By Andy Ostmeyer

aostmeyer@joplinglobe.com

With gas at more than $3 a gallon, the romance of the open road is, well, road kill.

But there was a day when motoring across the country with the top down was part of the American experience. While the romance may be gone, the nostalgia isn’t, at least in communities from Carterville to Miami, Okla., where a half-dozen former filling stations are being preserved and restored.

“There is new life coming to these places,” said Rod Harsh, a Route 66 promoter who recently acquired a 70-year-old filling station at 401 W. Main St. in Carterville.

In Miami, city officials have submitted grant applications to the National Park Service and to Marathon Oil Corp. for the restoration of a former Marathon gas station along the old Mother Road. The station, at 331 S. Main St., was built about 1929.

Daryl Buckmaster, the building’s owner, said: “It’s got the old tin ceiling. ... It’s a sound structure. It just needs some tender loving care. What we’re trying to do is preserve it like it originally was. It is largely unaltered. It still has its original slate roof.

“As far as we know at this point, it’s the only Marathon (gas station) still left in the United States.”

Costs for the restoration are projected at $15,589, with the grant to cover half, and the rest coming from Buckmaster and the Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Restoration would include installing replica pumps, placement of a historical marker, repairing and painting the exterior, and adding period signs out front and on the sides of the building. The gas station would continue to function as a beauty salon after the restoration.

“We know that every day, 40,000 cars pass by Miami, Okla.,” said Larry Eller, community development and grant coordinator for the city. “If we could just capture a small percentage of that, it would be really huge.”

Joplin site for sale

In Joplin, Dale’s Ole 66 Barber Shop, at the corner of Euclid Avenue and Utica Street, recently was designated a historic landmark by the Joplin Historic Preservation Commission.

“It was a Shamrock station,” said owner Dale Holly. He said the station was built in the late 1920s and closed in 1959. He bought it in 1962 and ran it for 40 years.

“It’s on the market,” said Holly, who is asking $110,000 for the building and a couple of lots, as well as an adjacent storage building.