Medicine Mound had long been a thriving village when brothers-in-law Lon L. Cobb and Ira Lee Hicks arrived with their families in 1927 and opened a general merchandise store. The store sold work clothes and clothing material, shoes, cotton sacks, groceries, and horse feed, and regular customers warmed themselves by the fire in winter while talking and playing checkers. In 1933, a fire all but destroyed the townsite, but Hicks and Cobb rebuilt that year with round granite cobblestones from Oklahoma. Lon L. Cobb died in 1942, and Hicks continued the business as one of the last to serve area residents and migrant agricultural workers. After Ira Lee Hicks died in 1966, the structure became a community gathering place and a Medicine Mound museum.