FREDERICKTOWN — In a recent vintage photo of downtown Mount Vernon in the early 1950s, we saw the sign (if not the actual building) for a Sinclair gas station.
This image from around the same time shows the Sinclair station that used to operate in Fredericktown at the intersection of South Main and Columbus Road, courtesy of a photograph donated to the Knox Time Collection by Vickie Clawson Adams.
While Sinclair gas stations have grown rare around these parts, the company is still active, though it has since been absorbed into larger corporations.
They are widespread enough that numerous pop culture references to the company have been made, including the surname of the main family in the ABC puppet sitcom Dinosaurs (1991-1994), which was “Sinclair.”
The chain’s dinosaur logo has been referred to in the Toy Story and Cars movies by naming a fictional gas station as “Dinoco.” And the large Sinclair dinosaur balloon has been an on-and-off favorite of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade since the 1960s.
Though it didn’t yet have it in this photo, the Fredericktown station later had a large, rotating dinosaur sign, according to commenter Bruce Snell, sometime around the late 1960s.
This famous Sinclair logo came about because of the impression that “fossil fuels” like gasoline came from the remains of dinosaurs deep in the earth, whereas today it is thought that such deposits have far more to do with microscopic plankton and plants than large dinosaurs.
The logo was a brontosaurus, a long-necked sauropod, whose scientific name means “thunder lizard” because of their size, which may well have caused the ground to tremble when they walked.
For a number of years, the scientific name fell out of use based on the probability that the creatures were just a local variation of the apatosaurus species, but recent studies have demonstrated that brontosaurus is actually a distinct cousin of the apatosaurs.
Maybe it’s just because I grew up with that name, but I hope I’m not alone in thinking that “brontosaurus” sounds a whole lot cooler than “apatosaurus.” One thing that is pretty certain today is that they would not have dragged their tails around like that.
Rather, they would flex them to keep them ready to use as a defensive whip.
The image of the logo was likely inspired by the famous 1914 cartoon “Gertie the Dinosaur,” which featured a playful brontosaurus.
Commenters on the Knox Time Facebook page note that a popular ice cream stand was nearby.
“Across the street,” said Orval Simon-Bower, “there was an ice cream place where my little league coach always took us after a game we won.”
Commenter Raymond Jennings noted that not only did his grandfather, M.B. White, own the station at one point, Jennings also worked there, but later on when it was an Arco station.
He said that cigarettes from the vending machine (is that the machine to the left of the pumps?) sold packs of cigs for only 35 cents. The owner of the station at the time of this picture was evidently Howard “Dutch” Mast, judging by the lettering on the building.
We can just barely see a truck to the left that makes me think this photograph is also from the 1950s. Deb Reed Hawk noted that her father Chalmer Reed and his brother Galen also ran the station for a period.
Ruth Wandle noted that her husband Al and her also ran it for a time in the 1960s. With its prominent location, many residents have stopped there over the years.
As of the Google Maps photo from 2023, it was now a Clark Station. Is that a completely new building, or was it adapted from the previous one, with a new roof?
It looks like the roads around it have been slightly widened over the years, leaving the station precariously perched on the intersection.