Hedderich’s – Williston, ND
In 2010, I moved away from a metro filled with bookstores to a small town in northeast Montana. Oklahoma City, though not a mecca of bibliophiles, at least had some nice bookshops and was close enough to the Dallas-Ft. Worth area to go see great authors if they stopped there. Big-name authors almost never came to Oklahoma City, with Dallas being closer. Authors that did visit usually had some connection drawing them there, like they were originally from Oklahoma or had family there.
There was no bookstore in this small town in Montana of about five thousand souls, even though it is the biggest town around for nearly a hundred miles in any direction. There had been one little bookstore, but it closed. The county library, located there, had a small shelf of books for sale for dimes and quarters — cast-offs from the donation bin. Thank God for the library. Also, the museum where I worked had a gift shop that sold books by local authors and local history, which was nice but did not go far in feeding a bibliophile’s soul. But, just a short drive away, across the North Dakota state line, was a town large enough to have a movie theater: Williston. There were also bookstores in Williston.
Hedderich’s was not a bookstore, but they had enough old books for sale to be a point of discussion when used books came up in conversation. At one time, the building for Hedderich’s was a large downtown department store building, from the heyday of downtown retail long before online shopping or even shopping malls. By the time I lived in the area, the once proud, huge store had been converted to a sort of antique mall, army surplus, model train store. And in the cavernous basement of this enormous place was books. Nothing but old books, almost entirely unsorted and sold by the pound. There were thousands and thousands of old books down there. I called it a book mine.
What is a book mine? I don’t think I originated the phrase, but I don’t know if anyone has ever endeavored to define one. I’ve seen a few book mines, but I see them less often now. I find they are rarely advertised and don’t have websites beyond maybe a placeholder with hours — typically not updated since 2001. Book mines can have weird, irregular hours. A book mine is also usually huge. Cheap real estate helps, so they are usually in huge, rundown, leaky buildings in a part of town that’s seen better days.
In the past, I’ve called author Larry McMurtry’s Booked Up in Archer City, Texas a book mine. It had almost no web presence and a huge inventory. One of the biggest book stores I’ve ever seen. You could easily spend days, not just hours, looking. Perhaps book mines tend to be in out-of-the-way places. Or, maybe I’m the one in out-of-the-way places. It seems even the ones in major cities are in parts of the city that meet these descriptions, too.
To be clear, Hedderich’s was *not* the Northern Plains version of Booked Up. The comparison disintegrates quickly when looking at almost any part of it. McMurtry’s store had top-quality stock, immaculate buildings, and shelving, and all of the books were knowledgeably sorted, organized, and priced. Even when I was actively selling online, I had a hard time finding books to resell to make up for the cost of my trip to Archer City the prices were so spot on. I was not a super-talented book scout, but I could usually cover the cost of books I wanted to keep, gas, and food when I went anywhere to buy old books. Sometimes, I could turn enough profit to feel good about doing it.
Hedderich’s was the opposite of Booked Up. There were easily tens of thousands of books. But, the store’s basement, which was filled with books, was dirty. Only most of the fluorescent tube lights worked. Some flickered constantly. I could hear something dripping somewhere. Another version of the sign above announced these prices are NEW. The sign was also dated 1992. The books were barely sorted. Books seemed to be mainly from the 1940s-1980s, which was strange. Nothing very old. Nothing more recent. If you’re a Soviet/ Anti-Communist collector, this was the place for you. Do you collect self-help, pseudo-religion, or pseudo-health? Nurse-themed romance novels? This place would have scores for you. There were more Reader’s Digest Condensed Books than I’ve ever seen in one place. These can be worth selling to realtors and interior designer types by the yard if you have that kind of client, but there was not much worth bothering with for resale online.
To a collector, there was a lot of crap. But at these prices, who wouldn’t be tempted to at least dig a little? I found a gorgeous 1930s booklet from Zion National Park … but someone had cut a few of the photos out of it, but found another for Glacier National Park from the 1920s, which was pristine. There was a pile of old phone books, which helped fill gaps in the county archive, which was exciting for historical research purposes, but that’s a different kind of thrill. It was that kind of place. All was not lost, however. I did find a few books for myself, but mostly roamed and tried to figure out where everything was, my brain trying to impose order or find the order that led someone to bring all the books there.
Writing this essay several years after my last visit, I looked online to see if it was still open. The Hedderich’s building burned in 2017. Photos from local news sources show the multi-story building’s roof collapsed. Days later, the wreckage caught fire again, and eventually, all of whatever remained collapsed into the basement. Maybe the total loss of those tens of thousands of books won’t be missed, but the loss of the experience of searching, mining, and discovering will be something any book lover would love to find in a dream.
About the Author: Benjamin L. Clark writes and works as a museum curator.