Idle Time On Our Hands -- Looking For Whiting Oil History -- January 7, 2018

Updates

January 7, 2018: you have no idea how much I want to go on a cross-country trip after seeing a photo like this. I just watched the movie, The Founder, the story of Ray Kroc and McDonald's -- all along Route 66.

Original Post

 

Image from Google. One wonders if this might be the original building as it looks today:

A reader was interested in some old Whiting Oil history. He came across this photo on the internet:

This Whiting Bros service station is 15 miles east of Grants, NM, one mile north of I-40.

San Fidel, about 23 miles down the road from Grants, is a census-designated place in Cibola County, New Mexico, United States. Its population was 138 as of the 2010 census. San Fidel has a post office with ZIP code 87049, which opened on December 24, 1910.Wikipedia.

The reader was hoping to find a connection between this Whiting Bros service station and the current Whiting oil company operating in the Bakken. No such luck; maybe a reader knows more.

So, far this is all we know:

Whiting Brothers was established in 1926 as a chain of gasoline stations based in St. Johns and Holbrook, Arizona. At its peak, it operated more than one hundred filling stations (including at least forty on the former U.S. Route 66), fifteen motels and various truck stops under a slogan of "quality gas for less".

The business began to decline in the 1970s due to fuel shortages and a drop in traffic at its locations on the US Highway system as these roads were bypassed by Interstate highways. 

Stations in still-viable locations were sold off individually by the 1980s while many locations on roads long bypassed were simply abandoned. 

The reader opines:

Kenneth R. Whiting, Denver Co (deceased) Whiting Petroleum, may have been a son or grandson of one of the Whiting Brothers, but if so I can't find any connection.

Maybe someone knows more.

Updates from others:

• Kenneth R. Whiting, obituary, age 86; 2014.