Pamida

Ghost Corp Apparel — resurrecting iconic corporate ghosts.

Founded in 1963, Pamida built its business by going where many big-box retailers didn’t — small towns across the Midwest and West. Its stores carried a little bit of everything: clothing, housewares, electronics, pharmacy items, furniture, and whatever else you suddenly remembered you needed while walking through the aisles.

Even the name was a family affair: “Pamida” came from the first two letters of Pat, Mike, and David, the sons of co-founder Jim Witherspoon.

For decades, Pamida was the hometown department store for communities too small to attract the retail giants. But in 2012, the chain merged with Shopko, and most Pamida locations were converted into Shopko Hometown stores. Just like that, nearly 50 years of familiar red-and-blue signs began disappearing.

Small-town America lost another place where you could buy socks, motor oil, cold medicine, and a toaster without changing parking lots.

Explore our Pamida collection celebrating one of the great vanished names of rural American retail.