by Bruce Wells | Sep 22, 2026 | Petroleum Transportation
Beginning after its 1979 opening day, the Iowa 80 Trucking Museum has hosted an annual Jamboree attended by thousands. The museum in Walcott preserves more than 100 antique trucks — with most on display, including a rare 1890 Standard Oil triple wagon; a 1903 Eldridge; a 1910 Avery tractor/gasoline farm wagon; and a 1911 Walker Electric Model 43.
The trucking collection off Interstate 80 at the “World’s Largest Truck Stop” began thanks to truck stop founder Bill Moon, who had a passion for trucks and truck history. Every summer, the museum at exit 284 on I -80 outside Walcott, Iowa, hosts a variety of events for truckers and other travelers, teachers, students — and transportation history buffs.
“Bill had a passion for collecting antique trucks and other trucking memorabilia,” notes the Iowa 80 Trucking Museum. “We are pleased to be able to share this collection with the general public. Every truck has a story to tell and can provide a unique glimpse back in time. Many rare and one-of-a-kind trucks are on display.”
“If you are the least bit into cars you will find the museum interesting and well worth the stop,” notes a visitor from Legendary Collector Cars. “From what we could tell, it looks like this I-80 Exit at Walcott, Iowa, is about to become the over-the-road truckers Disneyland in a few years.”
In 2024, the Iowa museum celebrated U.S. trucking history by showcasing its 1924 White Model 40 Wrecker, now on permanent display (and featured in the 1991 film Fried Green Tomatoes). The Model 40’s four-cylinder, 371-cubic-inch engine was produced at the White factory in Cleveland, Ohio, factory.
The museum, which offers short films about trucking history, attracts all kinds of visitors, from those interested in antique trucks to those wanting to learn the history of modern, big rigs. Exhibit spaces, greatly expanded in 2012, today include free smartphone apps with audio narratives.
Since its inception in 197. an annual Iowa 80 Truckers Jamboree has celebrated the U.S. trucking industry. Special events include programs about trucking history — and those big rigs.
The descriptions provide additional details about each truck not found on the limited space of exhibit signs. Visitors can scan a “QR” code at the welcome desk to download the app. Upcoming museum visitors can download it from the website. The innovation — increasingly found at museums — allows both virtual and actual visitors to scan and download exhibit information.
Celebrating Trucking History
“The Iowa 80 Trucking Museum’s mission is to celebrate trucking and to preserve and share its history,” noted Marketing Director Heather DeBaillie in 2012. The smartphone apps, give visitors even more information about the exhibits, “and also give those who are unable to visit the museum the opportunity to learn more about trucking history,” she said.
A century of trucking technology is on exhibit at the Iowa 80 Trucking Museum, which on July 15, 2011, celebrated the birthday of its rare 1911 Walker electric truck, which once delivered dairy products.
The annual Jamborees in July host nearly 30,000 drivers and their families from 23 different states and Canada, according to the marketing director. During two days guests enjoyed 175 exhibits — and a Super Truck Beauty Contest with 59 contestants.
In 2011, the trucking museum hosted a birthday party for its Walker electric truck — with the party coinciding with the 32nd annual Walcott Truckers Jamboree at its next-door neighbor, the Iowa 80 Truck Stop, DeBaillie noted.
The antique truck display included more than 200 vehicles. Thousands also enjoyed an Iowa pork chop cookout; a Trucker Olympics; carnival games; a concert and fireworks display.
A 1929 International Harvester. Photo courtesy Legendary Collector Cars, which notes: “If you are the least bit into cars you will find the museum interesting and well worth the stop.”
Trucking Museum 1901 Electric Truck
The Walker truck’s 2011 centennial birthday party at the Iowa 80 Trucking Museum celebrated an electric manufactured by the Walker Vehicle Company of Chicago.
The company produced electric vehicles until late 1941. Walker trucks were used mainly as delivery trucks in major cities — delivering ice cream and other dairy products, baked goods and dry goods.
Although the 1919 International Harvester’s four-cylinder gasoline engine provided a top speed of just 17 mph, it was the first truck to climb Pike’s Peak.
The Iowa 80 Trucking Museum’s 1911 Walker electric truck was owned by Bowman Dairy and used to deliver milk to hospitals, restaurants and hotels, according to curator Dave Meier. It is one of only a handful of Walker Electric trucks known to still exist.
“Many people think that electric vehicles are a recent invention, when in fact they were in production over 100 years ago,” explained Meir.
