“I’d like to see it left there, but if somebody buys it, I’d like to encourage them to donate it to a museum,” he said. “I don’t want to see it torn down.”

As for the romance of the open road, well, Holly has some perspective on that, too. Some years back, when he was remodeling the building, he found an old price chart. Gas was 8 cents a gallon.

“It’s pretty unreal,” Holly said.

Kansas projects

Stations also are being restored in Baxter Springs, Kan., and Galena, Kan.

The National Park Service’s Route 66 Corridor Preservation Program awarded a grant of $26,202 to the Baxter Springs Historical Society to restore the exterior of an old Phillips 66 filling station for use as a visitors center. The station first opened in 1930.

“We have the inside all stripped out now,” said Dean Auman, a member of the board of the society and chairman of the station committee.

The first phase of the project, estimated to cost $10,000, will involve work on eaves, fascia, heating and air conditioning, and painting.

“It’s going to be attractive,” said Auman, who is always looking for volunteers to help with the work. The station at 10th Street and Military Avenue.

Renee Charles is one of a group known as 4 Women on the Route that is restoring an old station in Galena, near Main and Front streets. Front Street is the original Route 66. Larry Courtney is the owner of the building.

“We’re restoring it to be a Kanotex (station),” Charles said. “We’re going with the 1940s. We’re just restoring it ourselves. We haven’t brought in the historical society.

“It will be a welcome center. You just don’t know how many people come through this town and stop and take pictures of the old Route 66 signs.”

She thinks the station was built in the early 1930s.

Nearby, another gas station from the 1930s is under renovation. Scott Shockley wants to restore the filling station at Sixth and Main streets. He wants to give it the look it had in the 1950s and 1960s.

“Everybody around here remembers this building as Texaco,” he said. “I’m going to restore the whole front of it.”