Ambler's Texaco Gas Station

The station is open seasonally, generally daily from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. April through October, with reduced or by-appointment hours in winter months. Admission is free. The interior of the small office has been preserved and includes period advertising, antique cash registers, a desk and chair from the Tubby Ambler era, framed photographs and Route 66 ephemera. The two original gas pumps stand under the gabled awning out front, repainted in their original red and green Texaco livery for photographs.

Visitors are encouraged to photograph from any angle, indoors and outdoors. The most iconic shot is from the parking lot looking up at the gable, with the pumps in the foreground and the Texaco star sign visible above. The structure photographs particularly well in late afternoon light. There is plenty of room for tour buses, motorcycle clubs and classic car groups to pull in and stage photographs. The adjacent parking lot has space for about thirty cars.

Inside, the visitor center function takes over. Volunteers and paid staff greet travelers, distribute free Illinois Route 66 maps and brochures, sell modest amounts of Dwight-themed merchandise (T-shirts, postcards, magnets, small books), and answer questions about other Route 66 stops in the region. Public restrooms are available. The combination of historic building and active welcome center makes this one of the most-loved free stops on the Illinois stretch of the Mother Road.

Jack Schore, a Dwight local, built the station in 1933 just as the country was emerging from the deepest part of the Great Depression. Texaco's cottage-style design was both a marketing strategy and a community concession; gas stations had been considered eyesores in residential neighborhoods, and the cottage form softened that perception while still providing the canopy and pumps necessary for automotive service. Schore operated the station briefly, then sold it to Basil 'Tubby' Ambler in 1938.

Ambler ran the station for nearly three decades, from 1938 to 1966, during which time it became a beloved local landmark and a familiar stop for the Chicago-to-St. Louis traffic moving south on Route 66. Tubby's name has been associated with the station ever since, and the official name of the building today is the Ambler-Becker Texaco Station in honor of both Ambler and the later Becker family who kept it operating into the modern era. Few station structures have benefited from such continuous, careful stewardship.

The station closed as a working gas station in 1999, briefly seeming destined for demolition, but Phil and Debbie Becker donated it to the village of Dwight in 2002. Federal and state Route 66 preservation grants funded restoration over the following several years, and the building reopened to the public in 2007. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2001 and remains one of the most cited examples of intact cottage-style gas station architecture in the United States.

For the 2026 Route 66 centennial, Ambler's Texaco Station is one of the highest-priority preservation stops on the entire 2,448-mile Mother Road. The Illinois Route 66 Scenic Byway and the National Park Service have both included the station in their official centennial promotional materials, and traffic volumes are expected to be significantly higher than usual throughout the year. The village of Dwight is expanding parking capacity, adding new interpretive signage and extending operating hours during peak summer weekends.

Special centennial programming planned for 2026 includes monthly classic car nights from May through October, a traveling photo exhibit hosted in partnership with the Illinois State Library, and a series of guided historic walks linking the station to other downtown Dwight Route 66 sites. The Village of Dwight has also announced commemorative merchandise that will be sold only at the station, including a limited-edition print and a centennial 100th-anniversary patch.

International visitors make up a significant share of the traffic at Ambler's, particularly travelers from Germany, the Netherlands, Japan and the United Kingdom. The station appears in nearly every published Route 66 guidebook regardless of language, and staff regularly answer questions in basic translated phrases. The site is genuinely barrier-free; the office is accessible from the parking lot at grade, and the restrooms are ADA compliant.