Retail History | Walmart — Store No. 1 at 719 West Walnut Street

People look for the first Walmart inside the Bentonville Supercenter or the museum on the square.

The first store called Wal-Mart Discount City opened here, at 719 West Walnut Street in Rogers, Arkansas, on 2 July 1962.

Sam Walton was forty-four. With his brother Bud he already ran a string of Ben Franklin variety stores. National discount chains were planting themselves in large cities. Walton put 16,000 square feet on the corner of Eighth and Walnut in a town of about 5,700 and waited for the line.

More than five hundred people stood outside before the doors opened. Twenty-two departments. No groceries. The building is about a tenth the size of a later Sam's Club. David Glass, who would one day run the company, watched an opening stunt of stacked watermelons and donkey rides in 110-degree heat; the melons split.

Walton had already lost a Ben Franklin lease in Newport. The Rogers store was the first under the Wal-Mart name, not his first shop. The company left this address for Walnut Plaza in November 1973 and later for the Supercenter at 2110 West Walnut, which still carries the Store No. 1 number. The original lot became other retail. A historical marker now names the corner.