Last Chevron on the Right

NO, this is not my photo. YES, it has a watermark. Read below.
Over the course of this site, I've written over 250 entries on various businesses and buildings, probably mentioning dozens more defunct operations, and well over ten years later I still find things that surprise me.

When I started this site, I did not have access to a lot of resources and that led to some embarrassing errors, like conflating "Wolfe Nursery" and Wolf Pen Creek into "Wolf Pen Nursery", but eventually learned enough about it to write an entire history about it (as seen on Houston Historic Retail).

However, every once in a while, there's some building that I should know of, but somehow eludes my memory. Such was the case of the original 2307 Texas Avenue...but an even bigger black hole is the gas station above. Like Veronica's (but located even further down, at the intersection of Robert Road and Highway 6), this was torn down for the freeway widening but I'm afraid I don't remember it at all save for a fuzzy memory of seeing the words "BAR-B-QUE" or something similar on the sign...which for years I thought was the Heirloom Gardens site. In some aspects, it makes sense—there was a railroad nearby and it was on the correct side of the road from my usual backseat vantage point.

In the initial version of this post, I incorrectly pegged it as "Clyde's Country" (see the first update below, which has more information on what was eventually correctly identified as a Chevron "Handi-Plus".

The picture above is from Vintage Aerial, which is a bit hard to navigate (and mostly focuses on rural areas) but great at finding older gas stations out in the sticks, plus it helped confirm that there was indeed a swimming pool just off of 290 in Houston. And if you wanted to learn more about Navasota proper (outside of the scope of this site) there's more where that comes from.

UPDATE 01-29-2023: I have been informed via Trevor Yeager on Facebook that this was not Clyde's Country and that Clyde's Country was a "bit closer to College Station on 6" (it was "a small green and white building that sold used truck camper tops"). However, he also mentioned that Navasota Welding Supply was in the building of the gas station above, which was at, according to my resources, 27620 Highway 6 South. After further research, it appears it was a Chevron Handi-Plus (#18) since the mid-1980s at 27320 Highway 6 South and mentioned in this post. It would suggest it was not Exxon and had converted to Chevron like other Gulf stations.
UPDATE 05-20-2023: With the identity of the station confirmed, the post has been re-worked and renamed "Last Chevron on the Right".
UPDATE 10-4-2023: This 1983 shot indicates it was in fact built in the 1980s (changed [1970s] to [1980s]).

Texaco at Highway 6 and Highway 21

Today, a Texaco store stands proudly here. This picture and the others below are from the author, September 2016 (except for the Circle K Truxtop picture).
Funny story--I originally had wanted to do this post back in September 2016 (the rewritten version of course, as the "date posted" is from well before that) when Alimentation Couche-Tard announced it would buy CST Brands. In layman's terms, Corner Store, the convenience store commonly associated with Valero (though independent since 2013) would be turned into Circle K (which unfortunately recently did away with its classic or at least classic-inspired logo for a new, worse one). With that in mind, I felt it was high time to cover one of the Circle K stores that did grace our fair city before a wave of new Circle K stores come in adjacent to the Valero stores (if not taking them over entirely). This is of course a "rebranded" post originally posted as "Two TETCO Stores" many years ago.

But not to be outdone, there was news some months later that Sunoco, which had bought Stripes a few years back (resulting in new Sunoco gas canopies), was selling its convenience stores out to 7-Eleven, which would ultimately be the boost that put real 7-Eleven stores back in College Station-Bryan.

There is one other TETCO store that used to be covered on this blog, and that would be the one at Harvey Road and Texas Avenue, which has difficult access (parking was never accessible from Culpepper Plaza) and has been operating for years as an Exxon. That one has been operating for years as an Exxon (since the 1980s, though unfortunately I don't have a lot of info on it, it seems like there was more of an emphasis on auto parts), and would eventually go under the Speedy Stop name (but still an Exxon). I believe the SS name has been in place since 2000, as evidence seems to point that the original Exxon was auto repair-oriented but the rebuilt Exxon was not. I don't remember the old Exxon, personally, but I did take two pictures when it was Speedy Stop.