Electric vehicles were popular in the late 19th century and early 20th century – until advances in internal combustion engine technology and mass production of cheaper gasoline vehicles led to a decline in their use (also see Cantankerous Combustion — 1st U.S. Auto Show).
Among the exhibits at the trucking museum is one of the few surviving examples of an Avery gasoline-powered tractor. Avery Company of Peoria, Illinois, began producing coal (and straw)-burning steam tractors in 1891 — and became the world’s largest tractor supplier. It was also one of the first companies to manufacture gasoline tractors.
Avery tractors brought new efficiency to rural America — and the world. The Iowa 80 Trucking Museum’s 1910 Avery “Tractor-Gasoline Farm Wagon” (at right) was promoted with the slogan, “Makes Power Farming Possible on the Average Sized Farm.”
Created by his family, the Iowa 80 Trucking Museum was a dream of Bill Moon, who founded the Iowa 80 truck stop. Standard Oil originally built the stop in 1964 – when Interstate 80 was still under construction. In September 1965, Moon took over management and purchased it from Amoco in 1984. He managed its growth until his death in 1992.
Plan a visit to the Iowa 80 Trucking Museum.
Preserving personal artifacts and oilfield stories is important. Oil & Gas Families complements the extensive work of community museum staff and volunteers finding new ways to preserve artifacts, photographic, written and oral histories.
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The American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS) preserves U.S. petroleum history. Please support this energy education website, subscribe to our free monthly newsletter, and help expand historical research. Contact bawells@aoghs.org. Copyright © 2026 Bruce A. Wells.
Citation Information – Article Title: “Iowa 80 Trucking Museum.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/oil-almanac/oil-riches-of-merriman-baptist-church. Last Updated: September 30, 2026. Original Published Date: April 18, 2012.
by Bruce Wells | Aug 28, 2026 | Petroleum Transportation
Modern gasoline pumps began in the 1880s with a device for dispensing kerosene at an Indiana grocery store.
Presaging the first gas pump, S.F. (Sylvanus Freelove) Bowser sold his newly invented kerosene pump to the owner of a grocery store in Fort Wayne, Indiana, on September 5, 1885. Less than two decades later, the first purposely built drive-in gasoline service station opened in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Bowser designed a simple device for reliably measuring and dispensing kerosene — a product in high demand as lamp fuel for half a century. His invention soon evolved into the metered gasoline pump.
Gas pumps with dials were followed by calibrated glass cylinders. Meter pumps using a small glass dome with a turbine inside replaced the measuring cylinder as pumps continued to evolve. Illustration courtesy Popular Science, September 1955.
Originally designed to safely dispense kerosene as well as “burning fluid, and the light combustible products of petroleum,” early S.F. Bowser pumps had marble valves with wooden plungers and upright faucets.
With the pump’s popular success at Jake Gumper’s grocery store, Bowser formed the S.F. Bowser & Company and patented his invention in late October 1887.
Bowser’s 1887 patent was a pump for “such liquids as kerosene-oil, burning-fluid, and the light combustible products of petroleum.”
As consumer demand for kerosene (and soon, gasoline) grew, Bowser’s innovative device and those that followed faced competition from other manufacturers of self-measuring pumps. In Wayne, Indiana, the Wayne Oil Tank & Pump Company designed and built 50 of a new model in 1892, the company’s first year of business (learn more in Wayne’s Self-Measuring Pump).
S.F. Bowser’s “Self-Measuring Gasoline Storage Pumps” became known as “filling stations.” A clamshell lid closed for security when unattended.
Despite the competition, in the early 1900s – as the automobile’s popularity grew – Bowser’s company became hugely successful. His grocery store pump consisted of a square metal tank with a wooden cabinet equipped with a suction pump operated by hand-stroked lever action.
Beginning in 1905, Bowser added a hose attachment for dispensing gasoline directly into the automobile fuel tank. The S. F. Bowser “Self-Measuring Gasoline Storage Pump” became known to motorists as a “filling station” as more design innovations followed.
A 1922 Bowser advertisement illustrating the size of S.F. Bowser’s Fort Wayne, Indiana, manufacturing facility and six-floor headquarters similar to early Chicago skyscrapers.
S.F. Bowser died on October 3, 1938, and the manufacturing company he founded maintained its presence on Creighton Avenue in Fort Wayne until being demolished in 2012.
“In Fort Wayne today, the only reminder of Bowser’s legacy is a street named in his honor,” reported Indiana landmarks in 2017, adding, “In parts of Europe and Australia, however, people still refer to a gasoline pump generically as a ‘bowser.'”
