At the dawn of the twentieth century, Thompson Falls experienced growth and new stability marked by several substantial brick buildings, including Charles Weber’s general mercantile store, the town’s second building made of locally manufactured masonry. Built between 1900 and 1903, the building’s combined residential and commercial use and simple design reflected the utilitarian architecture of small western towns, with only a continuous band of inlaid fleur-de-lis below the roofline as ornament. In 1906, Weber added a cold air well and storehouse at the rear, the town’s last remaining commercial evidence of a natural phenomenon early settlers had used after discovering currents of icy air, ranging from 55 to 33 degrees Fahrenheit, issuing from porous gravel thirty to forty feet below ground while digging wells for water. Nearly every business owner eventually used this resource by building an insulated shed over a cold air shaft to store perishable goods, until backwater from a hydroelectric dam built less than a decade later blocked the cold air currents. From the early 1900s to 1917, Weber’s service as postmaster made the store a daily destination, and it remained important in the community’s economic life until his death in 1940.