Nestled into the rolling hills of the Palouse and 17 miles south of Spokane's South Hill is the quaint 500-person farming town of Rockford. Tucked away in the town's block-long downtown business district is one of its main attractions, the Hurd Mercantile & Co. gift mall.

The 11-year-old business is located at 30 S. First in a 10,700-square-foot building originally constructed in 1896. The building housed the town's general store up until the late 1990s, says Hurd Mercantile's owner Jill Townsend.

Hurd Mercantile, as it was called then, now offers its visitors an eye-catching mix of old and new, including home decor items, furniture, gifts, children's toys, jewelry, espresso drinks, and an extensive wine selection featuring products from many Northwest wineries.

Townsend says she bought the old general store building in 2000 from the Hurd family, who had closed the business a few years earlier because its owners had grown too old to continue operating the store. Their children had gone into other careers.

Mrs. Frances Hurd, whose late husband Mr. Neil Hurd—the son of Hurd Mercantile's founders— had passed away in the late '90s, didn't sell the vacant building until about two years after Mr. Hurd's death, Townsend says. She adds that Mrs. Hurd—who now is in her 90s and lives in an assisted-living facility in Spokane—wanted to wait for a buyer who would promise to keep the building's historic integrity intact.

"She was particular and sentimental as to whom she sold it," Townsend says. "We really tried to respect the sentiment of the building to her, and that also is why we kept the name and added the '& Co.,' because we are the 'and company.'"

Townsend is joined in the venture by business partners Teresa Carbone and Henry and Marilyn Mayer. The Mayers help run the shop and contribute to its inventory with handmade metal artwork.

Carbone oversees the store's 1,200-square-foot wine shop, called Backroads Palouse. That section is located in part of the original Hurd Mercantile general store's footprint but is sectioned off by a wall from the rest of the sales floor. Townsend says that area of the store originally housed a butcher shop and then an appliance store in the 1950s.

Wine sold in that area of the store includes a collection of four private-label wines—chardonnay, Riesling, merlot, and cabernet—made by Spokane Valley-based Arbor Crest Wine Cellars. The wine label features the Backroads Palouse name and a 1930s photograph of Townsend's grandmother, Georgie Bailey, dancing on the hood of an old car. Townsend says her grandmother grew up on a farm near the Palouse town of Lamont, Wash.

Aside from managing Hurd Mercantile's wine shop, Carbone is in charge of the store's children's section, located in a sizable loft at the back end of the building that overlooks the main sales floor.

The whimsical selection of items geared toward kids includes both new and antique toys, make-it-yourself kits, books, learning-oriented games, clothing, and kids' room decor, among other items.

Carbone also orders items to stock the business's kitchen gadgets area, which includes cooking and baking supplies, cook books, and other cooking-related items.

While Hurd Mercantile doesn't have any other employees besides Townsend and the three partners, she says her husband, Les, often helps run the shop.

Hurd Mercantile's historic building features an airy and open floor plan with the original, creaking hardwood floorboards still intact. Townsend says she had the floors sanded and refinished after she bought the building because a century of foot traffic and waxing the floor with oils had turned the wood nearly black in color.

She says she also had the general store's original schoolhouse-style pendant light fixtures rehung from the ceiling. The pendant lights give the space a soft, warm glow in contrast to the harsh fluorescent lighting that had been in the building at the time she bought it.

The high-ceiling building architecturally is divided down the center by several structural-support columns. The main 8,000-square-foot sales floor itself also is separated along the building's north- and south-facing walls into small room-sized nooks. Townsend says she added the dividing walls, which are about half of the height of the building's ceiling, to separate the sales floor into various themed sections that showcase both vintage and reproduced pieces.

"I had a vision of creating different themes—cottage style, kitchen, lodge, cabin style—so I created different 'rooms' and the walls separate those decor themes," Townsend says.

One of the store's nooks is decorated in a country-cottage style, with mostly white pieces of furniture, including a white metal bedstead and various distressed white cabinets. Some of the furniture is antique, and some are reproductions that were designed to look old.

"The main focus when I started was that I wanted to pair the old with the new and to have antiques but to carry new gifts," she says. "The goal was that most everyone passes down things in a family like grandma's china cabinet ... I hadn't been to a store that mixed hand-me-downs with new purchases."

Townsend estimates that Hurd Mercantile's inventory consists of about 40 percent vintage or antique pieces and 60 percent are new items.

"The new gifts are never contemporary or modern, or something that doesn't lend itself to the building," Townsend says. "I buy what I love, and it seems to work that way. It might be more of a comfort zone thing; I don't buy things that I wouldn't put in my own home."

The pieces of furniture in each themed section of the store are adorned with various decor items that match the section's style and complement its color palette. Townsend says that most of the furniture ranges in price between $70 and $400, depending upon the size of the piece and whether it's an antique or a reproduction.

Smaller gift items usually are priced between $20 and $100, she says.

Right now, Hurd Mercantile is decked out in holiday-themed decor that has been selected to complement the furniture that's already on the sales floor in each of the themed displays.

"Every year around November, we bring in extra inventory that gets people into the holiday spirit, and we try and pick out unique pieces and lines you don't find everywhere," Townsend says.

Because the business doesn't have a large advertising budget, Townsend says she relies on word-of-mouth between customers to bring in new people.

"We have a great location, with people driving on the road to get to the (Coeur d'Alene) casino and to some of the Lake Coeur d'Alene bays," she says. "But we also hear all the time that someone comes in for the first time and they will bring a friend back, and we constantly are getting new customers that way. If someone comes once we usually get to see their face again."