A rundown old gas station on a stretch of desert highway in Peach Springs, Arizona has made a national list of endangered historic places. Osterman’s gas station was built in 1929 and was once a community hub for the Hualapai people, as well as a place for tourists traveling Route 66 to stop for cold drinks or car repairs. Now the building is nearly in ruins. KNAU’s Melissa Sevigny reports on the Hualapai Tribe’s efforts to save it.
What remains of Osterman’s sits between historic Route 66 and the railroad tracks. Some eighty trains a day sound their horns as they pass. But inside the building, it’s quiet.
Too quiet, says Hualapai tribal member Loretta Jackson Kelly.
"I have memories as a young girl coming downtown…. We would get 50 cents or a dollar to come down here in downtown area to spend our money, maybe buy candy or soda pop," she says.
As a kid, she trick-or-treated at the gas station on Halloween. Later Jackson Kelly got a job gassing up cars.
Greyhound buses stopped just outside, which made it a gathering place for tribal members. "Everybody would run, come here to meet their relatives, or sending somebody off, everybody would come and say goodbye," Jackson Kelly recalls.
But when Interstate 40 bypassed Peach Springs in the 1980s, businesses along the Mother Road began to fade. The Osterman Gas Station closed in 2005 and the building fell into disrepair. Three years ago, a storm blew off the roof and felled the tree that shaded the bus stop.
"I would have never imagined myself sitting here, under this open roof…. it breaks my heart when I see this," Jackson Kelly says.
This year, the National Trust for Historic Preservation named the gas station as one of 11 most endangered historic places in the country. Spokesperson Katherine Malone France says the list shines a spotlight on places that face urgent threats.
"What we look for in the list are places that are significant, places that are meaningful to their communities, and that help to tell the full shared history of our country," Malone France says.
It’s not just about protecting the past. It’s about building the future, too.
"You see that so powerfully at the Osterman Gas Station," Malone France says. "Because again the Hualapai Tribe want to put this place and its layered stories back at the very beating heart of their community."
Kevin Davidson is doing just that. He’s the director of the Hualapai Nation’s planning department.
"People have been picking on me for years to get this thing fixed," he says. "Well, now the building’s in the emergency room, and now it’s gonna get fixed."
The tribe is raising funds to restore the gas station. Davidson hopes to salvage the original bricks, which were stamped out of a kit from the Sears catalog, and preserve as much of its history as he can. Signs of it are everywhere in the dilapidated building.
"That’s an old hydraulic jack," he says, pointing to the rusted metal clamped to the floor. "This is an old school like 1940s style floor jack to pick your car up… I can’t think of how many cars have been lifted on that jack over 70 years of its operation."
He unchains the door and goes outside to look at the vintage gas pumps, forever fixed at 99 cents a gallon. "They only have two digits so you can’t go to a dollar," he points out.
All these layers of history are in danger of disappearing as the gas station crumbles. Davidson estimates it’ll take close to a million dollars to repair and reopen it. It might become a museum, business incubator, coffee shop, artist’s galley, or even a gas station again, this time with electric chargers out front.