The popular Bowser Model 102 Chief Sentry with its “clamshell” cover offered security when the pump was left unattended (see the 1920 Diamond Filling Station in Washington, D.C.).
Manufactured in 1911, an S.F. Bowser Model 102 “Chief Sentry” pumped gas on North Capitol Street in Washington D.C., in 1920. The Penn Oil Company’s pump’s topmost globe, today prized by collectors, survived only as a bulb. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.
With the addition of competing businesses such as Wayne Pump Company and Tokheim Oil Tank & Pump Company, the city of Fort Wayne, Indiana, became the gas-pump manufacturing capital of the world.
Some enterprising manufacturing companies even came up with coin-operated gas pumps.
Penn Oil Company filling stations were the exclusive American distributor of Lightning Motor Fuel, a British product made up of “50 percent gasoline and 50 percent of chemicals, the nature of which is secret.” The secret ingredient was likely alcohol. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.
First Drive-In Service Station
Although Standard Oil will claim a Seattle, Washington, station of 1907, and others argue about one in St. Louis two years earlier, most agree that when “Good Gulf Gasoline” went on sale, Gulf Refining Company opened America’s first true drive-in service station.
Gulf Refining Company had been established in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1901 by Andrew Mellon and other investors as an expansion of the J. W. Guffey Petroleum Company formed earlier the same year to exploit the Spindletop oilfield discovery in Texas. The company’s motoring milestone took place at the corner of Baum Boulevard and St. Clair Street in downtown Pittsburgh on December 1, 1913.
Unlike earlier simple curbside gasoline filling stations, an architect purposefully designed the pagoda-style brick facility that offered free air, water, crankcase service, and tire and tube installation.
Gulf Refining Company’s decision in 1913 to open the first service station (above) along Baum Boulevard in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was no accident. The roadway had become known as “automobile row'” because of its high number of dealerships. Photo courtesy Gulf Oil Historical Society.
“This distinction has been claimed for other stations in Los Angeles, Dallas, St. Louis and elsewhere,” noted a Gulf corporate historian. “The evidence indicates that these were simply sidewalk pumps and that the honor of the first drive-in is that of Gulf and Pittsburgh.”
The Gulf station included a manager and four attendants standing by. The original service station’s brightly lighted marquee provided shelter from bad weather for motorists. A photo of the station, designed by architect J.H. Giesey, may or may not have been taken on opening day, according to the Gulf Oil Historical Society.
“At this site in Dec. 1913, Gulf Refining Co. opened the first drive-in facility designed and built to provide gasoline, oils, and lubricants to the motoring public,” noted a Pennsylvania historical marker dedicated on July 11, 2000.
Spitlers Auto Supply Company, 205 Commerce Street, Fredericksburg, Virginia, closed in 1931. It was an example of curbside pumps used before Gulf Refining Company established covered, drive-through stations.
The drive-in station sold 30 gallons of gasoline at 27 cents per gallon on its first day, according to the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission.
“Prior to the construction of the first Gulf station in Pittsburgh and the countless filling stations that followed throughout the United States, automobile drivers pulled into almost any old general or hardware store, or even blacksmith shops in order to fill up their tanks,” the historical commission noted at ExplorePAhistory.com.
The decision to open the first station along Baum Boulevard in Pittsburgh was no accident. When the station was opened, Baum Boulevard had become known as “automobile row” because of the high number of dealerships that were located along the thoroughfare.
Until about 1925, Gulf Refining Company was the only oil company to issue maps. Gulf was formed in 1901 by members of the Mellon family of Pittsburgh. Map image courtesy Harold Cramer.
“Gulf executives must have figured that there was no better way to get the public hooked on using filling stations than if they could pull right in and gas up their new car after having just driven it off the lot,” noted a commission historian.
In addition to gas, the Gulf station also offered free air and water — and sold the first commercial road maps in the United States. “The first generally distributed oil company road maps are usually credited to Gulf,” said Harold Cramer in his “Early Gulf Road Maps of Pennsylvania.”
This 1916 Bowser gasoline pump operated by a hand crank and “clock face” dial. Photo from the Smithsonian Collection.
“The early years of oil company maps, circa 1915 to 1925, are dominated by Gulf as few other oil companies issued maps, and until about 1925 Gulf was the only oil company to issue maps annually,” Cramer explained. That would change.
Founded in 1996, the Road Map Collectors Association (RMCA) preserves the history of road maps to educate the public about America’s automobile age, also documented and exhibited by the Smithsonian Institution (see America on the Move).
