The Colebrook Store (Closed)

Colesing the Brook
The Colebrook Store, Colebrook
July 2024

The store closed at the end of 2024… but has closed and re-opened a few times this century. Keep me updated.

Not familiar with Colebrook, Connecticut? Let me introduce you to the town’s bustling center:

You’ve got your historical society museum attached to the post office attached to the town hall attached to the senior center. There’s a stunning white colonial across the street which is next to the historic Colebrook Store which sits across the intersection from the beautiful Colebrook Congregational Church and a couple more stately white colonials. The town’s school is behind the church.

That’s the entirety of downtown Colebrook, folks.

Now, I love Colebrook. And I’m sure the people who choose to live there love it as well. It is rural New Hampshire in northern Connecticut.

And one thing rural New Hampshire has are long-standing general stores.

I did not know this place was going to close at the end of 2024 and when I learned that it had, I was bummed. I’m an outsider, sure, but I always equated the town with this store. And for good reason – it’s been here forever.

The original Colebrook Store opened in 1803 and that building still exists – it’s the smaller building behind the current larger one. There was a need for a larger store almost immediately and the first story of the current building was completed in 1812. At the time, the two buildings were the only two stores in town.

Which… isn’t that still the case?

The store changed ownership many times over the next 200 years, but I feel the need to point out there was one owner from 1990-1997 named Richard Blitz. I really hope he was called Rich or Richard during his life.

Things turned a bit ugly in 2007 – in two ways: one, the owner was mad:

At the beginning of July, Lora Murphy, who has had the store on the market for several months, closes, and places signs reading “Closed for Vacation”. She had no apparent intent to reopen, as one of the display cases had been sold, the interior was dirty and in disrepair, the few remaining newspapers (dated July 6th) were on the counter. There were very few items of any category left on the shelves. A week or so before Murphy had written a caustic article in the Winsted Journal blaming the town and in particular the town government for not supporting her store. She implied that the town should supply some form of financial support to help keep the operation in business.

And two, this closure marked the end of what really made The Colebrook Store special: Up until 2007, the store had been the oldest continuously operated general store in the State of Connecticut, encompassing a span stretching from 1812 until 2007, 195 years. Impressive to say the least.

The store was vacant until the summer of 2013, when the Colebrook Preservation Society purchased the shop. You’d think everything would be hunky-dory after that, but no.

That summer, the store re-opened under the society’s ownership, with operator Miriam Briggs at the helm. As is customary, Briggs and her family lived above the store. After nine months, Briggs again closed the shop. She and the preservation society had difficulty cooperating. Briggs told monthly non-profit news outlet Norfolk Now that the society was “too intrusive” and that she was treated “terribly.”

Such drama in Colebrook! Who knew? Two more proprietors, both of whom lasted less than a year came and went at some point during that time.

Another owner, Jodi Marinelli, was found and she moved into the space above the store with her family and got straight to work. Marinelli revived the place. She cleaned it up, repainted it, and made it into a true hub for the town when it reopened in 2014. Marinelli added a deli, served breakfast and lunch sandwiches, pastries and coffee, soups and chili, and homemade deli salads. She added a catering business and some grocery necessities so locals could stay local.

By all accounts, Marinelli brought glory back to The Colebrook Store. For five years.

Enter Dan Wilcox. The most recent savior of this institution. He was local; with family in the area since 1610(!) according to a Waterbury Republican-American article. Thomas Hooker didn’t come to Hartford until 1636. Sure, there were a few white people here before then, but in the New Hartford area as the article claims? I dunno…

Regardless, Wilcox expanded the deli, the breakfast and lunch menus, and the grocery items. He’s a trained chef and the buzz was that his pizzas and hot items were pretty darn great. The store hummed along and every time I passed it, there were cars and bicycles parked in front. I popped in a couple times over his tenure and was always smitten/astonished by how… how old everything seemed. Maybe “quaint” is a better word.

The store was (and is) still owned by the Colebrook Preservation Society which has its pluses (they pay for upgrades, cheap rent) and minuses (they control things).

My plan was (and is) to “complete” Colebrook in 2025 and this was (and maybe is, if a new proprietor is found in time) where I was always going to celebrate that completion – as literally the only place in town one can order and be served a meal of some sort. As it stands in early 2025, this isn’t possible. I really wanted one of their creative pizzas too.

But I did get to enjoy the store’s legendary gargantuan eclairs on two occasions in 2024. No picture can convey the size (and deliciousness) of these things.

Hopefully those eclairs won’t be my last memory of this institution. While it lost its “oldest continuously operated general store in the state” title, it’s still one of the oldest businesses, period. IF it reopens.

(Please reopen.)

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