From the Associated Press — The last Kmart in Michigan has closed in the state where the retail giant got its start. Sunday was the last day at a Kmart in Marshall, 100 miles west of Detroit. Marshall City Manager Tom Tarkiewicz says customers were still finding products on the shelves. The first Kmart store opened in Garden City, a Detroit suburb, in 1962. The chain grew to more than 2,000 stores across the U.S., but its fortunes changed as other big box retailers gained momentum. Kmart reorganized under bankruptcy protection in 2002-03 and began closing hundreds of stores before merging with Sears, Roebuck in 2004.
