-out restaurant.

“We sell hot dogs daily and the sauce is homemade right on site,” Fluharty said. “Once a week we also offer a specialty soup, and at different times we have things like baked goods.”

The building the Community Store is housed in was vacant for years. The structure previously served as an IOOF lodge and a school house. In the early 1920s it was used for a special two-year junior high school, and during the aftermath of the 1944 Montrose tornado, the building was used as a hospital.

The structure was later used as a one-room public school, until it closed in 1975. Over the years, the store has been used for special meetings, bazaars, 4-H and community activities.

“The building itself has a lot of history,” Fluharty said. “When we opened there wasn’t a kitchen, so people from the town donated items we needed to get that set up. We are happy to have everything running the way we envisioned it, and we invite everyone from Montrose and the surrounding communities to stop by and see what all we have to offer.”

Vendor demonstrations will run from 11 a.m. through 4 p.m. during the event, which will feature instructions on how to decorate sugar cookies (11 a.m.), and how to make wood slice ornaments (noon), snowy candle jars (1 p.m.), beaded ink pens (2 p.m.), charcuterie boards ( 3 p.m.), and pysanky eggs (4 p.m.).

For more information, visit the Montrose Community Store’s Facebook page.