Promotion and Preservation: Bob’s Oil Well
(Matador, TX)
Before Buc-ee’s existed as the go-to Texas-travel-stop, Bob’s Oil Well held the title. This landmark service station sits at the junction of highways US-70 and TX-70, and in its prime featured a diner, grocer, and a very unique roadside attraction.
Luther Beford “Bob” Robertson (1894-1947), a Greenville-native and World War I veteran, moved to Matador in the Roaring Twenties where he worked as a gas station attendant. In 1932, ‘Bob’ decided to open his own service station at the corner of the two busiest highways in West Texas. Prior to the interstates being built, TX-70 was considered the main north/south route into the Panhandle (currently, I-27 between Lubbock and Amarillo is considered the main corridor to the Panhandle).
Bob’s Oil Well as it stands in 2018, seen from across TX-70.
To promote the business, and certainly to be noticed on the West Texas horizon, he built a wooden oil derrick over the station. He patented this design, and in 1939, replaced the wooden derrick with a more durable steel model. The new derrick stood 84-feet tall and featured lights: after all, everything is bigger in Texas.
Bob, a businessman with a gift for promotions, was not content with merely an 8-story-tall oil derrick to bring in customers. He kept a cage of live rattlesnakes to entertain tourists; from there, he built a full zoo that included lions, monkeys, coyotes, and a white buffalo. To further promote his operation, he paid long distance truck drivers to place advertising signs at strategic points across the nation that notated the mileage to ‘Bob’s Oil Well in Matador’. (This being a tactic that our modern-day Buc-ee’s has certainly learned from.) These signs became well-known to motorists in the 1940s.
Due to the success of his promotions, Bob’s Oil Well expanded to include a grocer, family café, a diner for truck drivers, and garage – pretty much a one-stop shop for any long-distance driver or vacationing family. The man himself became an active civic leader in Matador, particularly in recognizing the efforts of those who served during World War II.
The remnants of Bob’s Cafe in 2018, a building away from the service station.
In 1947, Bob Robertson passed away. Two weeks after his death, a high wind toppled the trademark steel derrick. His widow, Olga, restored it two years later with even larger lights. Despite the restoration, the business did not survive long without Bob and the creation of the ultra-fast interstates. Bob’s Oil Well closed its doors in the 1950s.
Even though Bob’s Oil Well is closed for business, a few of its buildings still remain. The station along with its oil derrick can still be seen from a distance, and the café made of stone and petrified wood stands a building away. Many efforts have been made to preserve this landmark. In 2004, Preservation Texas announced the site as endangered. This sparked a fundraiser for the site that included sales of name bricks (these can be seen outside the service station near the gas pumps), 940 volunteered hours by the Motley County Historical Commission in cleaning a half-century’s worth of debris and neglect, a Texas State Historical Marker, and a volunteer that donated a Conoco sign, two period pumps, and a Coke machine to add interest.
The donated Coke Machine, Conoco Sign, and one of the two Period Pumps. You can also see the fundraising bricks to the left of the period pump.
Renovations to the service station itself (what the Motley County Historical Commissions was hoping could become a Visitor’s Center), has proved challenging because of the weight and design of the derrick. Per one article with the Austin Chronicle, the chairman of the Historical Commission, Marisue Potts, calls the building “a carpenter’s nightmare”, and that “everything slants inward with the bottom of the derrick”.
In 2013, Preservation Texas re-announced this site, no longer in an ‘endangered’ status, but still in a ‘threatened’ status. The owner has no interest in selling the site or taking care of it as the volunteers of the Historical Commission keep the site clean and landscaped. Per Marisue Potts, “We are better off than we were, but not where we would like to be.”
Texas State Historical Marker for Bob’s Oil Well
While the fight to preserve this site continues, the legacy of a great businessman and promoter lives on. In the trying times of the Great Depression, one man’s creative ingenuity led to a profitable business and memories of family gatherings and great hamburgers. It was only the rise of the interstate system that led to more motorists forgoing the once popular highways that killed off the allure of Bob’s Oil Well, similar to the demise of many great spots along Route 66 and other famous trails of Texas.