Location Old US Route 66 Country United States Town or city Galena | Address 119 North Main Street Opened 1934 Renovated 2007 | |
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Former names Little's Service Station Alternative names 4 Women on the Route
Cars on the Route Type historic filling station Similar Galena Mining & Historical, Rainbow Bridge, Front Street Garage, Baxter Springs Heritage, 66 Drive‑In | ||
The Kan-O-Tex Service Station in Galena, Kansas, is a roadside diner and souvenir shop in the former Little's Service Station building, a Kan-O-Tex filling station which originally served U.S. Route 66 motorists in 1934.
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Map of Kan-O-Tex Service Station, Galena, KS 66739, USA
History
Galena, Kansas is a former mining town, named in 1877 for galena, a lead sulphide ore extracted locally. U.S. Route 66 was designated in 1927; by 1929 Kansas and Illinois were the first to completely pave their respective segments of this highway.
Little's Service Station installed its fuel pumps on the former site of the Banks Hotel (demolished 1933) at 119 North Main Street in Galena; an automobile repair shop was added later. Before Interstate 44 opened in the area in 1961, bypassing Kansas entirely, U.S. Route 66 in Kansas was a vibrant part of the "Mother Road" which led from Chicago, Illinois to Santa Monica, California and former local mining towns like Galena and Baxter Springs would be filled with roadside diners, motels, tourist camps, service stations and trucking companies to serve travellers on the U.S. Highway as it passed through Kansas on its way between Joplin, Missouri and Miami, Oklahoma.
Lead and zinc mining in the Tri-State district had largely ended by the 1960s, leading to a local population decline and the closure of many of the town's businesses. In 1979, US 66 in Galena was taken off its former Main Street alignment (which came in from Missouri as Front Street, turned south on Main Street, then followed the current K-66 route to Riverton) and routed directly onto 7th Street, bypassing the station. US 66 would become Kansas state route 66 in 1985, but the station sat vacant, closed and largely abandoned until its 2007 restoration.
Restoration
The Kan-O-Tex Service Station was restored in 2007 and renamed to 4 Women on the Route. Located seven blocks north of the current (7th Street) Kansas Route 66, the station retains the original aesthetic design of the fuel pumps and exterior façade but places a diner-style lunch counter in what once would have been the service bay of the station's repair garage.
It bears the branding of the former Kanotex Refining Company (1909-1953), a now-defunct regional fuel brand named for Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. The Kan-O-Tex logo was a Kansas sunflower behind a five-point star.
The station is home to a 1951 International boom truck on which Pixar's animated Cars character Tow Mater would be based; a Disney/Pixar crew returned on April 2011 to interview the station's owners for a DVD release of Cars 2.
As the "Mater" name is a Disney trademark, the original truck has been named "Tater".