B A C K   T H E N

Ellsworth’s Triangle Filling Station

The Triangle Filling Station and adjacent tearoom stood at the junction of Routes 1 and 3. The photo appears to date from the 1930s; a 1931 advertisement listed day and night service, with meals and afternoon tea available in the attractive salon or spacious veranda while your automobile was being serviced. The business was well situated to attract Mt. Desert traffic. Alonson E. Clement, the owner, also owned Card Brook Dairy Farm. Architecturally, this would be classified by filling-station devotees as an oblong box with canopy.

The Gulf Oil Company had its belongings with the discovery of oil at Spindletop, Beaumont, Texas, in 1901. The largest investor in a refinery built to process the oil was William L. Mellon of the Pittsburgh banking family. In 1913 Gulf introduced the first drive-in gas station and early promoted branded gasoline on consistent quality. By the 1970s, Gulf Oil was the ninth largest American manufacturing company, but in 1985, due to management blunders, it was engulfed—no pun intended—into Chevron. Branding rights in the northeast were bought by Cumberland Farms, which is why “Gulf” gasoline is still sold in Maine.

Text by William H. Bunting from Maine On Glass. Published by Tilbury House Publishers, 12 Starr St., Thomaston, Maine. 800-582-1899.

Maine On Glass and prints of the photographs are available through the Penobscot Marine Museum: PenobscotMarineMuseum.org.