To begin, who remembers UtoteM? It was a small convenience store chain that once had locations all over the area, and we've covered a number of them in this blog before. My records indicate that there was one at the current site of Jin's Asian Cafe (though I currently lack the phone book records for it), one at 301 Patricia, one at the current site of Northpoint Crossing, one at what is now the current site of Checkers there at Holleman and Welsh, one at 105 Walton (that link goes to the main Eastgate page, I've been wanting to separate those into different pages), and one that later became a bus station, and those are the ones actually covered here. (An extant example can be found at the corner of Old College Road and College Main, unless that has closed and I just haven't been aware of that fact yet)

As mentioned on this page regarding the gas station at Longmire and Harvey Mitchell, Circle K bought these stores and shut most of the original UtoteM stores down almost immediately afterward. They weren't all bad, though, because UtoteM did construct a few modern stores with pumps just a few years before it sold out. 3401 East Highway 21 was one of them, and by the early 1990s, this would be branded as a Circle K "Truxtop".

OK, I cheated: this isn't actually from the Bryan store, it's from Skyline Products but I still imagine the Texaco sign looking sort of like this
As part of a sale in mid-1999, Circle K sold its stores in town to Duke & Long as part of a 142 store deal, which rebranded the stores to Everyday and gave all the stores Conoco gas pumps, but a few years later, Duke & Long filed bankruptcy, and from there, the stores went their separate ways. Many of the stores went to Speedy Stop, which in turn sold a few, like Villa Maria/Cavitt and Longmire/Harvey Mitchell Parkway sold to Handi Stop in the mid-2000s, becoming Diamond Shamrock briefly before switching to Texaco as Valero began to consume the Diamond Shamrock name. Others, like 1600 South College Avenue, went independent (it still holds a Conoco-shaped sign).

Note the oval-shaped sign, that's from Conoco
However, 3401 Texas 21 held onto its Speedy Stop name until it was the only one in town left (along with a second Speedy Stop not related to the Circle K lineage). I don't know if 3401 Texas 21 had a Diamond Shamrock branding in the mid-2000s, I'm 95% sure it did, but it did have Texaco gas by 2007 like the Handi Stop stores (and by that time, the Diamond Shamrock stores were well on their way to being replaced by Valero completely). Despite promises, the TETCO stores have yet to receive full 7-Eleven branding, perhaps when the Stripes deal is closed they will get the leverage to finally push it, as it will expand their holdings to 10 stores (in theory--I can imagine the Holleman Rattlers sold off for being too close and the former Chicks sold off for being too big). It would also put well above Circle K, which would only gain four stores in their deal, all of them east of Texas Avenue and none of them too impressive.

Hopefully this will receive proper 7-Eleven branding soon enough!
As of October 2019, the gas station now has Chevron as the name with the Chevron logo on the highway, but still with TETCO branding.

UPDATE 06-23-2021: New title (from "Circle K Truxtop"), new captions. [Diamond Shamrock] also added. Also some updates were made reflecting Circle K and 7-Eleven and their changes here.
UPDATE 04-18-2021: Somewhere around December 2021 the convenience store was officially rebranded as 7-Eleven. (The Conoco oval is now gone).
UPDATE 06-16-2023: Unfortunately, the Highbeam article no longer works. We'll continue to search for a replacement.
UPDATE 12-13-2024: Try this link instead (source) instead. Google is reporting 7-Eleven is "temporarily closed". We'll confirm this soon.
UPDATE 01-11-2025: A return trip to this 7-Eleven about two weeks ago confirms that it is indeed no longer a 7-Eleven, yet a new 7-Eleven canopy has appeared for the truck/diesel portion. Very strange...

Junek's Grocery / Wellborn Grocery

My photo. I wish I had taken it when was still, you know, a real sign.

Gas station nostalgia isn't an obscure hobby, but there seems to be less for the recent nostalgia as well. Case in point: the old "gray and solid colors" Chevron stations from the 1980s and 1990s. I first really noticed the difference a few years ago (there was an abandoned Chevron in Conroe, Texas, in 2011 that had the striking difference, and a Chevron near Jersey Village survived with the original color scheme before the tower finally came down this year).

This "gas nostalgia" often goes hand in hand with the growing endangerment of rural gas stations that are often small and out of date but have excellent barbecue, and the former Chevron in Wellborn was an example of this (along with Rolling Ridge Grocery). Junek's Grocery (Junek being pronounced unfortunately similarly to "eunuch") was the name but around 2007, the Chevron here lots its pumps and branding around 2007, about the same time when the new design was starting to roll out chain-wide (probably closer to 2010 was when it saturated) and not when a more modern Chevron was built nearby.

