Going shopping for clothes involves a 45-minute drive for Madras teenagers Carlos Guzman and Mauricio Rosas, who wound up in Bend on Friday to pick up a couple of shirts at the J.C. Penney Co. store.

“We like to come here because they have good brands, nice quality clothes for a good price,” said the 16-year-old Guzman.

What the teenagers didn’t know was that they were shopping at a retail chain that has been in business in Bend for 100 years come Friday.

Guzman and Rosas are the kind of shoppers that Linda Best, J.C. Penney Co. general manager, courts in her effort to stay meaningful as a brick-and-mortar department store at Cascade Village Shopping Center. Best knows that shoppers have more options today than ever. Roughly 8 in 10 Americans are online shoppers today, compared to 22 percent in 2000, according to the Pew Research Center 2016 survey of online shopping. Still, 64 percent of Americans say they prefer to shop in a store rather than online, according to Pew.

“J.C. Penney customers are loyal,” Best said. “Our customers are happy with our brands. We try to hit different markets and reach down to the generations to show them the shopping experience.

“The foundation of this business is my associates. If you have a good foundation, you have a good store.”

Margie Larson, a Bend resident, was chatting with Jane Dalton, the store’s home department clerk. They were discussing comforters and colors, and Dalton whisked her over to the computer to find an item that wasn’t in the store. Knowing what the chain offers online is one of Dalton’s specialties, Best said.

“I always come to see Jane,” Larson said. “I do like shopping online, but some things you just can’t do online and you have to touch.”

The chain was founded by James Cash Penney as the Golden Rule Store in 1902 in Kemmerer, Wyoming. In 1913 he renamed the chain J.C. Penney Co. Inc.

The Bend store at the corner of Wall Street and Oregon Avenue opened in 1918 and stayed at that location for 77 years, until it moved to the shopping center, now called Cascade Village, on U.S. Highway 97.

The downtown Bend store is one of 20 locations that opened in the spring of 1918. Seven of those stores — Owosso and Alma, Michigan; Mansfield and Lima, Ohio; and Enid and Ardmore, Oklahoma — will be celebrating their 100th anniversaries with events.

Penney’s has 870 stores in the United States and Puerto Rico, with eight in Oregon.

Last year J.C. Penney closed 138 stores across the country and this year will close eight stores, none of which are located in Oregon, said Carter English, J.C. Penney Co. corporate communications and public relations representative.

At each store, the managers are encouraged to adapt the business model to the community, Best said. That could mean different displays, featuring different merchandise, she said.

When Patty Stell, the former Bend city recorder, was in the fifth grade, she got her first new dress from the old J.C. Penney store in downtown Bend.

“Penney’s was, for most of us, the more affordable option,” said 63-year-old Stell. “My mom always made our clothes, but I got to have a new dress, and I was thrilled. Penney’s was part of the community.”

Bend’s downtown was a thriving, growing community when the store first opened in 1918, said Kelly Cannon-Miller, executive director of the Deschutes County Historical Society. Two lumber mills had opened, and the railroad came through town.

“Downtown was very vital in 1918,” Cannon-Miller said. “Everything was blossoming and followed the trend at the time. As a kid I remember coming up to Bend from Lakeview to shop at Penney’s.”

— Reporter: 541-633-2117, sroig@bendbulletin.com