Jennifer O’Dell, who with her sister Kim Toney and husband Ray Toney, run the legacy shop their mother Barbara O’Dell opened decades ago when they were small children. “This gift shop made me who I am today,” she says of Canyon Rim Gifts in Lansing, West Virginia’s New River Gorge National Park and Preserve. It was basically a second home for the girls when they were growing up.
“I remember making a nickel an hour,” O’Dell laughs, sharing how the sisters would “skate back and forth” in the shop, watching their parents build presentations of merchandise.
“We had fun decorating the displays,” O’Dell says.
Toney chimes in, “I remember having to take trash bags to clean up the parking lot and there better not be one cigarette butt out there! If you told a kid to do that today, they’d look at you like you lost your mind.”
Old-fashioned values and work ethic grew Canyon Rim Gifts into a destination, with repeat visitors returning to greet Barbara and her business partner Gloria Friederichs.
The shop, its myriad inventory, creative displays and thoughtfully orchestrated systems are rooted in simple list-making and the late Barbara’s inspiration. It’s routine, in the sisters’ blood like a gene they inherited.
The variety at Canyon Rim Gifts is staggering.
“We probably have the largest T-shirt collection in West Virginia,” O’Dell says of the good, better and best options that suit every budget with more than 70 design choices. Some reflect the state park and Canyon Rim, others are state name-drop themes.
A souvenir menagerie
The 6,000-square-foot shop holds “a ton of merchandise,” O’Dell says. Plus, there is a kitchen space where they make fudge in-house, offer hand-dipped ice cream, and display jams, honey and other West Virginia-based food products. An old-school soft serve machine is still kicking and has been in its spot since the store opened.
Customers enjoy sorting through the vast rock and mineral options at Canyon Rim Gifts.
Photos: Chris Jackson
“We have babied it and kept alive, and every time I call in for service they say, ‘We are running out of parts for this machine,’ but it does the job, so that’s what’s important,” Toney says.
The soft serve machine is a shop relic that lives on, much like the store’s old-fashioned penny press.
“We keep fresh copper pennies available so when people want to make a little penny jewelry piece or keychain, they have a shiny one,” O’Dell says of the front-entrance display.
Hermit crabs may be the most unique offering at the shop. The neon pink, green and blue cages are the size of a coffee can and a cutesy “my hermit crab house” label attracts the younger set. The shells come painted.
A large section of the store is a “rock hounder’s heaven,” O’Dell says. Guests will linger for up to an hour in front of a U-shaped display of rocks and minerals. “You can build a bag, buy them by the pound, purchase stones or create a necklace,” she says.
Canyon Rim Gifts carries everything from geodes to crystals and polished stones, many of the specialty pieces selected by Ray Toney.
Custom totes, Christmas ornaments and a range of New River Gorge National Park and Preserve items are for “parkies” who collect national park memorabilia. Wood puzzles and postcards, magnets, bookmarks and hiking water bottles by Prairie Mountain appeal to these guests.
A junior park ranger-rancher section filled with products by Wild Things offers nature games and apparel. Canyon Rim Gifts also stocks items from The Candleberry Candle Co., along with popular personalized street signs by ScandiCal.
New River Gorge mugs, magnets, stickers and puzzles are popular with customers.
A growing pet section includes an all-out display of magnets bearing dog names. “We sell handfuls every day,” Toney says of the “I love Bean,” and, “I love Penelope” messaging. So far, every customer looking for a specific pooch name has found one in the display.
Among the supersized display of shirts, Toney says the No. 1 best-selling says, “Laid Back” by the brand High Range.
Oh, and Canyon Rim Gifts has no shortage of Sasquatch gifts and souvenirs.
“We have Sasquatch bear by Wilcor Outdoors, and we even have a giant stuffed replica we named Sas,”
O’Dell relates. “When we went to a buying show this year, we saw the display, looked at each other and both said, ‘Yes! We have to have it.’”
Coal products and a dedicated hillbilly section appeal to tourists who want to take home some humor.
“We have redneck chopsticks that are a giant clothespin,” O’Dell describes.
Add to the list a “complaint department” that is basically a mouse trap mounted onto wood with a message: push red button for service.
O’Dell gets a kick out of the “exercise block.” Its instructions read, “Place block on floor. Walk around it twice. Sit down, relax and congratulate yourself. You just walked around the block twice.”
Inviting inventory
O’Dell notes that it’s tough to explain how she and Toney go about organizing the varied inventory at Canyon Rim Gifts. But there is some method to the menagerie of goods that the destination retailer sells.
And the sisters have been building displays since they were learning to spell.
The shop is organized into departments. “We display mugs with mugs and group T-shirts together,” says Toney, adding that guests usually want to purchase a certain type of souvenir.
The shop has gifts that appeal to both park and Sasquatch enthusiasts.
O’Dell gets creative with displays. For the earthy necklaces, she went out to the woods, foraged for some interesting branches and created a forest-themed presentation. “I’m in the process of looking for a kitchen hutch, and I have a wash tub to show off our goat’s milk soap products by Wild Mountain Soap Co. out of West Virginia,” she says. The shop also offers Finchberry and Bates Family Farm goat’s milk soap.
The rock and mineral department has the greatest risk of theft. While an appealing section of the store for many visitors, Toney says overseeing the rock rummaging is nearly impossible. But now that the shop has transitioned to a new point-of-sale software system — a technology Barbara had hesitated about for years — the sisters will be able to better track losses in that area, along with pricing slow-moving inventory as sales items.
Another project they’re taking on is to enhance the eatery side of the shop. “Our mom loved honeycomb and we sell cloister honey and an amazing lavender whipped honey,” says O’Dell.
This year, Canyon Rim Gifts is bringing back the West Virginia dog, a hot dog topped with homemade chili and coleslaw.
While some modern tweaks will make running the business smoother and inventory is ever evolving, the most important aspect of running the shop is keeping the spirit alive.
O’Dell concludes, “This is our mom’s gift shop, even though we inherited it — it’s her heart and soul.”
