Linda Fiore’s brother, Richard Chapin, started the swap meet in 1975 as a way to help pay his way through college. He rounded up some of his hand-made furniture and set up shop at the corner of north Tanque Verde and east Grant roads. And he attracted customers. So he gathered other vendors and made the Tanque Verde Swap Meet official. When summer heat kept crowds away during the day a determined Chapin bought every strand of Christmas lights he could find and opened at night. The enterprise grew, and Chapin turned to his parents, sisters and other family members to help. Linda Fiore, a onetime schoolteacher and the mother of three, became president. Chapin is still involved, but prefers to leave the day-to-day operations to his sister and her team.
Kent Solberg was one of those early vendors.
“The swap meet was really good to us,” he says of his used tool business. “It was a real swap meet. Most vendors were individuals getting rid of junk. We were turning our inventory pretty quickly back then. It was fun. In the winter it got nippy, we braved the rainy season, the summertime was hotter than hell. But it was a really good swap meet. We were making a lot of money there.”
Karen McPherson and her late husband, Mac, sold jewelry there and were able to support themselves.
“It was a good location,” says McPherson. “People would go out to dinner and then wander through. It was one of those things to do.”
