About HyGrade Lotion

The story of HyGrade Lotion began when C.D. Smith, a 20-year-old registered pharmacist, bought a drug store at the corner of 5th and Main in Grand Junction, Colorado.

That was in 1900, and after a decade Mr. Smith owned eight stores in western Colorado — the state's first chain of drug stores.

In 1910 he established the C.D. Smith Wholesale Drug Company, which eventually served retail drug stores in western Colorado, eastern Utah, northern New Mexico, and parts of Arizona and Wyoming. There is a large map of the sales territory in the early days.

Because Mr. Smith did not want his own drug stores to compete with his potential wholesale customers, he sold his stores to their managers after he established his new company.

In 1924 C.D.'s son Burrell Smith graduated from pharmacy school as a registered pharmacist and began working in the family business.

It's very dry here in western Colorado, and C.D. Smith thought that there was a need for an all-weather skin lotion that could be used for sunburn, dry skin, and other skin ailments.

In 1910 the C.D. Smith Wholesale Drug Company moved into this new building at 2nd and Colorado Streets in Grand Junction.

He knew which healing ingredients he wanted to use, but he also wanted something which would penetrate into the skin for deeper, long-lasting healing.

He thought that perhaps a very small amount of ammonia could cut through skin oils long enough to allow the healing ingredients to work, so he and his son Burrell tested his theory and found that it worked.

HyGrade Lotion quickly became the leading skin lotion on the Colorado Plateau, and has had remarkably loyal customers since it was put on the market in 1924.

Word-of-mouth recommendations and tourists travelling in the western United States have created a mail-order business which supplies all fifty states and countries including Saudi Arabia, Switzerland, Sweden, and the rest of Europe.

The company has received thousands of testimonial letters praising HyGrade Lotion, and has not received a single negative response since the product became available in 1924.

The C.D. Smith Wholesale Drug Company had thirty-one employees when it celebrated its thirtieth anniversary, and in 1935 it moved into a brand new building at the corner of 5th and Ute Streets in Grand Junction.

The structure was described as "fireproof, air-conditioned, 45,000 square feet of floor space, conceded to be the most modern and best equipped wholesale house of its kind in the United States."

Mr. Smith, shown here in his new office in 1936, had three sons and a daughter; C.D. Smith died in 1939 at age 60.

HyGrade Lotion is now available from HyGrade Distributing of Grand Junction, Colorado.

We are grateful to Judy Prosser-Armstrong of the Research Center and Special Library at the Museum of Western Colorado — which is now located in the C.D. Smith building built in 1935 — for use of historical materials from the Sterling Smith collections 1996.65 and 1998.62.