Ashland Oil Stations
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Many of Ashland Oil’s service
stations were modern designs
like the one in this magazine advertisement.
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HUNTINGTON — Back when a gasoline station
attendant filled your tank, washed your
windows and checked your oil, all while you comfortably
waited in your car, the Huntington area landscape was
dotted with Ashland Oil stations.
With its busy refinery in Catlettsburg, Kentucky, and
its corporate headquarters
in Ashland, the company was a familiar part of life in the Tri-State. The
company’s sponsorship of the popular “Saturday Night Jamboree”
on WSAZ kept its name in front of local TV viewers.
Ashland Oil was founded in 1924 when Paul G. Blazer
bought the
Catlettsburg refinery, then a small unprofitable
1,000 barrel a day operation.
A canny businessman, Blazer would build the company into
a corporate
powerhouse with six refineries, thousands of miles of pipelines,
an extensive fleet of river towboats and barges and,
of course, lots of service stations.
The 1940 edition of the Huntington City Directory listed
only two
Ashland Oil stations. But by the 1970s, that number
had increased to nine stations.
In 1998, Ashland Oil’s petroleum division entered
into a joint venture with Marathon Oil.
In 2005, Ashland sold its share of the joint venture to Marathon.
After the sale, Ashland was no longer involved in
refining or
marketing fuels. The original Catlettsburg refinery remains
in operation, owned and operated by Marathon.
Today, Huntington area motorists can buy gas at a
Marathon station
or pull into one of the Speedway convenience stores operated
by Marathon. But you can’t buy gas at an Ashland
Oil station. They’ve long since disappeared.
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Note: This Article and picture appeared in the Herald-Dispatch Newspaper on Feb. 18, 2020.
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