08/27/2026
Welcome to Throwback Thursday!
🏬 Chris-Line Originals / Petersen's Western Apparel
🤵🏻♀️ Christina B. Peterson
📍 340 Main Avenue South, Twin Falls
At the age of 40 in 1938, Christina B. Petersen set out with her 4 children to make it on their own. She worked doing house cleaning for 25 cents an hour, cooking, finally finding work in a harness shop where she learned her leather skills.
🏨 Her second job was working a night job as a desk clerk at the old Park Hotel. Here she made leather goods. Soon the hotel guest loved her work and asked to sell it on the road. The orders soon resulted in her working full time in the leather business.
From a hobby to a firmly established business concern in less then seven years is the proud record of Christine B. Petersen who founded this fascinating and unique business in 1947. Fringed and beaded western jackets – indeed something new and different in 1948 – met with immediate success in the western states and soon were being demanded by leading sportswear shops throughout the nation.
🧥 With salesmen taking orders for the high-quality Chris-Line garments, wholesale shipments of jackets began to increase sharply. Retail trade grew, too, at Chris-Line as leather goods of many kinds were handled. Unique items of western nature, along with high-quality purses and billfolds, brought many visitors to this new kind of store in Twin Falls.
🧥 Chris-Line Originals moved into a retail shop at 340 Main Avenue South in the early 1950s. By the late 1950's the business became Petersen's Western Apparel. You can still find Chris-Line Originals on eBay for up to $1,000.
Hardworking and successful, Christina B. Petersen was voted Mother of the Year by the State of Idaho in 1967.
📍 The building is currently not occupied.
Now you know more about a piece of Twin Falls County history!
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