Sunday, August 13, 2017

The Mysterious Moving Phillips 66 Station, Adrian, Texas

Adrian, Texas, is the midpoint of Route 66, meaning it is equidistant to Santa Monica Pier in Los Angeles or to Lake Michigan in Chicago.


There is not much to Adrian, just some old gasoline stations, junk yards, and the Midpoint Cafe (closed as of August 7, 2017). But I saw this adorable little gasoline station with a Phillips 66 sign. This was a Phillips 66 station, but a similar architecture with a peaked roof was used by Cities Services Company in various southern states. One of Thomas Rosell's articles in Preservation Mississippi describes the architecture of early 20th century Cities Services gasoline stations.


Just to the left (east) of the little station is a more modern Phillips 66 station, but also not in operation.

I checked the locations of these buildings on Google Maps and was perplexed. Look at the Google Street View from 2011: The little station is not present. Someone trucked in this the little building from somewhere else and placed it next to the tree. Did the aliens move it?

3 comments:

Debra Jane Seltzer (aka agilitynut) said...

The little P66 cottage came from Vega, TX. It was moved to Adrian in 2016.

AW said...

It was originally located in Adrian, then it moved to the premises of the Museum in Vega, facing the historic Mangolia station, and now it is back in Adrian.

Kodachromeguy said...

Thank you, AW, that is good history. I suppose we can be confident that the aliens did not move the station....