Jamie Hale/The Oregonian

It’s not every day you find a gas station that makes a political statement – let alone one shaped like a teapot.

But the historic Teapot Dome Service Station in central Washington does just that, bridging the worlds of quirky roadside attraction and politics like no other. It no longer functions as a gas station, but the attraction still stands as a tongue-in-cheek monument to the Teapot Dome scandal that rocked American politics in the 1920s.

The controversy surrounded leases for oil fields near Wyoming’s Teapot Dome, issued by U.S. Secretary of the Interior Albert Bacon Fall, to two oil companies in 1921 and 1922. For granting exclusive rights to the federal oil reserves, Fall received some $200,000 in bonds – a transaction the Supreme Court found to be fraudulent.

President Warren G. Harding wasn’t implicated in the scandal, but it reportedly took both a mental and physical toll, leaving him disillusioned and exhausted up until his death in office in 1923, leaving a tarnished legacy behind.

While the Teapot Dome scandal took hold of Washington, D.C., an enterprising man in Washington state found a clever way to capitalize.

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Jamie Hale/The Oregonian

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Jack Ainsworth’s father had first built the Old Dalton Trading Co. General Country Store in 1902, along the highway between the small towns of Zillah and Granger. That store might have been forgotten if not for the younger Ainsworth’s idea in 1922 to build a gas station beside it in the shape of a giant teapot.

At the time, drive-in gas stations were a novelty, no more than a decade old. They were likely exciting in and of themselves, but to drive up to one shaped like a teapot must have been a real treat – something literally to write home about.

READ MORE: Oregon's 40 best roadside attractions



The service station’s effectiveness as a political statement, on the other hand, seems to have been less impressive. Despite a constant flurry of press on the Teapot Dome scandal, there appears to have been little to no notice of the quirky new service station in central Washington. The Oregonian archives, at least, make no mention of it until 2001, in a travel feature about Yakima.

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Jamie Hale/The Oregonian

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But for the small town of Zillah, the attraction has remained a source of pride – despite the headaches locals have endured just trying to keep it in existence.

In 1978, the construction of Interstate 82 forced the station to relocate. Five days before the scheduled move, a car hit the building and caved it in. It was rebuilt and moved to the side of Yakima Valley Highway, but by 2007 it was listed as an endangered historical site. In 2012, it was refurbished and relocated once more, to its current site at Teapot Dome Memorial Park.

That the town of Zillah – and Friends of the Teapot Association, in particular – worked so hard to preserve the station, shows the lasting power of quirky, unique roadside attractions. These places are true slices of Americana that illuminate our culture in strange, often colorful ways. In that way, the Teapot Dome Service Station was less a statement on oil leases, and more a statement on American creativity.

What else can you expect a giant teapot to say?

--Jamie Hale | jhale@oregonian.com | @HaleJamesB

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