1920 Texaco StationShoreview, Ramsey County, Minnesota, was farming and cabins for the elite before becoming a suburb of Minneapolis and St. Paul.In addition to farming and elite vacationers, Shoreview also served as a respite for the poor and vulnerable. The Union Gospel Mission operated summer camps on Snail Lake, and the Children’s Preventorium on Lake Owasso, taking in youngsters exposed to tuberculosis.In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Ramsey County was known as a “‘crooks’ haven” with Midwestern gangsters, bank robbers, and bootleggers running their operations and hiding from the FBI on farms and in cabins. About 20 years after the longtime owner, At Larson, died, the city acquired the 2.4-acre historic site, including the century-old brick farmhouse, for $322,000. This farmstead was one of the earliest in the city of Shoreview. Once restored, the farmhouse was rented out for over a decade as office space to a nonprofit. The farmhouse is crafted from buttery-yellow Chaska brick and was built in 1896 in Mounds View township. The Chaska bricks were brought by train from the west metro and carted from Cardigan Junction, located 5 miles to the southeast of the farmstead. Its first occupants were German immigrants August and Henriette Lepak. The house is a cross-wing style typical of German and Scandinavian architecture.The park’s other main attraction is the 1920s Guerin Texaco Gas Station, the area’s first filling station. The restored gas station moved to the site in 2012 from its original location at the corner of Rice Street and North Owasso Boulevard. Texaco, Inc. ("The Texas Company") was founded in Beaumont, Texas as the "Texas Fuel Company" in 1902. The Texaco station had some infamous clientele. In the 1930s, gangsters, including Ma Barker and Baby Face Nelson, gassed up on their way to visit local cottages and taverns.
Here's a short video of the Tiny Texaco and the Lepak-Larson house.
