04/11/2025
Bear Crossing Gas Station & C-Store is celebrating 20 years in business!!🎉🎉
As we celebrate our 20th year in business, we extend a huge THANK YOU to our current employees and past employees we have had over the years as well as our customers near and far who patronage our store! A successful business cannot run this long without good employees and customers. We are humbled and proud to be a local family-owned business in our little town of Glidden!
So how did this business get started, you might ask? We took at trip down memory lane to share with you! It was a partnership between two brothers Mike and Leo Dunlavy who first formed their partnership many years ago purchasing some real estate houses in Glidden as rental properties. More than 20 years ago Mike and Leo decided to do some research on gas stations and c-stores and the viability in the Glidden market to expand their partnership. With that research, they developed a business plan that would include purchasing a lot with a house on it facing highway 13, jacking up and moving that existing house from its foundation to Sunrise Estates neighborhood in Glidden, clearing the lot, and constructing the convenience store building to include gas pumps in the front and diesel pumps in the back.
Being the smart, talented brother duo that they are, they used their engineering and building/construction skills as well as their business knowledge to be hands on with the project from start to finish. This included obtaining necessary permits, to locating equipment for the store, to obtaining a canopy for over the pumps, and of course building the store itself. With the support of their wives, they took a risk and put their own money into it along with the help of a bank who believed in their plan to fund the construction. Mike and Leo pondered a name to call the gas station. Glidden is known for the school being the Black Bears as well as the town being the Black Bear Capitol of the World so they threw some names back and forth until one day their sister Stephanie came up with the name Bear Crossing, which they loved! It fit! The community support with this project was quite astonishing as they watched progress day by day excited to see it open and some new jobs created. Their proud father, Jim Dunlavy, sure enjoyed making his trips from southern MI to Glidden as well to watch their progress of building this business from the ground up! All in all, it took approximately one year to finish the project from when they first obtained permits around April of 2004 to April of 2005 when they opened their doors to their first customers. Over time, inside the store they also created a café called Cubby’s Café, which served breakfast, lunch, and dinner for many years until just before the Covid pandemic came.
In approximately 2013 Mike and Leo decided to expand the store to include other items or “necessities” that people in town were asking for locally; however, knew they couldn’t fit what they wanted to sell in the c-store building. With that, they renovated an old garage that was across the alley from the gas station (the old blacksmith shop back in the day) and opened the Bear Necessities store, which provided ice cream cones and a little bit of everything from car care, to housewares, to cleaning supplies, toys, gifts…..you name it, for the community.
In 2018 they made yet another business decision to expand into the propane industry by developing land they owned on the north end of town also facing Highway 13 putting up a bulk propane site, which they called Bear Gas to complement the Bear Crossing. After a lot of planning and hard work with the site, they purchased their first propane truck and hired a driver making their first propane deliveries in January, 2019.
The story goes on! With Leo and his family living in Shell Lake, WI, Leo decided to start his own propane business in his community and therefore he and Mike began their discussion of a buyout plan of their Glidden business partnership. With Mike and his wife Krystel living in Glidden it only made sense for them to buyout Leo and his wife Jill so Leo could spend more of his time in Shell Lake with his family and focus on his propane business and other work there. In late December of 2020 Mike and Leo shook hands and parted ways on their partnership, which was bitter sweet for both but also an understanding from both on what they wanted the future to look like for their families.
Through the years the Bear Crossing has gone through some minor changes with upgrades and such. The most recent upgrade was the summer of 2023 when Mike and Krystel made the decision to completely remodel the interior and exterior of the building and expand what was being offered to customers in the store, which was a major undertaking. A complete reset took place inside creating a better look and shopping experience throughout.
Things didn’t stop there. In December of 2022 Mike and Krystel purchased the old Chippewa gas station building that had sat empty and abandoned for many years with no one else purchasing it unfortunately. After the purchase, they started renovating the building inside and out to be a new and improved location for the Bear Necessities store. In June 2023 with the help of their amazing employees, they successfully moved the entire Bear Necessities store across the highway to this new location. It was quite impressive that this move was accomplished in just under a week’s time. The old Bear Necessities building was then turned into much needed storage, and the west side of it renovated to house the new location for the Glidden Enterprise, our local community newspaper. Additional improvements and expansions are being looked into for the Bear Necessities store, new pumps at the Bear Crossing, and an additional bulk propane site location for Bear Gas in the future.
Needless to say, it has been busy the past 20 years for the Dunlavy’s. Most business owners will agree that owning businesses comes with a lot of hard work, stress, and sleepless nights but also comes with so much reward and gratification in providing for a great community and working with such amazing people each day. We are thankful for all the community support and travelers coming to Glidden to stay in our area and those passing through Glidden who stop at our stores! We understand you have a choice with where you shop. Know that when you buy from our stores, money goes back into our local community. You might wonder how or with who? The Bear Crossing started the original Pumpkin Roll down “church hill” in our town for our youth, which we ran for many years before passing this tradition onto Lena’s Bar & Grill a few years ago. Besides volunteering our time, we’ve given back monetarily to many of the local nonprofits over the years such as our local Labor Day Weekend Fair to the horse pull, mud run, and car show, the GADC for projects they do throughout our town, the past Laura Jean Zach Center remodel, Chequamegon School District local sports and Glidden summer school program, the Orioles Baseball team, the Marion Park pavilion past roof project, the Most Precious Blood Church annual Father’s Day picnic at Marion Park, our local little league/t-ball field, the VFW, the EMTs, the Fire Department 4th of July fireworks display, Copper Falls State Park, local Girl Scouts, Healing Patriots, Clam Lake Forest Riders past groomer purchase, Shanagolden Whitetails, local Bow and Arrow Tournament contenders and others. You may have seen our marketing on some stock cars at the race tracks in sponsorship of local drivers as well as snowmobiles at winter race events, and the kids know us well for all the massive candy we throw out at the 4th of July parade from our annual float. We will continue to help where we can to keep our local nonprofits going!
We thank God each day for his blessings, the many friendships we have made from people stopping in our stores, our employees, and all our customers local and afar for these past 20 years! We hope to continue to not only just see you but also visit with you at the Bear Crossing! Watch for our annual customer appreciation event coming up in warmer months as we have decided to push this well known event from April to a warmer time. We included some photos of then and now.
With Many Thanks,
Mike and Krystel Dunlavy & family
Small town grocery/c-store with apparel. Bear Necessities across the parking lot for everything else! Clean bathrooms!!
