A nearly 100-year-old gas pump worth $5,000 recently was stolen from the historic Marathon Oil Co. gas station along old Route 66 in Miami, Oklahoma.
The theft prompted the station’s owner to remove the other two gas pumps for safekeeping, reported the Miami News-Record.
According to the police report, an unknown suspect removed one of the three antique gas pumps bolted to the concrete in front of the station. The bolts had also been removed from the two remaining pumps standing beside the now missing pump.
Authorities believe the pump may have been stolen sometime between 9 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 25 and 8:30 a.m., Monday, Feb. 26 when the larceny was first discovered. […]
The Miami Police Department asks anyone with information to call 918-542-5585.
The newspaper talked to the station’s former owner, Daryl Buckmaster of Miami, who bought the 1929 station in 1999 and worked diligently to restore it until he sold the property for $18,000 at auction in 2016.
He restored the station to 95 percent of its original condition with white external glazed subway tiles and the original slate roof. He used old paint chips to match the original colors.
The gas pumps were restored 1924 Rush models acquired from Parsons, Kansas, and Joplin, Missouri.
Buckmaster said removing the large bolts from the pumps would have taken a lot of time, and the pumps themselves are very heavy — indicating more than one person was behind the theft.
“They called me and I went down there, and I was just heart-sick,” Buckmaster said of learning the pump had been taken sometime in the night. […]
“It’s such a great place and I don’t know whether or not it will ever be put back again now that this has been done. It’s kind of like the end of something special,” he said. “We put a lot of work and money and time in that place and it was a labor of love. It’s too bad this world’s like that.”
The station sits at 331 S. Main St., part of the oldest alignment of Route 66 in Miami. That segment leads to the so-called Sidewalk Highway of Route 66 on the south edge of town into rural Ottawa County.
(Image of the Marathon station in Miami, Oklahoma, in 2016 via William and William Real Estate Auctions)
Welcome to the real world. He’d better get plastic copies of the other two made. And wire them up to very loud alarms.
Thieves suck.
Disgusting.
Video surveillance.
Parsons is where the last rolls of Kodachrome were processed on 1/18/11…
Unfortunately, this is becoming all to common not just on Route 66 but in every place. People, please teach your kids, grand kids to respect the belongings of others. Seems people have no respect for anyone or anything not them or theirs these days.
SAD…I LIVE IN CHICAGO AND HAVE ALWAYS SAID,”YOU CAN’T OWN ANYTHING NICE THESE DAYS”!
T.HOWARD