Welcome To Pete’s Service: More Than A 100-Year-Old Pine Bluffs Gas Pump Graveyard

PINE BLUFFS — U.S. Highway 30 runs a few hundred yards north of Interstate 80 through this eastern Wyoming town on the west side of the Nebraska border.

Now more of a lazy county road, U.S. 30 for decades was a bustling thoroughfare running east and west through Wyoming before the interstate was built.

And the busiest spot on the highway in Pine Bluffs was Pete’s Service.

For decades after it opened in 1924, thousands of cars a month would stop at the Mobil station — easily identifiable by the large red Pegasus painted on it — for a full-service fill-up, on-the-road repair or a glass bottle of ice-cold soda.

More than a century later, Pete’s is still there. It’s a monument to an America that valued hard work, attention to detail and never pumped its own gas. It may even have some of the original gas pumps in front of it.

Now, Pete’s Service is a graveyard for dozens of old gas pumps, washing machines, service station memorabilia and even an old pickup. There’s more rust than paint on most of them, but they seem to call to those handy enough to see potential in restoring these relics of petroleum history.

Some say the cluttered property has become a glorified junkyard. Others say it’s more of a loose museum that collects as many memories as it does tumbleweeds.

Kerry Odean is firmly in the second camp. He owns Pete’s Service and all the stuff in and in front of it.

Not only is it not junk, it’s treasure that must be preserved, he said. That’s why the 77-year-old said he would never sell Pete’s and its hoard of vintage, rusty relics without assurances they’ll be saved.

But he’s not waiting for that promise, Odean told Cowboy State Daily. He’s working to get Pete’s Service on the National Register of Historic Places.

Don’t Call It ‘Junk”

Admitting there’s some truth to the adage that one man’s trash is another’s treasure, Odean has made a career of being a treasure hunter. Along with Pete’s, he’s owned Odean Farm & Antiques for decades.

As a younger man, Odean used to do more repair and restoration of the vintage pumps that find their way in front of Pete’s, he said.

“Now, I’d like to preserve the history of that Pete’s Service. It was 100 years old last year, it was built in 1924,” he said. “I want it to be there and to stay there.

“I’m 77 years old now, and I bought that in 1987, so I’ve had that station since the mid-1980s. It was a working station when I bought it, but I never pumped gas.”

Odean said he intended to fix the place up and make it a working gas station again, but with the self-serve movement just beginning at that time, it was just too costly to update the pumps and systems.

“That’s when self-serve stations were first coming out, and that’s what I intended to have there,” he said. “We had two boys, and both were really mechanical, so we were going to do a car service deal where we’d come pick your car up, we’d vacuum it, check the oil, fill it up and deliver it back.”

But that never happened, and Odean now admits he bought Pete’s “with a lot of plans and a lot of dreams.”

Now he still has plans and dreams for it, which is to keep Pete’s as it is.

‘Some Of That Stuff Is Real Cool’

That would be just fine with Mary (Smith) Chowns, who grew up in Pine Bluffs and is now the curator at the local Texas Trail Museum.

She remembers Pete’s before Odean bought it when the station was owned by Jack and Celia Redding.

“It used to be a (Mobil) station with the big red horse,” she said. “I grew up here, and my mom and dad lived here when they first got married. And Pete’s was the place to get gas.”

She agrees with Odean that Pete’s now is an important part of Pine Bluffs history and should stay pretty much as it is.

“It would be real vacant if they took all that away,” she told Cowboy State Daily. “Although, it would be nice if he cleaned it up a little, and sometimes it’s so full of tumbleweeds.

“But some of that stuff is real cool. A lot of the reason he has so many gas pumps is he rebuilds them, and I’m sure it takes many of them to rebuild one.”

Alisha Michaud not only grew up in Pine Bluffs, she lived just down the street from the Odeans. The home also was an interesting place to see some cool, vintage gadgets and gizmos outside in the yard, she said.

“He lived a block away from me while I was growing up, and Mary (Odean, Kerry’s wife) was a schoolteacher,” Michaud said. “He’d have stuff up there at the house and always stuff there (at Pete’s), and then he’d go to the auctions.”

History Is The Future

Michaud also wants to see Pete’s preserved the way it is.

“It’s a cool piece of history, and I always like to see the kids who get their pictures taken out there,” she said. “I like the old stuff. Now, it sits there and rots, and I’m worried somebody is going to buy it and get rid of all that stuff.”

For now, Michaud and Chowns have nothing to worry about, Odean said. While he’s not as active as he once was, he still sees potential in his collection of pumps.

“I still sell old pumps from time to time,” he said. “At one time, we’d go to auctions and take the pumps. There’s a huge market for that stuff.”

Now that the interstate takes people through Pine Bluffs at 75 mph with little more than a glance, Pete’s Service is more important than ever to keep as a reminder of what once was, Odean said.

“It was the biggest, the fanciest gas station that caught the people’s eye to stop,” he said about the glory days of Pete’s. “That big Mobil station with the big pumps and the big Pegasus on it — it does have historical significance.”

Odean still has the heart of an antique dealer and will from time to time meet people at his shop or at Pete’s to strike a bargain, and he admits his focus has changed.

“That station’s been there, and we still get people who stop (in Pine Bluffs) and say they came through in the ’60s and ’70s as kids and got candy there,” Odean said. “Now when people ask, ‘What do you sell, Mr. Odean?’ I say, ‘I sell memories.’”

Contact Greg Johnson at greg@cowboystatedaily.com