During the 1857 trading season, this building housed a store on the edge of Council Grove that offered the last chance for traders bound for Santa Fe to buy supplies before entering the homelands of the Cheyenne, Arapaho, Comanche, Kiowa, and Plains Apache Indians. Beyond the security of the Council Grove settlement lay semi-arid, open plains, and only limited supplies could be found at isolated trading ranches along the trail, with the next supply station to the west one to two days away. Its advertising slogan was "Last Chance for Beans, Bacon and Whiskey."