Because of how far away Wellborn was, I never had the barbecue here. About the time the gas station stopped selling gas, Junek's Barbecue moved out to a nearby lot, had a change of ownership, and closed (becoming a revolving door of restaurants and eateries, none of which have survived for more than a few years: Outlaw Jack's Brew N Chew, Country Cafe, Chubby's Meat Wagon, and now a Cajun restaurant. Meanwhile, the former Chevron station renovated (the facade, at least) and became Wellborn Grocery. You can also see what the facade looked like as "Junek's Grocery" right here or what it looks like as "Wellborn Grocery" right here.

The Chevron here was always a fun sight to see, as I never went this way except on rare occasions (such as going on a long trip). Even in the early to mid 2000s, there wasn't much to see past the Exxon at Rock Prairie. The area between Graham Road and Rock Prairie only had a few (brand new) buildings, Highway 40 didn't exist yet, and Wellborn was entirely two-way only, save for a left hand turn lane near Rock Prairie Road and the remains of North Graham Road. Then, after you'd give up on whether you'd see anything until Navasota, you came to Wellborn.

14889 FM 2154

UPDATE 10-16-2023:: This had been partially updated and rewritten in 2015, but I wanted to mention that Google Street View shows the Chevron disappearing between 2008 and 2009, not 2007 as the above article states. A very old (1983) shot of the store can be seen here, as a result I've added [Phillips 66] to the post and changed it to [1980s].

Northgate Chevron

She cleans up nicely. There's even a canvas-covered area on the University side for the taco truck that hangs out here.
When I went to college at A&M in the early 2010s, I always had seen this strange pile of bricks on the corner of where a run-down gas station sat at 301 University and wondered what, if any, grander building was once there. Turns out, there wasn't one. There has always been a gas station structure here since the 1970s or 1980s, and before that, it was a residential house with a yard.

Sometime around the late 1960s or early 1970s, the house was torn down and a Philips 66 gas station was built, but after that things got a bit murky. In the very late 1970s it was enclosed to be a bar. Two of the comments from the older version of this page seem at end with each other: "Around 1979-80 the owner enclosed the old service bays, remodeled and turned it into the Thirsty Turtle" and "I bought the Thirsty Turtle and remodeled it and reopened it as the 12th Man & Co. in 1978. The Thirsty Turtle was indeed a bar. It had a small but loyal clientele. Some of them actually blamed me for closing the Turtle and were somewhat threatening at times. But we got opened and survived until Texas changed the drinking age laws."

Others seem to remember 12th Man & Co. came first. Regardless, sometime during the mid-1980s (likely 1986, which would make sense with the "drinking laws" time frame) the building was torn down for a gas station again, a Citgo with a 7-Eleven (as Citgo and 7-Eleven built stores together in that era). In the spring of 1993, the 7-Eleven name vanished from the area as they were sold to E-Z Mart (by this point, the stores in Houston had also since been sold to National Convenience Stores where they obtained the Stop N Go name).

While I'm sure E-Z Mart still had the Slurpee machines (until they all broke like the rest of the former 7-Eleven stores in town), over time, the E-Z Mart just got more and more run-down, with the nickname "Sleazy Mart" as it continued to deteriorate (though to be fair, it was in very close to proximity to the bars). The earliest reference I could find is from this 2004 posting but who knows how far it really goes back.

By the time I got to A&M, the E-Z Mart name had disappeared, having sold their stores to other owners around the mid-2000s (I seem to remember the Citgo at Southwest Parkway and Wellborn became Zip'N around 2004, but don't quote me on that). The store had been renamed to "Aggie Food Mart" but A&M's lawyers don't want private businesses using "Aggie" or "A&M" for anything anymore, so it was just removed. The canopy was literally falling apart, the pumps didn't really work properly, and there was a trash-filled alley in the back where a faded mural was (now painted over), but I imagine that it was probably meant to be used for additional retail adjoining the 7-Eleven. Today that space (space is valuable in Northgate) is just wasted.

Sad thing is, ALL the gas pumps had looked like that.
The Boyett stoplight installed in summer 2012 made the intersection a more prominent "entrance" to Northgate (compared to the east side of Northgate, where large attractive campus buildings co-mingle with fast foods and the Rise at Northgate) just made the eyesore intersection more obvious, sharing it with the ruined Campus Theater across the street.

Sometime around 2016, things started to change. The Citgo branding completely disappeared and the gas station went unbranded for a time as it morphed into a Chevron, and finally, came the "Gig'Em Food Mart" name, complete with a shiny new Chevron canopy and pumps (interestingly, this came right at the time as the Southgate Chevron lost its branding), but I haven't been inside since they redid it since I have no idea if it's just window-dressing or the inside was done as well.

