Since I was a kid, family vacations included stopping at a Standard station to fill up the tank, get a bottle of pop, maybe a candy bar, a comic book if they had any, and continue the drive. It seems like it was always a Standard station. There were all the others that we knew at the time: Sinclair, Shell, Mobil, Texaco, Amoco, etc…but it seems Standard was the ‘standard’.

Standard’s full original name was Standard Oil Company and Trust, founded and incorporated as an empire by John D. Rockefeller and lasting from 1870 to 1911. In 1880, the company controlled 95% of all the produced fuel & oil products in the United States.

Thanks to the Standard Oil Trust Agreement, offshoot companies using the Standard name could be bought, created, divided, merged, sold, which resulted in many Standard Oil components around the country.

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In 1931 Standard Oil Company of New York merged with Vacuum Oil Company and formed Socony-Vacuum, which was re-named Mobil Oil Corporation in 1966.

Standard Oil in Indiana took over Standard Oil in Nebraska & Kansas and became known as Amoco by 1985.

Standard Oil of California took over Kentucky’s Standard Oil and renamed Chevron in 1984.

Standard Oil Company in New Jersey changed its name to Exxon in 1972.

And the tale continues.  In 1987, the British Petroleum Company bought out Ohio’s Standard Oil Company, was re-named “BP” and merged with Amoco. So it seems no matter where you get gas, it’s somehow connected to the old Standard Oil Company & Trust.

The gallery below contains many photos of old Standard stations throughout the state of Michigan…!

Michigan's Standard Gas Stations: 1910s-1950s

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