The Oklahoma Route 66 Association has announced a cleanup day on July 17 for the Allen’s Fillin’ Station property along old Route 66 in Commerce, Oklahoma.
An email from the association stated:
We will be freshening up the paint on the building and doing any other general site clean-up that is needed. We’d love to have your help! Many thanks to Kay Russell for lending us a bit of scaffolding for the day to get the job done right. In the event of rain, we will push to the next day (Sunday, July 18th) but here’s hoping that will not be necessary. We’ll send out another email and update the Facebook event if that is the case.
We’d love to see you! Please reach out to me or Marilyn Emde at the Oklahoma Route 66 Association office directly if you have any questions. If you’d like to donate to help cover some of the costs of the materials, you can do so here.
The gas station is at 101 S. Main St. (map here) in downtown Commerce. Cleanup efforts will begin at 10 a.m.
Station owner Bobby Allen announced last summer he was putting the property up for sale. Allen said he was prompted to sell the station because of the death of his wife, Linda, 65. The Allens had used the station as a small souvenir shop and photo op for years.
The station originally was a Conoco built in 1929 or 1930, then became a Phillips 66 station during the late 1930s. It’s been known as the “Hole in the Wall Conoco Station” for years.
7/17/2021 UPDATE: The association canceled the cleanup day. It announced in an email:
Storms popped up much earlier than expected and Ottawa County as a whole is under a Flash Flood Watch. The last thing I want is for all of our hard work to get washed away.
It will announce a makeup date later.
(Image of Allen’s Fillin’ Station in Commerce, Oklahoma, in 2013 by formulanone via Flickr)