UPDATE 01-13-2023: This post was last updated in April 2020 but as of late 2022 the gas station has permanently closed for redevelopment of the lot.
UPDATE 01-25-2025: The station was demolished a year or two ago. Redevelopment is still pending. Some new labels have been added to the post.

Northpoint Crossing

Sure it kind of looks nice but it's a bit of a failure. (Picture by author, 1/20)

In order to talk about Northpoint Crossing (not to be confused with Northpoint Business Park, we need to talk about what stood at that corner before it. That would be the "Plaza Hotel", which would be the most obvious answer (though not a wrong one), but to really answer the question, we at least should look at least need to look at the whole block Northpoint Crossing currently occupies.

Below is a layout of how everything looked in 2019, bounded by Hensel Street (CoCS) to the north, Texas Avenue South to the east, University Drive to the south, and the late Hensel Drive (TAMU) to the west.

Starting from the southwest corner, there's Northpoint Crossing of course and its buildings, then working our way up Texas Avenue, there's the current Hampton Inn, Home2 Suites by Hilton (covered on the big Texas Avenue page), the old Applebee's (soon to redevelop into a new Hampton Inn), Knights Inn, and finally at the southwest corner of Meadowland and Hensel Street, some old fourplexes that were holdouts from the demolition of this block in the early 2010s.

Now, let's take a look at what the block used to look like (2011). I annotated this one a while back.

At the southwest corner (marked as #4) is, or rather, was, a Kettle. Kettle #86 (1403 University) opened in 1979 and predated all the rest of the Kettle restaurants in town (at its peak we had FIVE Kettle restaurants! There aren't even five Kettle restaurants anymore). While it was clearly built as a Kettle, previous references for the address include a private house (as of 1970) and "Pool Country" swimming pools (as of 1974), suggesting it was a conversion. The "original 1403" held McLaughlin's of Corpus Christi (beauty salon, had a second location off of Patricia Street), and apparently, for a very short time, Heroes Clothing Company was here before moving to 1502 Texas Avenue South in 1976. Kettle operated here for years, finally closing at the end of 2003. The yellow P A N C A K E S signage (not unlike Waffle House's signage) remained up until its demolition several years later).

Pancake House...? (Google Street View)
Kettle sold the property in 2004 to Leonard Ross (Rossco), which like other properties he owned just deteriorated until it was sold to the Northpoint Crossing developers in 2011.

The white-roofed building (not the brown-roofed building behind it), 1405 University Drive, opened in 1966 as UtoteM (#811), part of UtoteM of Austin (as the other stores locally were...Houston was its own division, having nearly half of the chain there as of 1967).¹ In 1984, it was rebranded as Circle K but closed in fall 1985 along with the location at 105 Walton. You can see a glimpse of it as a UtoteM in the Plaza Hotel video from KBTX around 25 seconds in. Around 1988 it reopened as Thermal Shield Applications (it might've moved from a different location) offering car windshield tinting (and later cell phones and vehicle security alarms), though in 1989 they moved to 3213 S. College Avenue. In early 1991 it became home to Sterling Automotive, which specialized in Subaru repairs, and apparently even reopened as the now second location of Thermal Shield Applications in 1993.² Thermal Shield Applications seems to have folded entirely in 1996, though this particular location was sold and reopened as AC-Protech in fall 1996, but within a year had become a location of Just Smokes, which was already shut down by May 1998.

Fountain drinks?! You told it was just smokes! (The Battalion, 09/05/1997)
By late 1998 it had become Aggieland Tattoo, which changed hands to Ink Dreams in 2005³ and closed in the late 2000s, becoming Oasis Pipes and Tobacco, which was evicted in 2011 or 2012, moving to Eastgate. I'm not sure of the purpose or address of the building behind it, it had four units of some sort (office? residential?) and I can't remember the address.

#2 on the map is another mystery. Brazos CAD said this building was built in 1949, under "Units on Univ Dr", and I'm not sure of its purpose. It seems that this was 1501 University Drive, and it was home to U.S. Black Belt Academy in the late 1980s (you can see the picture of this building in the video linked above near UtoteM). This also seems to be the home of 1503 University Drive. Years ago, I said that this was a location of 100,000 Auto Parts, citing the same address of Ramada Inn, but retracting it due to it being 410 North Texas Avenue in Bryan. However, I was still right despite there being another 100,000 Auto Parts (which later evolved into a Carquest location) on University Drive East.

