When walking through the door of The Herb House, the scent of teas, herbs, tinctures and a variety of other scents flows forth, immediately telling what the shop has to offer as well as providing a pleasant lapse in the mundanity of daily smells.
The Herb House is a business that specializes in not only purveying herbs and tinctures but also growing and creating them. Many of the herbs offered are certified organic and grown locally in Carbon County, Wyoming, as well as Snowy Range.
There are shelves upon shelves of everything for any possible health benefit, any possible recipe and any possible use along with an eclectic assortment of other objects such as singing bowls, candles, stones and minerals.
The story of how The Herb House came to be is one full of twists and turns, and it began at an edible plant conference.
Caroline Johnson, one of three owners along with Karin Guernsey and Kim Vincent, said at the conference, Johnson and Guernsey met and later started the Sweetgrass Laramie Herbal Society. Eventually people started asking the group to make tinctures, which are alcohol extracts of herbs.
“The process of making tinctures begins with letting the herbs soak in alcohol for anywhere from two to six weeks,” Johnson said. “The herbs then get squeezed to remove all the juice. The juice is saved and the plant matter is thrown away before the tincture is stored in bulk bottles. At this point the tinctures are ready for consumption, but are first bottled further into small bottles.”
Guernsey had the idea to make it into a business and The Herb House was started in 1992 in Guernsey’s basement, selling its herbs and tinctures at street fairs and local shops. There was not much money in selling that way, however, which prompted the owners to get a place of their own.
“In ’96 we bought a little house on Ord Street and had that for our store,” Johnson said.
Johnson said The Herb House had a single product shelf at that time.
“We had 88 herbs on there or maybe even less. And we looked pretty skimpy so we said, ‘well if we order some vitamin c people could come and buy vitamin c.’ So we did. And they did. And now we’ve got all that,” Johnson said, gesturing to the rest of the store. “It grew.”
Before long, The Herb House had outgrown its little home on Ord Street and in 2005 it had to move to its current location downtown. The growth did not stop there, however, and when The Jaded Lair went out of business, The Herb House absorbed its stock of singing bowls, pendulums, crystals, candles and other ceremonial objects.
