It may seem hard to believe, but there is a grocery store in Colorado that opened its doors before the first shot of the Civil War was ever fired. Colorado wasn’t a state until 1876 but when statehood arrived the Romero Family had already been serving the residents of the San Luis Valley for nearly
two decades.
In the 165 years that have passed, eight generations of Romeros’ have overseen the business. A few other things have happened in the ensuing sixty-thousand-plus days, as well: the first flight, a couple of moon landings, a Black president and enough events to fill a ten-thousand page history book. But the store’s last owners, Felix and Claudia Romero, were getting old and ready to retire. Shuttering R&R Market was a very real possibility, one that would mean a significant hardship for Colorado’s oldest town along with the residents of nearby hamlets that dot the San Luis Valley.
Closing the R&R would mean a two-hour round trip to Taos, New Mexico, or a forty-mile drive—one-way—to Alamosa just to buy food. In bad weather, the drive to either destination would add even more time.
For San Luis native Shirley Romero Otero and a few others, closing the store was unthinkable, but keeping it open was not as simple as one might think. Not unlike scores of others who’d followed similar paths, Romero Otero had left the valley for college. Following that, she would spend a career as a teacher in Grand Junction before returning. Home again, she knew that losing the store would not only challenge a lot of locals just getting food but erase an irreplaceable memory.
Romero-Otero’s group had a plan to not only maintain and preserve a legacy business and an important chapter of Colorado history but one that would recreate something that would elevate the quality of life in ‘El Valle.’
The R&R of Romero Otero’s early memories was more than a place to shop for food. Of course, it always had customers or people driving through buzzing around picking up this and that, but there was one special day each month that she remembered when the joint was really jumping. “The twentieth was the day when the old folks got their pension (check),” she said, and the best time to catch up with friends and neighbors. Different conversations, most in Spanish, the Valley’s original language, hummed throughout the store. To
lose something this special, she said, was unthinkable.
The store has closed, albeit temporarily, but like the phoenix, will rise again. Its planned grand opening is set for late summer. The new incarnation of the R&R will also have a new name, The San Luis People’s Market and will operate as a co-op with a flavor ‘puro San Luis,’ said Romero-Otero. By that, she means, the store’s offerings will include a lot of what’s grown locally; organic, healthy, legacy food, not the high sodium, high sugar, unpronounceable ingredient food sold elsewhere.
Romero Otero and her group’s plan is to run a store that offers a food selection that is throwback to the earlier days in the valley when locals both bought and sold what was grown locally. “This used to be the breadbasket of the town,” she said. “Then a lot of things happened,” not the least of which was a period when locals entered a protracted legal fight over hunting, fishing and grazing rights with nearby neighbors, outliers who fenced off what would be known as the Taylor Ranch. Some, but not all, of the historic rights to the land have been subsequently won back.
Coinciding with those days, people were leaving the valley, looking for better paying jobs. At the same time, other people with means, were moving in but instead of planting the things that had been harvested for generations, they were growing alfalfa—cattle feed—and doing what Romero Otero called, “corporate farming.”
Locals, instead of buying what had been local produce, were forced instead to buy ‘for-the-masses’ foodstuffs, things that contributed to a skyrocketing rate of diabetes. “Costilla County,” Romero Otero lamented, “is ranked as the number one unhealthiest county in the state.” When the new co-op is up and running, not only will healthier food options be available, but “we will also be providing nutritional classes.”
Work on the store would require a total facelift of the structure, both interior and exterior. To arrive at a store that would serve the community, said Romero-Otero, would be costly. Her group had to be both imaginative, resolute and determined.
“We were not going to start in the red,” she said. Her group, one that included Dr. Devon Peña, a former college professor and skilled grant writer, put together a proposal that was good enough to win a $1.5 million dollar grant from the Colorado Health Foundation. But just having the money did not mean the group could just pick up hammer and nails and begin the work. COVID had a say in that timetable. The group, she said, could also use more money to finish the project.
“We’re at the mercy of contractors,” said the retired public school teacher. A lot of locals that might have been easy to sign on pre-COVID, were booked. “Just getting a company to do the electrical work that needs to be done, they’re busy,” she said.
In time everything will get done, she said. When that happens, the whole community, including the young, will have a hand in the finished product. And a legacy will live on.
