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Author:
Ellen Terrell, Business Librarian, Science & Business Reading Room
Created: December 2024
James Cash Penney was born in Missouri in 1875. After an aborted college experience and the death of his father, Penney began working as a store clerk. He moved to Longmont, Colorado External where he began working in Thomas Callahan and Guy Johnson’s Golden Rule store, but Penney had higher aspirations.
On April 14, 1902, Penney opened his own Golden Rule store in Kemmerer, Wyoming and within just a few years he bought out Callahan and Johnson to become the sole owner of three stores. In April 1914, the J. C. Penney Company was incorporated1 though the stores were still doing business as Golden Rule. By 1915, the headquarters moved to New York City and company advertising increasingly used JC Penney as part of the ad copy. Penney opened more stores east of the Mississippi River, and by 1916, there were over 120 stores2 nationwide, mostly concentrated in the west. By the eve of the stock market crash of 1929, there were hundreds of stores and an expanded merchandise selection.
Penney’s company barely survived the Depression, but they did, and by 1959, there were over 1,700 stores.3 Over the next decade, with the advent of the shopping mall, many JCPenney stores became anchor tenants in these new malls and the company launched a mail order catalog. James Cash Penney died in February 1971, but the company continued to do well and open more stores. It was still quite active through the 1970s and early 1980s when, in April 1987, they announced the headquarters was moving to Plano, Texas.
The company expanded throughout the 1980s and 1990s through various acquisitions and international deals, but the arrival of the internet meant trouble on the horizon for bricks-and-mortar stores like JCPenney. The company started closing stores and shut their catalog down. By 2010, part of the company was sold, even more stores were closed, and many employees were laid off. JCPenney continued to struggle, and in May 2020, it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Later that year, Brookfield Property Partners and Simon Property Group agreed to purchase it. In 2025, the company continues to sell via retail stores and online and on January 9, 2025, it was announced that a new company, Catalyst Brands, was going to be formed as a joint venture between JCPenney and Sparc Group, also backed by Simon, which owns Lucky Brand, Eddie Bauer, Nautica, and Aeropostale.4
In 1978, the National Park Service declared the J. C. Penney Historic District located on the southern edge of downtown Kemmerer, a National Historic Landmark District in recognition of creating one of the first national department store chains.
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