A Ripon Monument

On Monday I drove through Ripon, Wisconsin on a work trip and passed this little house type station. Closed long ago, the station has found a life as a sometimes office for a monument company. I shot this ironic photo, with the little station sitting amongst the cemetery markers wating their final inscription, like just another grave marker, where a little entrepreurial dream came to rest. You could see it as a sad little reminder of the sweeping changes that pushed thousands of these little stations to the side in the 1970s and 80s, or you could see it a tough little survivor, bucking the odds and surviving as so very few others have, to continue into the 21st century. I prefer to see it as the latter, a Ripon monument to the lives of the hardworking people who toiled in this little building for decades.

My hunch is that this station was built by the Biegick Brothers, who we feature in our book, Fill 'er Up: The Glory Days of Wisconsin Gas Stations. If you know something about this station, drop us a line, we would love
to hear from you.