Joseph Reynolds and Edgar Griggs, two former civilian employees at Ft. Filmore and Ft. Craig, married sisters from a prominent New Mexican family and built a flourishing mercantile business in the Mesilla Valley. The Mesilla store operated by the Reynolds and Griggs Company included two buildings -- one that housed the feed and grocery departments (in what is now the Mesilla Book Store) and a second that offered notions and dry goods. When Edgar Griggs died in 1877, Joseph Reynolds continued the business until his son Charles took it over. In an important expansion of the business in 1903, Charles Reynolds bought the Barela property and began an extensive refurbishing in the front rooms of the house.
Arrival of the railroad in 1881 significantly improved local access to a wide range of industrial building materials. Charles Reynolds rebuilt the store with a stamped metal façade, large plate-glass windows, and a metal-bracketed cornice that still exist. On the inside, a U-shaped mezzanine is reached by a symmetrically divided staircase embellished with turned wooden balusters and newel posts.