On Sunday, these new creatures caught my eye at Courtesy Corner, the Sinclair station at Pacific and Calapooia.
Pacific Boulevard in west Albany, not known for visual curiosities, now has at least one: a pair of green baby dinosaurs looking out at traffic on the highway.
The fiberglass creations appeared one day last week in front of Courtesy Corner, the gas station at 1515 Calapooia St. S.W. which last October changed its brand of fuel from Shell to Sinclair.
The figures are meant to resemble the apatosaurus, a species of plant-eating dinosaur that lived in North America during the Late Jurassic period 150 million years ago.
I call these babies because an adult of the species was about 70 feet long and weighed around 40,000 pounds.
Sinclair, an oil company more than a century old that now serves locally owned stations across the country, adopted the dinosaur as part of its logo early in its history.
On its website, the company explains:
“Dinosaurs first appeared in Sinclair marketing in 1930 as part of a campaign to educate customers on the origin of fossil fuels. The Apatosaurus (then thought a Brontosaurus) quickly surpassed the T-Rex and Triceratops in popularity, and by 1932, we had registered DINO as a trademark. The dinosaurs appeared again as life-sized fiberglass models at the 1964 World’s Fair – and you can still see many of those models in state parks and museums across the country.”
Taylor Smith, who manages Courtesy Corner, told me today the company supplied and installed the two replicas at no charge, which is no small thing considering they were shipped from their manufacturer on the East Coast.
Smith counts on having some fun with these additions to the station, which has been in his family since 1962. He was hoping to get his hands on a couple of caps and gowns so he could dress the dinos up for graduation.
Dinosaurs in general seem to still be popular among the preschool set, and Smith says people are welcome to take photos of his dinos with their kids.
What the dinos don’t yet have is names. Smith says he might have a contest to take care of that. (hh)
The two baby dinos look out at traffic on Pacific Boulevard on Sunday afternoon.
Dyno-mite!
How fun!
Take that, electric vehicles! We got dinosaurs! And they are vegetarians too. Ha, ha!
We have filled up with gas at courtesy corner for years. I did learn from the owner that he was switching from Shell to Sinclair and he hoped to have dinosaurs out front. The young men and women who pump gas there are always friendly and wash your windshield. I travel a lot and don’t mind pumping my gas. Usually have to wash the windshield anyway and use the facilities. However it is nice to visit with the staff at Sinclair. Thank you for the story and posting the picture.
I really like the dinos.
On a very sunny, hot day in the summer those dinosaurs can get very hot to the touch. Please use caution with the children on those days. No one wants anyone to get burned.
The dinosaur seems an apt metaphor when considering the future of gas-powered transportation.
On a recent trip to National Parks in Utah, I spotted DINOs twice. Thought them rare and disappearing. How cool to have twins here at home
at least one can be seen in North Dakota on the south side of I-94, You have to be on your toes because it’s several hundred yards away from the freeway.
All your gasoline etc. comes from Portland or Coburg through the pipeline from Portland and then trucked. Main terminals in Portland, across the Willamette from the University of Portland. Ship, barge & rail.
It’s all ” generic bulk” fuel of either 1 of 2 octanes with with the alcohol and proprietary additives added (or not) to the tanker after first being filled with the specified amount of fuel. Mixing occurs while the truck is going down the road and when dumped in the stations tanks. Mid grade is mixed at the pump.
There is a town of Sinclair a couple of miles east of Rawlins Wyoming along I-80. There is a huge oil refinery there and what appears to be a old company town. And, of course, there is a Sinclair service station at the freeway exit.