Gearhead Curios of Galena, Kansas, and its owner Aaron Perry recently received the inaugural Outstanding Attraction award from the Jefferson Highway Association during its 11th annual conference in Alexandria, Louisiana.
Gearhead Curios is best known for being on Route 66. The Jefferson Highway, which ran from New Orleans to Winnipeg, Manitoba, also went through Galena before being replaced by numbered highways during the late 1920s.
The Jefferson Highway Association said this about Perry in a Facebook post:
Aaron has people from all over the world stop by his business in Galena Kansas which is also on Route 66 as well as the historic Jefferson Highway.
Aaron continuously promotes and points people to discovering the north-south Jefferson Highway and gives outstanding hospitality to his guests. He has also created Jefferson Highway merchandise and was the first location on the Jefferson Highway to become a Jefferson Highway Visitor Center. We encourage our JH friends to visit his great site in a restored service station and thank him in person. We hope to soon be able to give him his award in person.
Perry in 2018 acquired a 1939 Texaco gas station along Route 66 in downtown Galena.
Since that time, he’s added a Doc Hudson replica from the “Cars” movie, installed neon lighting and erected a modified Big Boy statue, along with a lot of renovations at the site.
Later this year, Perry plans to fabricate and erect a “Big A the Texaco Man” fiberglass giant, aka Muffler Man, to the station.
(Image of Gearhead Curios in Galena, Kansas, via Facebook)