What are you?!
Of course, the rear of the building that appears to be attached and appears to be apartments of some sort makes this building even more complicated. I can't figure it out. Maybe more research another day is needed.

Next up is the Ramada Inn (later University Tower, later Plaza Hotel) which has its own sub-article here (this was located at 410 Texas Avenue South).

Piper's Gulf (#1 on the map) opened at 420 Texas Avenue South around 1973, offering gas (Gulf brand) and an auto garage and became Chevron in 1989 when Chevron largely retired the brand in this part of the country. The station officially changed hands in January 1999 as it became "University Chevron" (still Chevron, of course) but shut down in 2005 and was demolished afterward. You can see a picture of it on the hotel sub-article or this blurry video shot (not even a direct rip) from The Louisiana and Texas Retail Blogspot.

Going back around past the Ramada Inn and past the other hotels, we come to 100 Texas Avenue South (marked as #7 on the map) and built as Dutch Kettle, opening in spring of 1962 as a 24-hour diner (link). Dutch Kettle is not to be confused with the Kettle restaurants as described above⁴ and a few examples of former Dutch Kettle restaurants exist...or at least existed. There was one, for example in Houston that outlasted the College Station's building by about a decade at 8301 Gulf Freeway, though it had been heavily modified at some point in the past (note the dual chimneys).⁵ Galveston's restaurant seemed to be the last one in this location and closed in 2012 (2011 Street View).
Not mine, originally from a Brazos County history book
With its history intertwined with Kettle, it looks like Dutch Kettle might make for a good subject of its own. A 1963 article mentions its pies to go ("made fresh daily the Dutch Kettle Way in our own Commissary") which tends to heavily imply they had some sort of operation based out of Houston. In 1968, shortly after opening the (non-Dutch) Kettle at 1601 South Texas Avenue the diner became "Pick Wick Coffee Shop" before reverting to the Dutch Kettle name, where it operated until sometime around January 1975, liquidating everything shortly afterward (even selling its oval sign frame). In fall 1976 it became the first Schlotzsky's restaurants outside of the Austin area⁶ and it closed in 1997 (by this time, Schlotzsky's Deli was a fast-growing chain), before being replaced with Dalin's Donuts in 2001. A few years later, this was replaced with Snowflake Donuts, which quietly closed sometime in 2006.
Street View of the restaurant shortly before demolition
Marked as #6 on the map, a number of fourplexes existed on Meadowland, and at least at one time were marketed together (they had a swimming pool) with ownership common to Plaza Hotel (Rossco). Today, only two exist, now as independent properties, 1402-1404 Northpoint Lane (1402 being closest to Northpoint), but even as late as 2017 they were known as 149 and 151 Meadowland. A few older houses existed on Meadowland (likely cheap rentals) like 125 and 127 Meadowland (Street View shot) existed up until around 2012 as well.

After the Plaza Hotel was imploded and the rest of the site was cleared, Northpoint Crossing was built on the site, spread across six buildings.

The 425 buildings (closest to Texas Avenue) and 424 buildings were the only two buildings to ever ground level retail. As of August 2025, a few of the Texas Avenue storefronts have retail with suite 100 (closest to the north side), 300, and 500 (no even numbers), with those being taken by 4.0 Cuts, Aggieland Barber & Beauty Supply, and Modern Barber & Beauty Institute, respectively, and these three are the only ones to really make it. World of Beer still has signage up, but the hip chain closed in late 2023 (after opening in September 2015). Others didn't fare much better.

Over in the 424 building, Toastie's Sub Shops out of Austin opening in spring 2015 in suite 1700 but closed a year later (coincidentally, around the same time an Austin location was locked out for lack of lease payment, and by January 2017, the Toastie's chain as a chain, was, well, toast. In June 2018 it became Smallcakes Cupcakery & Creamery. In January 2021 this closed and was replaced by Smoosh Cookies, which opened in November 2022 but within a few years that was gone too (which was even shorter-lived than the Jones Crossing location).

Suite 1700 had Minuti Coffee opening in 2016 but it struggled and did not reopen after closing in December 2019, re-emerging a year later two miles east of its old location and got much better business. This was later replaced with Möge Tee which has also since disappeared.

Finally, another tenant in the 424 building but at Northpoint Lane and a road what we can only assume is also "Northpoint Crossing" a Gateway Newstands convenience store opened 2017 but closed in 2020 when its parent company exited the United States.

