text: An Old Friend on Route 7 Is Fading Away - The New York Times
  N.Y. / Region|An Old Friend on Route 7 Is Fading Away
  An Old Friend on Route 7 Is Fading Away
  By ELIZABETH MAKEROCT. 20, 2002
  THERE is a little log cabin tucked in the trees along Route 7 in Danbury that has been making motorists break and do double takes for 50 years. Many turn around and pull into the lumpy dirt parking lot, curiously sizing up the concrete deer, the wooden teepees and totem poles, the giant Indian statues out front.Some who have stopped have kept coming back. Fans from all over the country have made an institution of the quirky cabin called the Indian Trading Post.But sometime soon, probably by early November, the dark brown building with the red and yellow lettered sign will be closed for good, the owner said, because Route 7 is scheduled to be widened from two lanes to four this spring, running right through the property's parking lot and close to the cabin's front porch.''There's just no way we could stay here,'' said Joan Baynor Jackson, who opened the shop with her husband, Harold, in 1952. Continue reading the main story
  At 89, Ms. Jackson said she was ready to retire, but always had hopes that a family member might take over the shop, until the long talked about road project became imminent.
  Since her going-out-of-business sign went up in August, people have been pouring into the shop, full of questions and concerns about what will happen to the beloved little landmark.''What do I plan to do?'' Ms. Jackson, a feisty white-haired woman, snapped as she responded to a customer's question one recent weekend. ''I'll tell you what I plan to do. Anything I want. How's that?''She directed the customer to a sign on the wall that said it all: ''Thanks for your patronage these 50 years! Rte. 7's widening has made it impossible to continue.'' Then, in bold, underlined print, ''And thanks for not asking too many questions! I've answered the same ones 1,000,000 + times. The owner.''
  Indeed, a half-century of service in a boutique so unusual for the East Coast has made Ms. Jackson somewhat snarky, but her clients do not care.
  ''I think she's adorable,'' said Wendy Lionetti of Ridgefield, plunking down on a counter the last arm load of merchandise she would buy from the store. ''I can't imagine her gone; I can't imagine this place gone. I've been coming here for 10 years, since my son, Braden, was 4. I used to buy tomahawks and these little make-it-yourself bow and arrow kits for him.''
  She reached over to a basket filled with souvenir photo prints of the Indian Trading Post dated 1952 to 2002, which Ms. Jackson is selling for $9.98 each. ''And I'll take one of these,'' she said. ''I have to have one. I'm so sad I could cry.''Another passionate patron was Pat Kenefic of Redding, who browsed through brightly beaded thunderbird belts, turquoise jewelry, feathery dream catchers, old wooden snow shoes, deer hide drums and soft suede moccasins, touching each as if to soak in the sensation before the store faded into history.''My parents and I used to come here when I was a kid, and I'm 47 now,'' Ms. Kenefic said. ''We used to cruise up here from Stratford because it was the country backwoods, the neatest, most enchanted place in the world.''
  She walked around the creaky wood floor of the 400-square-foot shop and breathed deep.''Even the smell is the same as it was back then,'' she said, ''this sort of musty, indescribable sense of the past.''
  Ms. Jackson handed over a beaded bear claw necklace from a big glass case, and Ms. Kenefic clasped it under her long blonde hair.''This is perfect,'' she said. ''This is the kind of funky, great, unusual stuff they have that you can't get anywhere else around here.''
  The idea for such a novel shop came in the late 1940's when Ms. Jackson and her husband took a trip to Vermont and discovered a store selling Native American clothing and knickknacks.''We thought it was interesting because it was different,'' Ms. Jackson said. ''So we decided to open one like it. We started with $1,500 of inventory and we sold out immediately. People loved it. Pretty soon, we had the largest selection of moccasins on the East Coast. We used to hear stories from people who would go to Europe and see moccasins on someone else's feet and they'd ask, 'Did you get those at the Indian Trading Post in Danbury?' A lot of people got sort of connected that way.''
