Lavina began at a stage line stop established by T. C. Power in 1883, and after the Milwaukee Road arrived in 1907 the town drew new businesses, including the Slayton Mercantile Co., founded in 1908 by Daniel Webster Slayton. Slayton was a prominent sheep rancher, county commissioner, later state senator, and founder of a sheep shearing business and the First Bank of Lavina. As the town grew as an agricultural and economic center, Slayton’s wood-frame mercantile burned to the ground in June 1910. Though the $60,000 business was insured for only one-third of its value, he immediately rebuilt a larger fireproof building, using exterior brick supplied by F. W. Handel and an inner layer fired in a kiln near the Musselshell River. The present two-story mercantile, built in the classic Western commercial style, opened in the fall of 1910 and became central to the community, providing mail, groceries, school supplies, horse tack, and after 1916 Ford automobiles, farm implements, and Titan tractors. Slayton, who was instrumental in the creation of Musselshell County in 1910, remained active in politics, ranching, and business affairs and kept an interest in the mercantile until his death in 1927. The building remains a local gathering place and preserves original features associated with Montana’s homestead era.