The Clubhouse is for residents only, standard for student apartment complexes. (Picture by author, 1/20)

In November 2024 the City approved a request for some unused ground floor space to be converted into 29 more units, functionally ending any new retail at Northpoint Crossing.

So what caused the issues at Northpoint Crossing as far as retail went, especially as the pre-redevelopment tenants did okay?

1. Access. Under the old system, there was a left turn into Meadowland, allowing one to get in and out of Kettle or whatever was at 1405 University relatively easy. Poor Chevron couldn't benefit from that...even the Exxon at the northeast side of the street has alternate ways to get in and out.

2. Nobody likes mixed-use. You can see this in Houston, too. Mixed-use is a hard sell here, in addition to substantially worse parking situations (which tends to deter customers) you also have much higher rent. These things aren't easy to maintain on foot traffic.

3. Poor integration with Century Square. This one isn't Northpoint Crossing's fault, they included a "stub" road (Northpoint Way) to integrate with Century Square, but instead they put up a parking garage of their own for their own customers. Which makes sense, they don't want you to park in Century Square's garage for Northpoint's tenants (and the same would likely be true in reverse).

With Northpoint Crossing being an unremarkable collection of apartment buildings to replace a large hotel, it really begs the question...is it an improvement? Maybe, but that was only because the hotel itself had such a bad reputation. At times like these I wonder if it just could've gotten a major exterior re-do as part of a renovation.

1. UtoteM was based out of Houston, though in 1967, they merged with Omaha-based Fairmont Foods, with UtoteM being a division of Fairmont. Fairmont moved its headquarters to Houston in 1975, though Fairmont's operations in the Midwest like their Kitty Clover potato chips and dairy operations (as well as some other functions) remained in Omaha. Ultimately, Fairmont was reorganized as UtoteM Inc. when the combined company was sold to American Financial in 1980 before its new parent company offloaded it to Circle K a few years later.
2. A 1995 directory lists this as still being Sterling Automotive.
3. How exactly I don't know, tax records suggest it was seamless. It may have rebranded at a different time.
4. Well, sort of. See footnote 5.
5. The tax data with this Dutch Kettle is associated with Kettle restaurants in Austin and Houston, and further digging reveals that some of the other restaurants were originally Dutch Kettle restaurants were as well, suggesting that the later Houston-based Kettle went their own way. 6. I say "Austin area" because there is a San Marcos location that predates it, though in that time there was a LOT of empty space between Austin and San Marcos.

UPDATE 08-09-2026: Major retool of the entire article. Differences include moving the "modern" development to the bottom of the page, adding mention of other Northpoint Crossing tenants that weren't listed, expanding on "Units on Univ Dr", expanding on 1405 University Drive, and new tags.

Southgate Chevron

I snapped this picture from the bus, taken sometime around 2013. The Reveille's sign can't be seen from this angle.
This building, home to Texas FilmWorks since late 2023, was for decades a gas station, originally opened in the 1960s as the Southside Gulf Service (300 Jersey, later 300 George Bush Drive), and converted to a convenience store (Reveille's) sometime around the late 1980s (that's what Brazos CAD suggests) with the Chevron name being bestowed in the early 1990s due to a merger. In 2011, I got the below picture that shows the Gulf station and the surrounding area (due to the city reorganizing the Project HOLD server from which I got it from, I can't find the original link and who that is) circa 1985.


Click for larger size/higher resolution.

It's great seeing the George Bush (er, Jersey) stoplight as it was...the "old style" of College Station stoplights (before they were all replaced or upgraded), complete with the old railroad crossing (a cantilever railroad crossing...but where's the crossing gate?), and all those trees, too: this must have been before the area around Olsen Field was developed, and a time when you could probably still see the I-GN right of way on both sides.

Somewhere on Project HOLD there's a picture of the gas station at night, though I can't link directly to it because PH keeps breaking the links. Later on, it updated once to the newer 2005 design (didn't roll out fully until the late 2000s), and has always been Reveille's (convenience store) at least since the mid-1990s (if not further back). In early 2017, it was de-branded as "K.D. Timmons Co. Inc." (a local fuel supplier and the only one of its kind, though it kept the Chevron colors), and by July 2018 permanently closed, remaining abandoned for the next five years or so.

UPDATE 02-25-2019: Rewrite incorporating 2018 update, new title
UPDATE 01-04-2024: More extensive rewrite and adding current tenant.