  Ms. Jackson fiddled with a giant coral squash blossom necklace around her neck (which, she said was for sale for $1,500) and reminisced about the property's history. Her father-in-law, William Jackson, bought the 30-acre parcel in 1912 and built a summer resort with eight cottages, each with its own dock on the spring-fed lake in back known as Jackson Pond.
  The cabin that houses the store was built in 1929. ''It used to be a little restaurant for the cottage guests, with hot dogs and such, up through the 1940's,'' Ms. Jackson said.It became the Indian Trading Post on Aug. 15, 1952, ''and I don't think I've had had a vacation since,'' she added, pulling out a pair of moccasins for a shopper from a ceiling-high stack of shoe boxes.
  ''The whole Route 7 thing has made it impossible to ever take a break,'' said her daughter, Barbara (BB) Jackson, who owns a public relations business and helps out in the store on weekends.
  ''We've been fighting this for 16 years and we've gotten nowhere. The state is taking almost two acres of frontage and putting in two new northbound lanes right through here,'' Barbara Jackson said, waving her hand across the parking lot. ''How are you supposed to operate with a four-lane highway right under your nose? How are you supposed to make a left turn out of here without being killed?''According to Thomas Harley, the principal engineer for the State Department of Transportation, widening Route 7 will actually make it easier and safer to enter and exit the site and other businesses along the road. The project will widen Route 7 from the Ridgefield town line for about 2.5 miles to the Super 7 expressway near the Danbury Fair Mall. This section, expected to cost $26 million, is part of a larger $1.4 billion plan to widen Route 7 from Norwalk to New Milford.
  ''They're taking our parking lot, and we don't have a whole lot of options for moving it,'' Barbara Jackson said, pointing out that even though the property includes 30 acres, much of it is slopes and wetlands. ''We own Moses Mountain out back here, and this gorgeous spring-fed pond, but the commercial value of the property is being diminished by the state. Every time our realtor shows the property, he's got to show them, inch by inch, what's left. We're stuck between a rock and a hard place, literally.''
  The realtor, Hal Kurfehs of Coldwell Banker Commercial in Bethel, said: ''I've had this property listed for over five years now, but there's been this constant cloud hanging over it. Everyone wants to know what's going to happen to Route 7? How much is the state going to take?''Mr. Kurfehs said he has been bombarded with inquiries for the property, which is now listed at $1.1 million. ''I've got a list of probably 25 people who are seriously interested: car dealerships, retail strip centers, restaurants, a multilevel hotel, the whole gamut of things,'' he said.
  The transportation department paid Ms. Jackson $231,000 for the 1.6 acres of frontage and also paid her about $700,000 several years ago when it acquired seven of her acres across the pond to build what had been planned as a Route 7 expressway. (The department has since abandoned the expressway plan.)Barbara Jackson, a fifth-generation Danbury native, said she had hoped to take over the store when her mother retired. ''But now, we just want to get out of here,'' she added.Just then, her mother perked up and said, ''Maybe I'll go back and dance with the Follies,'' adding that show business had been a big part of her life when she danced with the Ziegfeld Follies in the 1930's.
  The closing sign recently prompted a commuter, Kari Cooper of Danbury, to stop in the store after all these years of driving by.
  ''I've gone by this store a thousand times,'' said Ms. Cooper, 37, a freelance graphic designer who commutes to companies in lower Fairfield County. ''This place is a total landmark. It's one of those old historic places that's been here forever that you sort of take for granted will always be here.''Ms. Cooper said she has watched the evolution of the storefront as vandals made their mark over the years. Some letters are missing from the sign, the 12-foot-tall teepee has disintegrated down to its wooden frame and the concrete deer has been beheaded.''It all used to be so charming,'' Barbara Jackson said sadly. ''Its glory days were great. But it's on its last hurrah.'' Continue reading the main story