Archives West Finding Aid

Fearing the changes that the railroad would soon bring to Utah, Brigham Young sought to organize a business where the Latter-day Saints could trade solely within the Mormon community. The Zion's Cooperative Mercantile Institution (ZCMI) was established to benefit the Mormon community. Never a cooperative in its true sense, ZCMI nonetheless provided a variety of products to Mormons by Mormons. Starting with a scattering of locations through the Mormon-colonized area, many services were centralized under one roof in downtown Salt Lake City in 1870. It is this centralization of services in one building that caused one historian to remark that ZCMI was the oldest department store in America. The store eventually split from its cooperative origins and by the time the company was a century old, it was rapidly expanding across the Intermountain West. However, the chain was not able to sustain itself and in 2000 it was bought by the company, Meier and Frank. In 2006, Meier and Frank was replaced by Macy's.