While the Gulf station in Pittsburgh could be considered the first “modern” service station, kerosene and gasoline “filling stations” helped pave the way.
Memorabilia once exhibited at the Northwoods Petroleum Museum outside Three Lakes, Wisconsin, opened by Ed Jacobsen in 2006 and closed in 2024.
“At the turn of the century, gasoline was sold in open containers at pharmacies, blacksmith shops, hardware stores and other retailers looking to make a few extra dollars of profit,” noted Kurt Ernst in a 2013 article.
“In 1905, a Shell subsidiary opened a filling station in St. Louis, Missouri, but it required attendants to fill a five gallon can behind the store, then haul this to the customer’s vehicle for dispensing…A similar filling station was constructed by Socal gasoline in Seattle, Washington, opening in 1907,” Ernst explained in his article “The Modern Gas Station celebrates its 100th Birthday.”
One-hundred years after the Gulf Refining Company station opened, America’s 152,995 operating gas stations included 123,289 convenience stores, according to Ernst. On average, each location sold about 4,000 gallons of fuel per day, “quite a jump from the 30 gallons sold at the Gulf station in Pittsburgh on December 1, 1913.”
Photographs of early service stations remain an important part of preserving U.S. transportation history (also true for architecture, pump technologies, advertising methods, and more). The American Oil & Gas Historical Society’s Dome Gas Station at Takoma Park offers insights revealed in just one 1921 black-and-white photograph of a station in a Washington, D.C., suburb.
The Library of Congress maintains a large collection of service station images, as do other libraries and organizations listed with it in AOGHS photo resources.
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Recommended Reading: Pump and Circumstance: Glory Days of the Gas Station
(1993); Fill’er Up!: The Great American Gas Station
(2013); The American Highway: The History and Culture of Roads in the United States
(2000). Your Amazon purchase benefits the American Oil & Gas Historical Society. As an Amazon Associate, AOGHS earns a commission from qualifying purchases.
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The American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS) preserves U.S. petroleum history. Please support this website, subscribe to the monthly email newsletter, and help expand our historical research. Contact bawells@aoghs.org. Copyright © 2026 Bruce A. Wells.
Citation Information: Article Title: “First Gas Pump and Service Station.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/transportation/first-gas-pump-and-service-stations. Last Updated: August 29, 2026. Original Published Date: March 14, 2013.
by Bruce Wells | Jun 9, 2026 | Petroleum Transportation
North Slope oil began moving through Alaska’s 800-mile pipeline system in 1977.
The Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, designed and constructed to carry billions of barrels of North Slope oil to the port of Valdez, has been recognized as a landmark of engineering. On June 20, 1977, the 800-mile pipeline began carrying oil from Prudhoe Bay oilfields to the Port of Valdez at Prince William Sound. The oil began arriving 38 days later.
In July 1973, a tie-breaking vote by Vice President Spiro Agnew in the U.S. Senate passed the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Authorization Act after years of debate about the pipeline’s environmental impact. Concerns included spills, earthquakes, and elk migrations.
The Alaskan Pipeline system’s 420-miles above ground segments use a zig-zag configuration to allow for expansion or contraction of the pipe.
With the laying of the first section of pipe on March 27, 1975, construction began on what at the time was the largest private construction project in American history.
The 800-mile Trans-Alaska Pipeline system, including pumping stations, connecting pipelines, and the ice-free Valdez Marine Terminal, ended up costing billions. The last pipeline weld occurred on May 31, 1977, and oil from the Prudhoe Bay field began flowing to the port of Valdez on June 20, traveling at four miles an hour through the 48-inch-wide pipe.
The pipeline system cost $8 billion, including terminal and pump stations, and would transport about 20 percent of U.S. petroleum production. Tax revenue earned Alaskans about $50 billion by 2002.
Engineering Milestones
Special engineering was required to protect the environment in difficult construction conditions, according to Alyeska Pipeline Service Company. Details about the pipeline’s history include:
- Oil was first discovered in Prudhoe Bay on the North Slope in 1968.
- Alyeska Pipeline Service Company was established in 1970 to design, construct, operate and maintain the pipeline.
- The state of Alaska entered into a right-of-way agreement on May 3, 1974; the lease was renewed in November of 2002.
- Thickness of the pipeline wall: .462 inches (466 miles) & .562 inches (334 miles).
- The Trans-Alaska Pipeline System crosses the ranges of the Central Arctic heard on the North Slope and the Nelchina Herd in the Copper River Basin.
- The Valdez Terminal covers 1,000 acres and has facilities for crude oil metering, storage, transfer and loading.
