(
Department Store . It was founded by
German Jewish immigrant Emil Gottschalk in
1904 in
Fresno, California . Gottschalks has 63 stores and 10 specialty stores in six western states (
California ,
Washington ,
Alaska ,
Idaho ,
Oregon and
Nevada .) It is the largest independently-owned department store in the United States.
The company started trading stocks in
1986 . In
1995 the company went online. The company grew in
Southern California with the 1998 acquisition of
Harris Department Store s. In
2000 the
Seattle based department store Lamonts was acquired.
