REMEMBERING TURLOCK’S GROCERY STORES
Liberty Market’s story reaches from the Westside to Geer Road—and into butcher shops in other Valley towns. Old ads reveal three Turlock locations in 1960. A court case records the Doo family’s move to a larger market. The Geer store is gone, but the people who learned their trade at Liberty carried its work much farther.
Updated 2026.
Three locations in the college’s first newspaper
On December 13, 1960, Liberty joined other local businesses in congratulating Stanislaus State College on its new newspaper. Its ad on page six of the first issue of the Stanislaus Signal listed three stores:
- No. 1: Seventh Street.
- No. 2: Geer Road.
- No. 3: Lander Avenue and Bernell Avenue.
Those are historical locations. The ad shows how broadly Liberty served town at that point; the college itself was still in its first year. Our Stanislaus State history follows the institution’s early years at the fairgrounds and its later move to the Monte Vista campus.
Another advertisement in the same December issue listed Liberty, National and Thrifty markets as places to buy Christoffersen’s Valchris turkeys for the holidays. See the original turkey advertisement on page four.
The Doo family behind the name
The 1960 Polk city directory, on printed page 350, places Liberty at 710 Lander Avenue and lists George Doo among its proprietors. A later directory-based grocery history records a Liberty listing at that address in 1954 and identifies it with the 475 Seventh Street address used in the market’s 1968 ad.
The 1968 court opinion, Doo v. Packwood supplies a closer look at the family’s grocery operation. It names four husband-and-wife partnerships: George and Ying, Jack and Fun, Kenneth and Ruby, and Quong and Jennie Doo. The court described a business that sometimes operated three markets and sometimes two. The directory and later family accounts connect George Doo to Liberty, although the opinion itself does not use the store’s name.
In June 1964, the partners listed an earlier Lander Avenue market property for sale while building a larger store on the same street. They included a restriction against grocery retailing at the property they sold. When the buyer leased it to another grocer, the dispute went to court. The 1968 appeals decision reversed the trial judgment and upheld the restriction in the circumstances then before it. Alongside the old ads, the case documents a period of expansion and relocation.
Two stores, and Green Stamps, in 1968
Liberty’s October 18, 1968 advertisement listed two branches: No. 1 at 475 Seventh Street and No. 2 at Monte Vista Avenue and Geer Road. It also promoted S&H Green Stamps, the shopping rewards customers collected and exchanged for catalog merchandise.
The streets around the earlier stores are explored in our Westside guide; the northern branch belongs to the story of Geer Road’s shopping corridor.
What happened to the Geer Road market?
Stanislaus County’s layoff report lists 30 Liberty Market layoffs in Turlock in September 2008. A demolition photograph uploaded in July 2009 shows the remains of the Geer and Monte Vista store.
The April 13, 2010 City Council minutes explicitly connect remaining Liberty Market development-fee credits with the CVS/retail redevelopment. Today, CVS’s official Turlock listing identifies its pharmacy at 3100 Geer Road, Turlock. That is a new chapter for the property, rather than an operating Liberty Market.
For a view of the market when it was new, see the historic grand-opening photograph. Its uploader identifies the image as a reproduction from Turlock, California: A Pictorial History 1950–2005.
The meat counter’s story continued
Mean Lup Wong’s family obituary, published in 2019, records a direct connection between Liberty and another Valley market. After immigrating to the United States in 1964, Wong worked for his brother-in-law George Doo at Liberty in Turlock and learned meat cutting. In 1978, Wong and his wife Boking bought Town and Country Market in Oakdale, running it with their family for 25 years.
A similar thread appears in Marijke Rowland’s October 2022 Modesto Bee report. Carlos Virgen and his nephew Sal had worked together at Liberty stores in Turlock, Delhi and Livingston before opening Chuck’s Butcher Shop in Hughson in August 2022. Sal had learned the trade from Carlos at 18. Both accounts show how skills learned at a local grocery could become the basis of another family business.
The Liberty name survives nearby
Delhi has a Liberty Market at 16385 W. Schendel Avenue, Delhi. Merced County’s July 2026 record identifies that business, and Turlock Irrigation District lists it as an authorized payment station. It is separate from the former Turlock locations described here.
Have an old Liberty receipt, advertisement, staff photograph or story with a date attached? Send Local Turlock the details. The people behind the counters belong in this history too. Continue with Turlock through the decades or browse the Shopping & Dining directory.
