A groundbreaking ceremony will be held at 1 p.m. Dec. 21 at 514 Olive St. in Chelsea, Oklahoma, for the construction of a 1930s-style service station for car maintenance and repairs, plus a Route 66 gift shop.
The shop will be called Olive Oils 66 Service Station in downtown Chelsea. It will feature a 1930s-style canopy and vintage-style gas pumps for decoration.
One service bay will be for oil changes and other quick maintenance, another bay will be used for more complex repairs, and the rest will be used as a Route 66 tourist and gift shop.
Billy and Pam Stanbro have operated a vehicle-repair shop in rural Chelsea for 18 years and decided to move those operations into the village.
Billy Stanbro said in a phone interview he hopes to have Olive Oils 66 Service Station open by late 2022, but he acknowledged that might be an optimistic timetable because of the permitting required for the project.
Billy said he and Pam went on a Route 66 trip from Chelsea to Santa Monica six years ago to celebrate their wedding anniversary and “fell in love” with the Mother Road. The next year, they traveled on Route 66 from Chelsea to Chicago.
“We wanted to do something for the community,” he said. “We thought how cool it would be for something like this in Chelsea where we could meet (Route 66) travelers and talk to those people.”
Olive Oils would sit about a block west of the most modern alignment of Route 66, across the railroad tracks, and be visible from the highway. The Stanbros’ forthcoming business would be near the corner of West Sixth Street, part of which served as the original path of Route 66.
(Blueprint image of the Olive Oils 66 Service Station in Chelsea, Oklahoma, via Project Chelsea page on Facebook)