Mark Lunt, one of the owners and store director of the Island Market, puts his all into cutting the ribbon on Wednesday, Sept. 21, 2022, commemorating the store’s 40th year.
LOGAN – Last year, the general manager and owner of Logan’s Island Market, Steve Emile and Mark Lunt, reached out to the Utah State University History Department hoping to learn about the store’s past.
That led to a class project for eight undergraduate researchers in Rebecca Anderson’s spring 2022 public history course.
Anderson said the students worked through the complicated history of a 100-year old building as the project took on a history of its own.
“These students really took this on and they did the work,” Anderson said. “They went to the county recorder’s office, they went to the tax assessment stuff. They did it. They looked at newspaper articles. So, they actually are the experts on the Island Market; I’m not really the expert. They dug up the history.”
Lunt, the market’s owner the last nine years, said among the extensive history the students uncovered were all the names it went by from the time it started as a butcher shop in 1919 and later became the East Center Street Grocery Store.
“And then I understand the LDS church was where Wilson Elementary is now, so it was the 7th Ward Grocery,” Lunt said. “Then I believe it was in the late 1930s a family, the Bergens, purchased it and made it the Bergen Cash Grocery. Then it was the Hansen Grocery. Then with some changes in the industry, Independent Grocer’s Association formed and they are the first ones to call it the Island Market.”
Later it was the Countryside Market before becoming the Island Market for good in the 1980s.
One of the student researchers, Sydney Lehenbauer, was chosen as exhibit curator for the digital exhibit.
“Just so many people have great connections to that market,” Lehenbauer said. “So I decided this would be a really good opportunity to kind of capture the community experience with this place by including community stories. I think that’s become my favorite of what we’ve discovered.”
A special ribbon cutting took place at the market on Wednesday to commemorate the research and the store’s 40th year.
A digital exhibit of the Island Market is available online.