Thanks for the kudos everyone.

Welcome to Robby Andersen, grandson of the founders of the now world famous Andersen's Pea Soup! If anyone knows this area, Robby does as he grew up here. We will have to tell them more about your involvement with the Pea Soup Special Dragster Robby.

More on Las Cruces

As if there were not enough service stations in the tiny town of Las Cruces, there was still another one. Valdemar Nielsen decided to try and capture the traffic from the north, so he built another station on the southbound lane of the coast highway just a mile or so before the turnoff to Lompoc. He sold Shell gasoline and offered towing service, which was often needed due to accidents and overheating on the winding roads. It was called the “Las Cruces Garage”, which undoubtedly caused some confusion for the “El Camino Garage” at the other end of town on the northbound side of the highway.

Randy Chester, a former Buellton resident, recently sent me some pictures of the Las Cruces Garage that I had never seen before. Either his dad or his uncles worked there and may have operated the station at one time or another. The Chester brothers operated numerous stations in the Buellton area, including at one time, competing stations all clustered at one end of Buellton.

Here is a glimpse of a day at the Las Cruces Garage







The town of Las Cruces and the Chevron service station on the other side of the highway would last at least into the early sixties until hihgway widening and reconfiguration finally forced them out of business. I still have more pictures of the modern Chevron station and store that came about in place of the first row of stations in the first picture that I posted so come back and visit this post again soon.

[This message has been edited by the poor mans museum (edited 12-04-2005).]

C Cragg