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North Coast Current

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News online for Encinitas, Calif.

North Coast Current

News online for Encinitas, Calif.

North Coast Current

A Sears catalog cover from the early 1960s. (Goodwill image)

Historically Speaking: The nation’s first mail order general stores

Tom Morrow May 10, 2023
Before there were roads connecting the Atlantic to the Pacific and Mexico to Alaska, you could buy goods delivered via railroad freight and/or the U.S. mail. This was more than a century before the Internet, all courtesy of the mail-order catalogs of the Montgomery Ward and Sears & Roebuck companies. It was the Amazon of yesteryear.
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