Frank & Helen Bagley and The Bagley Store

The Story

Frank and Helen Bagley arrived with their three sons on Thanksgiving Day 1927 after filing on a 160-acre homestead. Their first home was an 18 × 18-foot garage, but local miners and homesteaders soon began asking the family to lend out or pick up supplies. That little garage evolved into the town’s general store.

The Plaza that grew around Bagley’s Market became a social center of early Twentynine Palms, offering food and sundries, gasoline, postal and notary services, a library, and the community’s first telephone switchboard.