Vickers_gasoline_truck_1954,_Wichita,_KS

First Vickers Service Station built 1954 in Haysville, KS

Vickers Petroleum Company was an

oil company The petroleum industry, also known as the oil industry or the oil patch, includes the global processes of hydrocarbon exploration, exploration, extraction of petroleum, extraction, oil refinery, refining, Petroleum transport, transportation (of ...

founded by John A. (Jack) Vickers, Sr. In 1918, Vickers established a

refinery A refinery is a production facility composed of a group of chemical engineering unit processes and unit operations refining certain materials or converting raw material into products of value. Types of refineries Different types of refineries ...

Potwin, Kansas Potwin is a city in Butler County, Kansas, United States. It is named after the town site land owner Charles Potwin. As of the 2020 census, the population of the city was 421. History Early history For many millennia, the Great Plains of N ...

to process the output of recently discovered

oil field A petroleum reservoir or oil and gas reservoir is a subsurface accumulation of hydrocarbons contained in porous or fractured rock formations. Such reservoirs form when kerogen (ancient plant matter) is created in surrounding rock by the presence ...

s in Butler County.

Wichita Vickers basketball

By the 1950s, Vickers had 300 employees, controlled a chain of 300 service stations in an area from

Iowa Iowa () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States, bordered by the Mississippi River to the east and the Missouri River and Big Sioux River to the west. It is bordered by six states: Wisconsin to the northeast, Illinois to the ...

Colorado Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of t ...

, and fielded the Wichita Vickers, an

Amateur Athletic Union The Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) is an amateur sports organization based in the United States. A multi-sport organization, the AAU is dedicated exclusively to the promotion and development of amateur sports and physical fitness programs. It has ...

basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular Basketball court, court, compete with the primary objective of #Shooting, shooting a basketball (ball), basketball (appr ...

team playing in the

National Industrial Basketball League The National Industrial Basketball League was founded in 1947 to enable U.S. mill workers a chance to compete in basketball. The league was founded by the industrial teams (teams sponsored by the large companies and made up of their employees) be ...

. The team was successful, winning a share of the 1957-58 league championship.

Dick Boushka Richard James Boushka (July 29, 1934 – February 19, 2019) was an American basketball player who competed in the 1956 Summer Olympics. Born in Springfield, Illinois, Boushka played collegiately at Saint Louis University. In addition to h ...

, a member of the United States basketball team in the

1956 Summer Olympics The 1956 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XVI Olympiad, were an international multi-sport event held in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, from 22 November to 8 December 1956, with the exception of the equestrian events, whi ...

, was a standout player. Vickers discontinued its team sponsorship in 1960 due to competition with the

NBA The National Basketball Association (NBA) is a professional basketball league in North America. The league is composed of 30 teams (29 in the United States and 1 in Canada) and is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United St ...

for players, but Boushka remained with the company and became president of Vickers Petroleum in 1963.

Service stations

In the 1950s, Vickers built service stations with a hyperbolic paraboloid roof design. The only remaining building with this design is the

Vickers Petroleum Service Station The Vickers Petroleum Service Station is a historic building constructed in 1954 in Haysville, Kansas. It was the first service station to feature a hyperbolic paraboloid form, also known as a "batwing", developed by John M. Hickman and was pla ...

, built in 1954 in

Haysville, Kansas Haysville is a city in Sedgwick County, Kansas, United States, and a suburb of Wichita. As of the 2020 census, the population of the city was 11,262. Haysville is known as the "Peach Capital of Kansas". History W.W. Hays came to this area ...

. It was listed on the Kansas Historical Resource Inventory on August 3, 2019 and on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

on September 30, 2019.

Purchase and breakup

In September 1968,

Swift and Company JBS USA Holdings, Inc. is an American food processing company and a wholly owned subsidiary of the multinational company JBS S.A. The subsidiary was created when JBS entered the U.S. market in 2007 with its purchase of Swift & Company. JBS speci ...

announced its intention to buy Vickers and the related Bell Oil Company. By March 1, 1969, the acquisition had been completed, and Jack Vickers, Jr., was made a director of Swift. In 1973, Swift changed its name to Esmark and created a new subholding company, Vickers Energy Corporation. Vickers Energy was broken up and sold in 1980. Total Petroleum (North America), Ltd. purchased the refining and marketing assets of Vickers Petroleum, including a refinery in

Ardmore, Oklahoma Ardmore is the county seat of Carter County, Oklahoma, United States. According to the 2010 census, the city had a population of 24,283, with an estimated population of 24,698 in 2019. The Ardmore micropolitan statistical area had an estimated ...

, pipelines, and 350 service stations.

Mobil Oil Mobil is a petroleum brand owned and operated by American oil and gas corporation ExxonMobil. The brand was formerly owned and operated by an oil and gas corporation of the same name, which itself merged with Exxon to form ExxonMobil in 1999. ...

purchased oil and gas producing unit TransOcean Oil. Doric Petroleum, a

natural gas Natural gas (also called fossil gas or simply gas) is a naturally occurring mixture of gaseous hydrocarbons consisting primarily of methane in addition to various smaller amounts of other higher alkanes. Low levels of trace gases like carbo ...

processor, was sold to Petro-Lewis Corp. Total continued to use the Vickers name in marketing until 1993. After the sale of the company, members of the Vickers family, including sons Jack, Jr., Robert, and Thomas, remained notable civic and business leaders in both

and

Kansas Kansas () is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its capital is Topeka, and its largest city is Wichita. Kansas is a landlocked state bordered by Nebraska to the north; Missouri to the east; Oklahoma to the south; and Colorado to the ...

References

External links

* {{webarchive , url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150612020235/http://www.haysvilleonline.com/hol/archives/72-Vickers-Service-Station.html , date=June 12, 2015 , title=Vickers Service Station, describing the preserved 1954 station in Haysville, Kansas Defunct oil companies of the United States Companies based in Wichita, Kansas Non-renewable resource companies established in 1918