The corner where the Chevron station stands now is where The Cupertino Store once stood. More than just a place to buy merchandise, the store for some 60 or more years was the heart of the community, a place where people came to chat with each other, to learn the latest about crops and neighbors. The store is long gone, but the Cupertino Historical Society has not forgotten it.

And just now they are bringing memories of the old store to the public via "The Cupertino General Store Inc.: Heart of a Community," an exhibit at Quinlan Community Center that showcases many of the original items sold at the old store.

The Cupertino Store was a special place that Florence Dixon Lindsay will always hold dear to her heart.

Being the only retail store in town in the early 1900s, The Cupertino Store supplied early settlers with all their daily necessities, which encompassed everything from groceries and hardware to fertilizers and explosives.

"It was a social place where people learned local news and talked to their neighbors. It was a place that gave people a sense of community," says the 72-year-old Lindsay, who grew up in a house just north of the Crossroads area at Stevens Creek and De Anza boulevards.

The Cupertino Store, a town hall, a church, a blacksmith shop, a post office, a cooper's shop (where woodworkers made barrels) and a telephone office were the main buildings of Cupertino, known at that time as West Side, a small village in the midst of vineyards and orchards.

The store actually began in 1892 when Lindsay's grandfather, Cupertino pioneer James Knox Polk Dixon, became the first manager for

the West Side branch of the San Jose Home Union Store, located on the southwest corner of the Crossroads area.

In 1902, Alex Montgomery, owner of the building, offered to finance Dixon so he could buy the building. Dixon and Montgomery's nephew Arch Wilson became partners and renamed their business The Cupertino Store, Dixon & Wilson Proprietors, General Merchandise.

The town's name changed from West Side to Cupertino in 1900, the same year that Lindsay's grandmother Mrs. James Dixon opened the West Side book club in the store. This club was the precursor of the first official Cupertino library. The town's only post office was located in the store as well.

After James Dixon died in 1904, the store was renamed again, this time as The Cupertino Store Inc. When the Peninsula Railroad came through town, the store was moved from the southwest corner of the Crossroads to the northeast corner.

The store continued on into the 1950s, until Dixon's sons sold it and it was torn down.

"The store reflected the needs of the small community," says Christine Jeffers, executive director of the Cupertino Historical Society Inc. "I think it helped set the small-town feel in Cupertino. Even though today it's a city of 52,000, it's still a close-knit, generous community."

"This exhibit has never been mounted before," Jeffers says about the historical society's exhibit at the Quinlan Center. "We plan to build educational activities around it and teach children about the city's history."

Visitors to the exhibit can enjoy seeing health and beauty items, toys, stationary products and tools that date from 1890 through the 1940s.

Although times have changed drastically since her childhood days in the 1920s and '30s, The Cupertino Store and the Crossroads have always been and will always be Florence Dixon Lindsay's home sweet home.

"It was a wonderful place and time to grow up in," she says. "You knew most of your neighbors. It was just a warm and friendly feeling."

The Quinlan Community Center is located at 10185 N. Stelling Road. Museum hours are 10 a.m.-4 p.m., Wednesday through Saturday. Admission is free.

Some historical information for this article came from the "Cupertino Chronicle," which can be purchased from the Cupertino Historical Society. For more information about the exhibit, call 408.973.1495.