ONWARD — The store at the home of America’s most famous hunting expedition reopened this morning after several months of upgrades and expansions.

The Onward Store first opened in 1913 and closed in the spring after serving the South Delta for 99 continuous years. The store has been purchased by Mollie Van Devender of Jackson.

Featuring a variety of Mississippi-made crafts, antiques and art, the store reopened today, and the restaurant portion should be ready next weekend, said manager Tiffany Lewallen.

“To give it a trial run we’re going to have some shorter hours,” Lewallen said.

The store will be open from 8 a.m. until 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday until the restaurant opens, Lewallen said.

The menu will consist of short-order lunches and fine dining on Thursday through Saturday evenings, said Nick Secoy, head chef.

The dining room of the store has been refinished with wood from the iconic Red Barn in Rolling Fork that collapsed in 2011. The dining room also features artwork and photos depicting former President Theodore Roosevelt’s historic 1902 bear hunt in Onward.

The rest of the interior also was refinished and reverted to a more original state, Secoy said.

“It was taken back down to the raw skeleton,” he said.

The shelves of the store are stocked with basic necessities, as well as handmade relics and teddy bears. A full-service deli is inside and live gas pumps outside will offer gasoline at the store for the first time in decades, Lewallen said.

“It’s just a little bit of everything,” she said.

In 1902, Roosevelt traveled through the Mississippi Delta to the Smedes Plantation, which is near Onward, to hunt for black bear.

Roosevelt’s guide, Holt Collier, boasted he would find the president a bear. Collier found a bear and tied it to a tree for Roosevelt, an avid outdoorsman, to kill, but Roosevelt refused to shoot the defenseless bear.

Some reports after indicated Collier had tied up a cub, and that led to the birth of the teddy bear.

Replicas of the guns used by Collier and Roosevelt hang in the dining room of the restaurant.

Onward is at the crossroads of Mississippi 1 and U.S. 61 North, about 31 miles north of Vicksburg and about 15 miles south of Rolling Fork.