- The pipeline project involved some 70,000 workers from 1969 through 1977.
- The first pipe of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System was laid on March 27, 1975. Last weld was completed May 31, 1977.
The Alaskan pipeline brings North Slope production to tankers at the port of Valdez. Map courtesy USGS.
- The pipeline is often referred to as “TAPS” – an acronym for the Trans Alaska Pipeline System.
- More than 170 bird species have been identified along the pipeline.
- First oil moved through the pipeline on June 20, 1977; it took 28 days to arrive at Valdez.
Established in 1975, the Organization for Management of Alaska’s Resources (OMAR) became the Resource Development Council for Alaska (RDC) three years later.
- 71 gate valves can block the flow of oil in either direction on the pipeline.
- First tanker to carry crude oil from Valdez: ARCO Juneau, August 1, 1977.
- Maximum daily throughput was 2,145,297 on January 14, 1988.
- The pipeline is inspected and regulated by the State Pipeline Coordinator’s Office.
At the peak of its construction in the fall of 1975, more than 28,000 people worked on the pipeline. There were 31 construction camps built along the route, each built on gravel to insulate and help prevent pollution to the underlying permafrost.
Heaters
The above-ground sections of the pipeline (420 miles) were constructed in a zigzag configuration to allow for expansion or contraction of the pipe because of temperature changes.
Specially designed anchor structures, 700 feet to 1,800 feet apart, securely hold the pipe in position. In warm permafrost and other areas where heat might cause undesirable thawing, the supports contain two, two-inch pipes called “heat pipes.”
The Trans-Alaska Pipeline System has been recognized as a landmark of engineering since it began transporting oil on June 20, 1977.
The first tanker carrying North Slope oil from the new pipeline sailed out of the Valdez Marine Terminal on August 1, 1977. By 2010, the pipeline had carried about 16 billion barrels of oil. Alaska’s total oil production in 2013 was nearly 188 million barrels, or about seven percent of total U.S. production.
The first Alaska oil well with commercial production was completed in 1902 in a region where oil seeps had been known for years. The Alaska Steam Coal & Petroleum Syndicate produced the oil near the remote settlement of Katalla on Alaska’s southern coastline. The oilfield there also led to construction of Alaska Territory’s first refinery.
The modern Alaskan petroleum industry began in 1957 with an oilfield discovery at Swanson River. The next major milestone came when Atlantic Richfield (ARCO) and Exxon discovered the Prudhoe Bay field in March 1968 about 250 miles north of the Arctic Circle.
Rise and Fall of Production
The Prudhoe Bay oilfield proved to be the largest in North America at more than 213,500 acres — exceeding the “Black Giant” East Texas Oilfield discovered in 1930.
Alaska’s daily oil production peaked in 1988 at about 2 million barrels of oil per day, according to the Department of Energy Energy Information Administration (EIA), Petroleum Supply Monthly.
Annual Alaska oil production peaked in 1988 at 738 million barrels of oil — about 25 percent of U.S. oil production at the time, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA). Production averaged about 448,000 barrels of oil per day in 2020, the lowest level in more than 40 years.
“Crude oil production in Alaska averaged 448,000 barrels per day (b/d) in 2020, the lowest level of production since 1976,” the agency noted in its April 2021 Today in Energy report. “Last year’s production was over 75 percent less than the state’s peak production of more than 2 million b/d in 1988.”
The decline in the state’s oil production has decreased deliveries in the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, EIA added. Lower oil volumes caused oil to move more slowly in the pipeline, and the travel time from the North Shore to Valdez increased by 18 days in 2020.
For America’s pipeline history during World War II, see Big Inch Pipelines of WW II and PLUTO, Secret Pipelines of WWII.
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Recommended Reading: The Great Alaska Pipeline
(1988); Amazing Pipeline Stories: How Building the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Transformed Life in America’s Last Frontier
(1997); Oil and Gas Pipeline Fundamentals
(1993); Oil: From Prospect to Pipeline
(1971). Your Amazon purchase benefits the American Oil & Gas Historical Society. As an Amazon Associate, AOGHS earns a commission from qualifying purchases.
_______________________
The American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS) preserves U.S. petroleum history. Support this energy education website, subscribe to our monthly email newsletter, and help expand historical research. Contact bawells@aoghs.org. Copyright © 2026 Bruce A. Wells.
Citation Information – Article Title: “Trans-Alaska Pipeline History.” Author: Aoghs.org Editors. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/transportation/trans-alaska-pipeline. Last Updated: June 14, 2026. Original Published Date: June 20, 2015.
